What Is Embrace Cloud?
Embrace Cloud is the first step in the five step social construct or blueprint called enterprise cloud development (ECD) being introduced in the software development industry. Embracing the cloud is simply about data aggregation - from source code control to requirements tracking to document storage - for software development or IT divisions that support larger business organizations. While this may seem easy on the surface and can be for small or midsized businesses (SMBs) - data aggregation presents significant challenges for larger organizations. Below are three challenges explained in depth.
(a) Intellectual property (IP) control. The lack of IP control can prevent auditors, attorneys and other development team members from doing their work months or years after a product or project has moved from active to retired. Here's an example of a nightmare scenario for a CIO. Two years after a project gets retired a lawsuit comes from an end user. In order to defend that lawsuit the code and conversations around that code needs to be found and analyzed. The IP can't be found and the development team members have since moved on to other organizations. In addition the conversations around that code are in six different repositories including email and chat, neither of which have historical logs. Now what is the CIO supposed to do? How is the organization supposed to defend itself?
(b) Organizational transparency. This goes back to a core belief that there exist different types of organizations. Only a select few will have a culture that values openly share information and data. However transparency breeds trust and code reuse / sharing. This is a really big idea and one that I will build on in step two of the five step ECD paradigm.
(c) Acquisition. If an organization is highly acquisitive then folding different corporate data together can feel like pushing mud uphill. Different organizations use different tooling / technology platforms, different standards for their key performance indicators (KPIs) and/or management by objectives (MBOs). The concept of replication or reconciliation of KPIs or MBOs doesn't necessarily work. Tradeoffs and exchanges need to be negotiated early between the two executive teams so that both sets of executives (the new and the existing) can track the organization accurately.
An additional fear of acquisition is the loss or theft of data. What prevents a core group of newly disgruntled employees or contractors from walking away with bits of meaningful code? The acquiring group must plan for these types of worst case scenarios.
Data aggregation through embracing the cloud is a promise of an incremental improvement to organizational structures because of the ability to find and organize the data (source code, requirements, documents) that teams rely upon to do effective work. Unlike some of the other steps of this social construct or blueprint this step is a prerequisite to steps two through five.
About The Author:
Laszlo Szalvay currently serves as the VP Worldwide Scrum Business Line at CollabNet, Inc.
CollabNet leads the industry in Agile ALM in the Cloud. The company also offers training, including Certified ScrumMaster training, software development process improvement services, and an innovative community management approach to driving enterprise development success. As the founder of the open source Subversion project, CollabNet has collaborative development for distributed teams in our DNA.
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