Forrester Gives Design Advice
Forrester Research has been cranking out a lot of useful research and insight
for the dev community lately. Now it's talking big picture, with its "Design
for People, Build for Change" forum, scheduled for Sept. 25 and 26 in Carlsbad,
Calif.
I'm always leery of grandly themed forums and initiatives, since they tend
to trip up on mundane stuff like the specifics of implementation, integration
and technology. And yes, some of the advance work on this event engages in suspicious
verbiage. Like this gem:
"As the 'design for people, build for change' concept gains momentum,
Forrester is seeing a much more holistic, transformational picture emerging
from the synthesis of the many business trends and new technologies that are
swirling around IT."
Oof.
The funny thing is, this forum actually makes a good point. That being: Too
often, sophisticated, forward-looking systems are created in a way that makes
them very difficult to use and to adapt to changing needs. This is a challenge
Microsoft has been attacking directly for a couple years now, with its effort
to turn MS Office (via Office Business Applications) into the friendly user
interface for industrial-strength CRM, ERP and other back-end systems.
You can read more about the forum and find an executive summary here.
So my question is: Are busy dev shops able to take in any of this big-picture
wonkery and turn it into anything useful? Is it possible to craft user-centric,
future-adaptable applications without completely crushing budgets or turning
application development into an endless task? You tell me. My e-mail is [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 09/12/2007