P2P

43 I L T A N E T . O R G burdens. As noted by Fred Davis in his Technology Acceptance Model, perceived ease of use is one of the two primary attributes that drive technology acceptance. The other attribute is perceived usefulness. Ease of use is achieved through refinement and tailoring. Without staying in contact with both management and end-users, we put system adoption at risk. The waterfall approach was popularized in 1970 by Winston Royce. Since that time, new methodologies have come forward. The new frameworks place a greater emphasis on iteration and dialogue. They emphasize interaction over process and tools, user stories over documentation, collaboration over negotiation, and responding to change over the adherence to a plan. Rather than clustering communication at a few points during a project, they emphasize recurring communication and interaction during the development of a system. Notwithstanding its advantages, agile methods have their shortcomings, notably they do not encompass operations. To respond to increasing competitive pressures, even newer methodologies have been developed that may supplant the agile methods we use today. In our current race to innovate, development cycles are being compressed to point that they are overlapping with operational cycles. It is almost as if the development and operational domains are converging to a point of singularity. In the current era, methodologies, such as DevOps, DataOps, ModelOps, DevSecOps and MLOps to name a few, are coming into vogue. These frameworks combine the concerns of development and operations into a singular, holistic unit. The xOps approaches are premised on continuous communication, iteration, and the social exchange of ideas. In the old world, we dedicated an entire phase to documenting requirements. It is becoming less and less common that we have the luxury of time to distill our ideas into pristine and polished documents. By the time an idea has reached that form, first-mover advantage is likely to be lost to a competitor that conveys knowledge during stand- up meetings via story form. If we put on a fish-eye lens and look across the evolution of system development methodologies, we see system lifecycles that are placing greater emphasis on socialization. It is through dialogue that we can achieve constant realignment that is needed to adjust to perpetual change. No longer can we afford to put a system into operation and stop worrying about it until we need to upgrade it or replace it, which used to be years. It may not be today, but it will not be long before we will need to adopt a development-operational mindset in order to remain competitively relevant. In this framework, we will need to communicate constantly with all spheres of stakeholders, not just end users. It is through constant communication that we can ensure clarity, alignment, engagement, and adoption. ILTA Mark Thorogood is the Director of Application Services at Perkins Coie. In 2013, he received the ILTA Distinguished Peer Award for Leadership. While in the U.S. Army, Mark received the Distinguished Leadership Award. He was also inducted into the International Honor Society for Computing and Information Disciplines. Mark can be contacted at mthorogood@perkinscoie.com.

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