DIALOG Agile IT Infrastructure

Another panel, this time on how business rules fits into an agile IT infrastructure. British Airways, PMI (mortgage related services), Swiss Medical (Argentinian health insurance) and Wyndham Group were represented. Panels are tough to blog so here’s a list of takeaways:

• Start small and in a well known area to prove out the technology but have a comprehensive blue print so you know how it will fit
• Develop coarse-grained decision services and empower the business users to manage the rules in those services
  Gives agility because the software infrastructure is stable even though the rules are not
• Think about the data your business users might want to use and pass this canonical data to services
  Allows new rules to be added without changing the integration layer because all the possible attributes are available
• Keep following software best practices
  Automating QA/validation and deployments is a big factor in delivering agility for instance
• Do the right thing and do it once
  Don’t let deadlines cause you to do the wrong thing
• Focus on business users – it cannot be an IT tool
• Integration and data issues require early IT involvement.
• Don’t forget Business Intelligence
• Governance matters
• Transparency of the rules is a key benefit
• Combining the rules from legacy systems owned by different groups improves transparency and reuse