Day: 7 November 2006

Vision "Replace an enterprise information system that has been developed over the last ten years, to allow it to become stable on a modern architecture, to allow two new business units due to a split in the business to develop along their own paths, and to introduce new features that will take the business into the multinational domain." Inception The business wants to know how much such a system will cost. Although its vital for the entire business to be able to continue, it does make sense to get a grip on the costs of such a system, because with a vision like that, they are likely to explode. So the business has approached the IT department and asked for a conceptual phase to be carried out that includes analysis of requirements, conceptual analysis, migration plans and cost estimates. Great, three months ago we started on the technical side. No requirements at this stage, other than the vision. We managed to put together the architecture though, with big caveats with regards to realisation based on actual requirements. Hang on... shouldn't we have stopped before writing about the architecture and waited for requirements? Well the project manager insisted we keep to the deadlines, so perhaps we could "put something together"? His budget, he can spend it how he likes (I get paid by the hour). Two months ago, we completed the migration document. Again, because of a lack of requirements, it was largely conceptual, with lots of pretty flow charts to…

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