An Opinionated look at Bi-Modal IT What’s in a name?

Shawn Smith Director of Software Engineering ses44@psu.edu shawn.eion.smith@psu.edu fatboy@psu.edu

Some Perspective Pusher & Puller

Some Perspective Pusher & Puller What’s this Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) all about?

Is Bi-Modal IT really something new?

It’s a tale as old as time (or at least IT) “Whether you call it legacy versus emergent systems, Brownfield versus Greenfield deployments or sustaining versus disruptive technologies, the dichotomy between old and new or maintenance and development has been around since the dawn of IT,”  - Kurt Marko Forbes contributor

Or put another way Waterfall Spiral (auger) Iterative Extreme Programming Agile Devops ……

And where does this stuff fit? ISO IEEE ITIL SixSigma EVM CMMI ……

What is Bimodal IT?  “the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.”

Or more simply…. Slow – Think stability Fast – Think agility

But does the assertion live up to scrutiny?

But do the assertions live up to scrutiny? “The larger the change going into production, the more difficult the production errors are to diagnose and fix, and the longer they take to remediate.” – The DevOps Handbook

But do the assertions live up to scrutiny? How often are the fast moving systems tied to the slow moving systems and what does that mean in a practical sense?

If we assume slow means waterfall…. “..Mode 1 is traditional and sequential..”

If we assume slow means waterfall…. What were the problems we found in the waterfall approach to development? Is waterfall a legitimate development lifecycle approach or more fundamentally a business approach? If waterfall worked so well, why did we evolve as an industry? In our experience with waterfall, did it really provide more stability?

But possibly the most insidious problem with Bi-modal as described by Gartner?

“Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy “Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.”

Sorry Google and Amazon, you’re doing it wrong…..

But do the assertions live up to scrutiny? “… the bimodal idea is founded on theTradableQualityHypothesis, the idea that quality is something you trade-off for speed. It's a common notion, but a false one. ” – Martin Fowler, https://martinfowler.com/bliki/BimodalIT.html

Leverage Automation Tools

Leverage Automation Tools

You can be fast and stable “The people who built the DevOps movement had to solve a wicked problem: how to build reliable, secure distributed systems at an unprecedented scale, while enabling a rate of change orders of magnitude faster than the industry had ever achieved.” - https://continuousdelivery.com/2016/04/the-flaw-at-the- heart-of-bimodal-it/

You can be fast and stable The original goal of the devops movement was to be able to do 10+ deployments a day. That’s kind of hard to achieve when you only have one maintenance window….

Does Bi-Modal ever make sense?

Possibly If used as a transition approach an argument can be made that Bimodal IT can work

Or in a local context Mainframe vs. Containerized Microservices

Or in a local context Mainframe vs. Containerized Microservices …But this is a technology problem, not a stability problem.

Can the Bimodal approach be dangerous?

Caveat Emptor

Caveat Emptor With a name you can establish a market, right? And Gartner said it so it must be good, right?

Mendix Can Help? Characteristics for Mode 1: Development projects related to core system maintenance, stability or efficiency. These require highly specialized programmers and traditional, slow moving development cycles. There is little need for business involvement. Characteristics for Mode 2: Development projects that help innovate or differentiate the business. These require a high degree of business involvement, fast turnaround, and frequent update. Mode 2 requires a rapid path (or IT ‘fast lane’) to transform business ideas into applications. *https://www.mendix.com/what-does-bimodal-it-mean/

BINGO!! “Mendix’s rapid application development software creates a ‘fast lane’ within your bimodal IT strategy so that you can achieve your digital goals. Our platform augments existing IT efforts so that a separate cross-functional team of business and IT people can quickly test new digital ideas and iterate toward the perfect business solution, reducing risk on your team while keeping potential business impact high.” *https://www.mendix.com/what-does-bimodal-it-mean/

In conclusion (until next time) The concept of running multiple modes of project and operations isn’t a new thing Sometimes it’s necessary to facilitate a hard transition in technology It should NEVER be codified as a long standing process There should always be a plan to make our systems more responsive to an increasingly volatile technology landscape. We owe it to our constituents, after all, most of them are either kids trying to get educated or faculty and staff trying to improve their ability to be successful (and they help pay our salaries).