Just in time design

It’s interesting how we tend to go in cycles. Back in the early days of OSS, the network operators tended to build their OSS from the ground up. Then we went through a phase of using Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) OSS software developed by third-party vendors. We now seem to be cycling back towards in-house development, but with collaboration that includes vendors and external assistance through open-source projects like ONAP. Interesting too how Agile fits in with these cycles.

Regardless of where we are in the cycle for our OSS, as implementers we’re always challenged with finding the Goldilocks amount of documentation – not too heavy, not too light, but just right.

The Agile Manifesto espouses, “working software over comprehensive documentation.” Sounds good to me! It perplexes me that some OSS implementations are bogged down by lengthy up-front documentation phases, especially if we’re basing the solution on COTS offerings. These can really stall the momentum of a project.

Once a solution has been selected (which often does require significant analysis and documentation), I’m more of a proponent of getting the COTS software stood up, even if only in a sandpit environment. This is where just-in-time (JIT) documentation comes into play. Rather than having every aspect of the solution documented (eg process flows, data models, high availability models, physical connectivity, logical connectivity, databases, etc, etc), we only need enough documentation for collaborative stakeholders to do their parts (eg IT to set up hardware / hosting, networks to set up physical connectivity, vendor to provide software, integrator to perform build, etc) to stand up a vanilla solution.

Then it’s time to start building trial scenarios through the solution. There’s usually quite a bit of trial and error in this stage, as we seek to optimise the scenarios for the intended users. Then we add a few more scenarios.

There’s little point trying to document the solution in detail before a scenario is trialled, but some documentation can be really helpful. For example, if the scenario is to build a small sub-section of a network, then draw up some diagrams of that sub-network that include the intended naming conventions for each object (eg device, physical connectivity, addresses, logical connectivity, etc). That allows you to determine whether there are unexpected challenges with naming conventions, data modelling, process design, etc. There are always unexpected challenges that arise!

I figure you’re better off documenting the real challenges than theorising on the “what if?” challenges, which is what often happens with up-front documentation exercises. There are always brilliant stakeholders who can imagine millions of possible challenges, but these often bog the design phase down.

With JIT design, once the solution evolves, the documentation can evolve too… if there is an ongoing reason for its existence (eg as a user guide, for a test plan, as a training cheat-sheet, a record of configuration for fault-finding purposes, etc).

Interestingly, the first value in the Agile Manifesto is, “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” This is where the COTS vs in-house-dev comes back into play. When using COTS software, individuals, interactions and processes are partly driven by what the tools support. COTS functionality constrains us but we can still use Agile configuration and customisation to optimise our solution for our customers’ needs (where cost-benefit permits).

Having a working set of vanilla tools allows our customers to get a much better feel for what needs to be done rather than trying to understand the intent of up-front design documentation. And that’s the key to great customer outcomes – having the customers knowledgeable enough about the real solution (not hypothetical solutions) to make the most informed decisions possible.

Of course there are always challenges with this JIT design model too, especially when third-party contracts are involved!

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2 Responses

  1. Hi Ryan
    I agree – design decisions need to be delayed wherever possible until sufficient context is available to make an informed decision. Software was after all invented to allow for more flexible solutions. This quickly resulted in chaos, but I think we overcorrected by introducing structure which is analogous to the building industry – hence IT architecture decisions which often get made up-front and considered to be cast in stone. Very often, these decisions end up to be problematic, since they were made before sufficient context is available to make an informed decision. Sadly, few individuals and/or organisations have the maturity to adapt by changing these decisions (or delaying them in the first place).

  2. Hi Johan,
    It’s interesting that you mention the building industry as it’s an analogy that I often ponder. I wonder whether software projects fail regularly but buildings rarely fall down because building standards have evolved over hundreds of years to where we are today, but software is still in relative infancy.
    Interesting too about the maturity of individuals and/or organisations. There are so many factors to try to balance (eg progress vs procrastination, willingness to refine vs loss-of-face, politics, time-to-market forces, etc). I figure it largely comes down to discussing against the context of a working system that people can see and feel rather than discussing against what-if scenarios. 🙂

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