Solving problems with principles

Description

Leading organizations focus their efforts on meeting users’ needs and avoiding the trap of large-scale enterprise architecture plans. But where those organizations have competing technology demands—such as legacy systems that need to be managed differently from modern technology or substantial differences between regional systems—it can be hard to establish a common vision, let alone handle the dependencies between teams and systems.

A clear set of principles that all teams contribute to and work from is a powerful tool to break down some of the barriers in those large organizations. Done well, they can set a common direction without being overly prescriptive, giving teams space to experiment and clarifying where technology and nontechnology concerns fit together (e.g., around data ownership).

James Stewart and Dafydd Vaughan explore how a variety of organizations in different sectors have articulated their working principles, analyze what makes for a useful set, and detail their experiences running workshops to help teams develop and apply data and technology design principles. They’ve worked with large, complex public and private sector organizations around the world, as well as doing research with others. They walk you through how focusing on principles helps set the balance between technology direction and autonomous teams and how you can use them to have clearer, more focused, more productive conversations.