The Agile Executive

A previous post in this blog defined the demarcation line between The Agile Executive and BSM Review as follows:

If software development is your primary interest, you might find my forthcoming posts in BSM Review go a little beyond the traditional scope of software methods. If, however, you are interested in software delivery in entirety, you are likely to find good synergy between the topics I will address in BSM Review and those I will continue to bring up in The Agile Executive. Either way, I trust my posts and Cote’s will be of on-going interest to you.

Since writing these words, I realized how tricky it is to adhere to this differentiation. The difficulty lies in the “cord” between development and operations. Development needs to devise algorithms that take into account operational characteristics in IT. Operations needs to comprehend the limits of such algorithms in the context of the service level agreements and operational level agreements that had been negotiated with their customers (either external or internal). The mutual need is particularly strong in the web application/web operations domain where mutual understanding, collaborative work and joint commitment often need to transcend organizational lines.

Given the inherently close ties between development and operations, here are some BSM Review articles and posts that are likely to be of interest to readers of The Agile Executive:

• The Joys of Real Hardware – what it means to do Business Service Management on a very large-scale
• The Voice of the CIO – a study on the attributes needed by today’s CIO (yes, you had better be agile and Agile…)
• The Quest for a Maturity Model in Business Service Management – while the focus is on BSM, some of the models might apply in a fairly straightforward manner to Agile
• Business Service Management, Six Sigma and your IT Compliance Program – lessons to the champion who has one foot in Agile, the other foot in Six Sigma
• A Measured Approach to Cloud Computing – what it really means to “… make muck so you don’t have to”
• The Case for Agile Business Service Management – the fusion of modern software development methods with the prevailing preference to run IT from the perspective of the business customer

It is a little premature at this early stage to project how BSM Review will evolve. My hunch is that forthcoming articles in BSM Review on cloud computing, large-scale operations, leadership, risk mitigation and technology trends will be of particular interest to readers of this blog.