To answer the question who we build MDriven for we created these personas: The developer, The status quo person, The manager, The customer.
Developers do not want to spend excessive time to get one thing done since there are so many different things to improve. Developers tend to fix the things that needs fixing the most to maximize any opportunity for improvement they see– then look around for the next thing in queue.
Then we have a total different kind of person – the status quo person. Developers can find themselves trying to get access to a thing that needs fixing for longer time than it would take applying the fix – when you are in this situation you are probably stuck in discussion with a status quo person.
Status quo persons tend to focus on risk minimization rather than opportunity maximization. They are in love with the current situation or at least they fear the unknown. This kind of person has a strong need for documentation and structure. The status quo person seldom fully understand the developer and vice versa. Depending on how little of the diplomat gene these two persons have inherited there will be conflict.
The third person in this mix is the manager. The manager has a mix of status quo persons and developers to manage and will try to minimize conflict between developers and status quo persons with different strategies. A very common strategy is to set up meetings that effectively becomes the arena for the developer and status quo person’s conflicts.
The forth type of person is the customer. The customer wants an outcome that is reliable as a first priority and improving as a second priority. The manager is responsible for the customer communication and customer satisfaction – this leads to the need to prioritize the developers and status quo persons work.
Problem statement
The manager can easily be fooled into listening too much to the status quo camp since the customer wants reliability as a first priority. This will however lead to losing the customer since the second priority – improvement – is actually more important than what the customer will let on. If the improvement factor is not high enough the customer will eventually stop using the product – and find another way.
IT has changed a lot in the last 30 years – but the organizational nomenclature has not. The IT department is still the IT department. The employees of a typical IT department has however changed and it is common that we have a leniency towards status quo employees rather than developers.
Modern business have many opportunities that could come from applying IT – and it will require developers. But the IT department has become the status quo department.
Business improvement meetings are often too abstract and technical to truly engage the doers in the customer organization – they are also time consuming with an unclear return of investment.
Not being able to fix business processes issues in the same pace as they are discovered builds employee frustration that leads to shadow IT and un-optimized, un-sanctioned solutions – this in turn may lead to compliance issues with laws and rules that governs the business, and missed opportunities for increased efficiency.
How MDriven helps
The personas described above are all satisfied with an MDriven powered approach to development.
The developer: Fast paced self-documenting changes in a growing domain language (model) makes it easy to continue to make improvements. Developers improve system Gist separated from Modernity and will this way avoid conflicts with the status quo camp of operations.
The status quo person: Well structured UML compliant documentation of systems are always kept up to date and easily reviewed prior to release of updates. Reuse of proven modernity platform ensures a foreseeable operation environment – and pain free deployments.
The Customer: Stable Modernity platforms gives a predictable environment that the business can trust – and at the same time have domain specific discussions with developers that can continuously improve processes in incremental steps. The business can avoid to get stuck in the time consuming requirement gathering processes of the past – since this is now solved as an integrated ongoing discussion with developers. Users in the organization get a stronger commitment to common goals as they are listened to and have impact on the future of the processes in which they work – this enables a self-sharpening organization that will stay competitive.
The Manager: Happy employees and happy customers makes a happy manager. Fewer conflicts between developers and status quo persons will increase productivity in both camps.
The alternative
If we remove the clear separation of Gist and Modernity that MDriven brings, we cannot keep a good separation between status quo persons and developers. This way conflicts will limit developer productivity and in the end this will lead to customer loss. The customer will also be left without a speaking partner that quickly can apply improvements with ensured operations stability.