Are agility and chaos two sides of the same coin?

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by dan foody Posted on February 28, 2008

It's conventional wisdom that business agility results from providing a significant amount of control and direction around a SOA initiative to ensure predictable results.  To achieve this, strong enterprise architecture and SOA governance are assumed to play a key role.

Of course, it's always important to ask whether conventional wisdom is really true...

It was long believed that, in aircraft design, the most agile aircraft was the most stable and predictable.  This conventional wisdom existed because engineers believed that certain things just weren't possible. For example, they believed a dynamically unstable aircraft couldn't fly.

With the advent of fly-by-wire though, the conventional wisdom was turned on its head.  Aeronautic engineers now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the most agile aircraft are also the most unstable.  In aircraft, chaos and unpredictability are key to achieving the best agility.

So, if the most chaotic "architecture" for aircraft provides the most agility, could the most chaotic "architecture" for SOA provide the most business agility? And, if the answer is "yes", what's the SOA infrastructure equivalent to fly-by-wire that makes it possible?


dan foody
View all posts from dan foody on the Progress blog. Connect with us about all things application development and deployment, data integration and digital business.
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