The roots of Business as Unusual

Before joining Capgemini Belgium in March 2010, the VP of Technology Services gave me a book that was co-authored by Andy Mulholland, CTO of Capgemini global.
Mashup Corporations (The End of Business as Usual) turned out to be a curious book. It has a story line, but it’s not a novel. It’s not a highly literate, fictional or romantic piece of work, but a very direct and effective tale about… technology. About uplifting technology to Service-Oriented Business Transformation.

The authors describe the transformation process of a fictitious company. Vorpal inc. is an important, but very traditionally organized, player in the market of popcorn popper machines. It enters new markets through the use of its ‘shadow IT’, leading to a top-down transformation to fully service-oriented operation, in order to cope with the continual changes and new demands of the new channels. It thereby builds new internal structures and more integrated (win-win) external relationships.

Vorpal makes the shift from ‘hub IT’ to ‘Edge IT’ on the wagon wheel:
(1) The ‘hub’ holds core enterprise data, clear and predictable processes and monstrous applications to maintain it;
(2) To reach new businesses, Enterprise applications are customized and refined;
(3) The ultimate level of flexibility and dynamism is achieved by opening up to new worlds via controlled services.

Agile is only briefly mentioned in the book, but in my Scrum Evangelist opinion, Agile development methods are the perfect match for this transformation. Deliver quickly, with high quality but on a less formal base. Go to market, learn and adapt.

This book should be on the reading list of every CTO or CIO !!!

Note: You can download my full paper on the book and the link to Agile.

I also published the complete story on the Capgemini Technology Blog, for our Business As Unusual program:

• Part 1: Introducing Vorpal Inc.
• Part 2: The larger picture
• Part 3: Fast-delivered Business Value