I have recently come across an article analyzing the Gartner Application Development Summit entitled What Gartner Is Telling Your Boss.  There are several reasons to pay attention to Gartner predictions.

Firstly, Gartner has built up a reputation as a reliable market analysis firm in our industry. No matter how we may feel about individual reports, it is an undeniable fact that the Gartner brand carries a lot of weight with executives in our industry. It is wise to keep on top of the latest opinions from the top major research firms when dealing with sophisticated customers such as ours.

Secondly, a client may ask us for an opinion about the matter when they learn of it. The worst possible mistake in the consulting industry is not knowing the latest frameworks, methodologies, and predictions before our customer. When our customers feel that we do not have our hand on the pulse of the market, they begin to question our usefulness to their organization. As IT Consultants we are responsible to our customers to appropriately recommend ideas from methodologies such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) and others.

Thirdly, we must always analyze the communication approaches taken by others to reflect on our own presentation techniques. For example, this specific article mentions “agility.” However, Gartner has redefined the industry term “agility” by stating “the keys to unlocking the agility paradox are architecture; a focus on software process and engineering; and reuse — of everything.” This is of course in contrast to the “agile methodologies” which stress less process and up-front engineering than traditional development approaches. As an industry, we must be able to communicate our ideas to our customers consistently and reliably.

My analysis:

According to the article, Gartner is proposing that software developers should change their focus from creating applications to reusing code and creating middleware (or mash-ups). In my opinion, there is certainly a case to be made for code reuse. However, in my experience, code reuse has been a hard thing to actually achieve. Often times, business goals can be achieved better, faster, and cheaper by re-writing or re-engineering an entire application rather then investing in existing systems. It is often the case that business applications outlast the platforms (hardware and operating system) that they were originally developed for. In such cases, it is hard to add value to an existing product because the cost of integrating existing code into new products can be very high. Conversely, there is a greater trend of companies like Microsoft to create integration points into their own server software. These integration points may provide new applications with vital functionality at a fraction of the cost of developing the same code in-house. Unfortunately, I believe that Gartner has confused the message to a developer by providing them with the “how” but not the “why.” The message should not focus on code reuse or process improvement but on the end goals. Both developers and consultants are only here to do one thing. Enable our business clients to meet their goals while managing the costs associated with our activities.  Whether that means code reuse, improved processes, agile methodologies, or any other technique, our goal is always the same.

My advice:

• Always analyze your specific situation and apply the appropriate tools to improve it
• Never fix what is not broken
• Always approach a business problem by looking at people, process, and technology points of view. A business problem is rarely solvable without affecting all three.
• Managers must provide proper guidance (process and governance) to their employees without overburdening them
• Radical change (in terms of application development approaches and IT in general) rarely leads to positive results