Manifesto for Stable Infrastructure and Data Management

Our goal should be Stability, not Agility. 

There has been much written about Agile Software Development techniques. Some even say people are overdoing the use of the Agile name (https://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-2018).

There is a time and a place for everything. A time for Agile, a time for Stability. Stability is simply the act of making your ecosystem S.T.A.B.L.E. Everyone should want to have achieve a stable environment that is a Scalable Technology Architecture By Layering Everything

In light of this, I propose the following Manifesto for Stable Infrastructure and Data Management.


We are uncovering better ways of growing business operations by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Steady over explosive change.

Individual expertise over title or position.

Shared responsibility over admonishment.

Ecosystem availability over new applications.

 We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to keep the business working while ensuring that we maintain a foundation of high quality tools and technology.

The modern business is built around a wide variety of software and applications.

No one application is more important than the holistic environment.

Not all applications will be built and maintained by our organization.

Treating all projects as if they were a software development project diminishes the value of the project itself.

Projects will come and go, new applications will join our ecosystem, old applications will be shutdown, but the data should be available forever.

The stability of the Enterprise, and the ability to fulfill the mission is paramount; this takes precedence over new needs.

Use out of the box tools and applications to drive using data for a different purpose than originally captured in a custom application.

Business continuity takes precedence over deployment of new applications.

Adopting new tools and technologies should be done with adequate time, training, and trials such that the original adopters are not the only ones capable of supporting it.

A minority of technologists are software developers; the Data of the organization is co-equal in importance to any algorithm that may be developed.