Agile – “Characterized by quickness, lightness, and ease of movement; nimble.” (Dictionary.com)

Businesses have always desired to be nimble. Our history is littered with companies that died because they weren’t able to able to change with the times. 8-Track tapes, fountain pens and the milkmen are all examples of products that had their time but eventually came to an end. The companies that made these products or offered these services had to change, and change quick. Some companies are able to change while others aren’t. Agility finds it’s way into all parts of a business. At the top, the CEO and executive team must maintain an agile vision. The direction of the company, the offerings, the way we bring product to market, build the products and ultimately support the products must all be nimble to support the changing environment. And yes, the systems that support all of these processes must be quick, light and facilitate ease of movement.

In the I.T. area, we find that at the heart of the “agility” issue is that rigid, tightly coupled systems cost too much to change. We architects, designers and developers have been pushing for agile systems, but success has been slow and incremental. High level programming languages, meta-models and specialized servers like databases and directory servers are all examples of recent successes in creating more agile systems. Yet, the pace of business and expectations continue to increase and demand more flexibility in the systems we deliver.

The service network is designed to create loosely coupled systems that can easily be changed. One of the primary goals of the Service Oriented Enterprise is to make sure that the I.T. infrastructure is not the obstacle to creating an agile business. I.T. should enable agility – not prevent it.