From Mark Kennaley's book.
When we hear of a new and exciting approach to old and never ending problems, we need to first ask in what domain is your new and clever solution applicable
No domain, not likely to have been tested outside you personal anecdotal experience.
Here's Mark's Scaling factors. He uses Agile as the starting point, but I'm expanding it to any suggestion that has yet to be tested outside of personal anecdotes
- Team size - 1 maybe 2 ↔︎ 1000's.
- If you've tested your idea on a small team, will it work in a larger setting?
- There are project where 1000's of engineers, developers, testers, support people work on the same outcome.
- There are projects where 2 people work on the same project.
- The business process usually defines the team size, not the method. Writing code for a family owned sprinkler company is not the same as writing code for a world-wide ERP system.
- Geographic location - co located ↔︎ across the planet.
- Having a co-located team is wonderful in some instances.
- In other instances this is physically not possible.
- In other cases, the customer simply can't be with the development team, no matter how desirable that is.
- Organizational Structure - single monolithic team ↔︎ Multiple Divisions
- Small firms with single structures
- Larger firms with "business units"
- Even larger firms with separate companies under the same Logos
- Your method doesn't get to say how the firm is organized, it needs to adapt to that organization.
- Compliance - None ↔︎ Life, financial, safety critical
- Governance is a broad term, so is compliance
- The notion of customer collaboration over contract negotiation is usually spoken by those with low value at risk.
- Domain Complexity - Straightforward ↔︎ Very Complex
- Complex and Complexity are relative terms.
- For a developer who has built web pages for the warehouse, the autonomous rendezvous and dock flight software may appear complex.
- To the autonomous rendezvous and dock developers, the GPS ground system of 37 earth stations may appear complex.
- Pick the domain, then assess the complexity
- Technical Complexity - same as above
What's the Point?
When a new approach is being proposed, without a domain, it's a solution looking for a problem to solve.
