This is the eBook version of the printed book.

A Practical, Start-to-Finish Approach to Managing, Evolving, and Transforming Legacy IT Systems

For every IT executive, manager, architect, program leader, project leader, and lead analyst

Most conventional approaches to IT development assume that you’re building entirely new systems. Today, “Greenfield” development is a rarity. Nearly every project exists in the context of existing, complex system landscapes--often poorly documented and poorly understood. Now, two of IBM’s most experienced senior architects offer a new approach that is fully optimized for the unique realities of “Brownfield” development.

Richard Hopkins and Kevin Jenkins explain why accumulated business and IT complexity is the root cause of large-scale project failure and show how to overcome that complexity “one bite of the elephant at a time.” You’ll learn how to manage every phase of the Brownfield project, leveraging breakthrough collaboration, communication, and visualization tools--including Web 2.0, semantic software engineering, model-driven development and architecture, and even virtual worlds.

This book will help you reengineer new flexibility and agility into your IT environment…integrate more effectively with partners…prepare for emerging business challenges… improve system reuse and value…reduce project failure rates…meet any business or IT challenge that requires the evolution or transformation of legacy systems.

·   System complexity: understand it, and harness it

    Go beyond the comforting illusion of your high-level architecture diagrams

·   How conventional development techniques actually make things worse

    Why traditional decomposition and abstraction don’t work -- and what to do instead

·   Reliably reengineer your IT in line with your business priorities

    New ways to understand, communicate, visualize, collaborate, and solve complex IT problems

·   Cut the elephant down to size, one step at a time

    Master all four phases of a Brownfield project: survey, engineer, accept, and deploy