How agile teams can pursue technical excellence (with abstract)
| How agile teams can pursue technical excellence (with abstract) | |
|---|---|
| Published By | Articles by McKinsey |
| Publish Date | 2022 |
| Authors | Jeanine Murphy, Michael Sioufas |
| Topics | Tech for business |
| Statistics | |
| Article Size | words |
| Diagrams | No |
| Downloadable Version | No |
| Reviewers | |
| Page Owner | Nikolay Sidelnikov |
| Summary Author | Nikolay Sidelnikov |
Abstract
The article "How agile teams can pursue technical excellence" brings a usefull advice on selection of software being oriented for high business performance due technical excellence.
Authors explain why non-functional requirements are so important for business and suggest the idea of a "well-architected framework" based on five pillars:
- Operational excellence: run and monitor systems to provide business value while continually improving support processes and procedures
- Security: protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies
- Reliability: ensure systems can recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues
- Performance efficiency: use resources efficiently to meet system requirements and to maintain performance as demand changes and technologies evolve
- Cost optimization: run systems that provide business value at the lowest price point by minimizing or avoiding unnecessary costs
All these pillars are explained in more details in the article.
McKinsey highlighted, that cost optimization is often the most neglected pillar, though it is critical in today’s pay-as-you-go cloud-deployment model.
A quote:
Teams that use the well-architected framework to improve NFRs and overall technical excellence can begin by asking specific questions to align their focus with each of the five pillars:
- Is the application designed to use resources in the most cost-effective way?
- Have the necessary security controls been implemented to ensure the integrity of the application’s data and to detect and address security events?
- Are we taking measures to meet the reliability and performance expectations of our user community?