"Outside-in thinking complements any approach your teams may be taking to the actual implementation of software, but it changes how you measure success. A successful outside-in team does a lot of learning and not much speculation."
—Tom Poppendieck
Build Software That Delivers Maximum Business Value to Every Key Stakeholder Imagine your ideal development project. It will deliver exactly what your clients need. It will achieve broad, rapid, enthusiastic adoption. And it will be designed and built by a productive, high-morale team of expert software professionals. Using this book's breakthrough "outside-in" approach to software development, your next project can be that ideal project.
In Outside-in Software Development, two of IBM's most respected software leaders, Carl Kessler and John Sweitzer, show you how to identify the stakeholders who'll determine your project's real value, shape every decision around their real needs, and deliver software that achieves broad, rapid, enthusiastic adoption.
The authors present an end-to-end framework and practical implementation techniques any development team can quickly benefit from, regardless of project type or scope. Using their proven approach, you can improve the effectiveness of every client conversation, define priorities with greater visibility and clarity, and make sure all your code delivers maximum business value.
Coverage includes
- Understanding your stakeholders and the organizational and business context they operate in
- Clarifying the short- and long-term stakeholder goals your project will satisfy
- More effectively mapping project expectations to outcomes
- Building more "consumable" software: systems that are easier to deploy, use, and support
- Continuously enhancing alignment with stakeholder goals
- Helping stakeholders manage ongoing change long after you've delivered your product
- Mastering the leadership techniques needed to drive outside-in development
Table of Contents:
Foreword xv Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxiii About the Authors xxv Chapter 1 Introducing Outside-in Development 1 There may be challenges to overcome 2
Consider a different way of thinking about software product development 2
Consider some proven techniques as well 3
It takes a whole team to succeed 3
Understand your stakeholders 4
Understand organizational context 5
Make your products consumable 7
Align with your stakeholders' goals 7
Define success in your stakeholders' terms 8
Become an outside-in developer 9
The leader's role in outside-in development 9
Essential point: You can get started now 10
Chapter 2 Understanding Your Stakeholders 11 Introduction to stakeholder understanding 12
Identify the stakeholders 16
Understand the stakeholders' goals 18
The four stakeholder groups 23
Engage in dialog with stakeholders 31
Align client discussions with stakeholder goals 41
The leader's role in understanding your stakeholders 43
Essential points 44
Key terms 45
Chapter 3 Understanding Organizational Context 47 Introduction to organizational context 49
Handling diverse client requirements 59
Use organizational context to speak your stakeholders' language 60
The leader's role in using organizational context 68
Essential points 68
Key terms 68
Chapter 4 Making Products Consumable 71 Introduction to product consumability 73
Identify consumability meta-tasks 78
Use a consumability score card to guide investments 82
Choose which consumability meta-tasks to emphasize 93
Allow more people to use your product 99
The leader's role in making products consumable 101
Essential points 102
Key terms 103
Chapter 5 Aligning with Stakeholder Goals 105 Introduction to stakeholder alignment 107
Focus dialog on what matters to stakeholders 108
Plan to have the capacity to stay aligned with your stakeholders 120
Minimize noise in your deliverables to improve stakeholder feedback 127
Help ensure quality 129
Rehearse for the success of your product 137
The leader's role in aligning with stakeholder goals 143
Essential points 144
Key terms 144
Chapter 6 Defining Success in Your Stakeholders' Terms 147 Introduction to stakeholder success in production 148
Wave one: It is all about principal stakeholder success 150
Use what you learn from the first wave 157
Wave two: It is all about the long-term commitment to your clients 164
Wave three: Help your stakeholders deal with the old and the new 168
The leader's role in defining success 169
Essential points 170
Key terms 170
Chapter 7 Becoming an Outside-in Developer 173 How to adopt outside-in development techniques 174
Insights into effective use of outside-in development 181
The leader's role in adopting outside-in development 196
Essential points 196
Key terms 197
Index 199
About the Author :
Carl Kessler is vice president of worldwide development with the IBM Software Group. He has led large software development organizations at IBM for more than a decade, primarily in the enterprise content management, systems management, security, and networking arenas. Prior to his product development assignments, Carl was with IBM Research where his roles included director of software technology and chief information officer. Carl is a senior member of the IEEE and holds several patents.
John Sweitzer is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology with more than twenty-six years of experience developing architectures for large complex software systems. He currently leads the IBM Software Group's outside-in design initiative, a subset of outside-in development that addresses design practices that impact the consumability and business relevance of integrated software products. Previously John was the chief architect for the IBM Autonomic Computing initiative, and prior to that, chief architect for the Tivoli systems management brand. John was a founding member of the DMTF standards committee for the Common Information Model, authored a book about that model, has several external publications, and holds numerous patents.
