A few of us met at ChiliPLOP98 and PLOP98 to discuss organizational
patterns.
[Host's Note: Yes, you gotta love these acronyms! ...Rick]
Most of what we did at PLOP98 was to "socialize" the experience at
ChiliPLOP, so all of these activities are best summarized by the ChiliPLOP
summary (included at the end of this note and also found at:
http://www.agcs.com/patterns/chiliplop/index.htm
under "1998 Reports")
Our most important result so far, is the realization of CPL (common
pattern language) "embryo", which we are in the process of uploading into
the org patterns repository at:
http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/OrgPatterns?ProjectIndex
This CPL embryo, only includes patterns for software development, but we
are also starting a new effort to consolidate some of the business
architecture patterns available.
- Mike Beedle
Principal
Framework Technologies Inc.
http://www.fti-consulting.com/users/beedlem/
Summary of the Org Patterns Hot Topic Workshop at ChiliPLOP
Last March, a few of us participated in the ChiliPLOP Org Patterns
Hot Topic workshop:
Michael Beedle
Neil Harrison
Barry Kaplan
Urvashi Kaul
Don Olson
Linda Rising
Our goal was to talk about the state of organizational patterns
in the broadest sense, and including the discussion of:
1) who the authors of these patterns were, and how we could get
them involved in writing a CPL (common pattern language).
2) what patterns had been written and what were their
current relationships, but also what was "out vision"
to combine them into a CPL,
3) who were the users of org patterns and what was our current
relationship with them, but also how we were going to get
them involved even more, and finally
4) how the architects of the org pattern language were
currently organized and how they were going work together
to weave the existing patterns and pattern languages into a CPL.
The workshop provided the following deliverables:
1) Current State. We accounted for the current state
of the organizational patterns in terms of how the patterns
were organized (product), and how it was communicated
to the world. In doing so we identified the following issues:
a) Duplication, inconsistencies and "holes" in
the current pattern languages
b) overall structure is not visible
c) present patterns and pattern languages are
not in understandable form
d) patterns' styles don't match audiences
e) org patterns are not easy to introduce/deploy
and internalize in organizations
f) lack of communication among architects, writers
and users of the CPL
g) Current CPL architecture team is not producing
updates for the patterns at the org patterns web
site
2) Lists of org patterns architects, writers and users.
We gathered a comprehensive list of everyone that could
possibly be involved in this project.
3) What is needed to make org patterns successful. We
envisioned that what we needed to do to make org patterns
successful was to take them "out (in)to the world", and
to teach people how to "deploy" them (this term
was chosen with management in mind):
I. Out to the world
a) Make the patterns understandable and readable
by management through:
- taxonomies/vies/pictures (functional area,
role, organizational type/stage, etc.
- minimal pattern form (executive summary,
5 basics, etc.)
b) high level book (this is "why" you need patterns)
c) patterns CD ROM
d) management handbook for patterns deployment:
case studies, stories, interviews, accountings by
other authors
e) video
II. Deployment
a) assess org
b) key areas of business
c) funding
d) politics
e) examples
f) incremental development of business
g) training
h) implementation strategies
i) checklists
4) Pattern language structure and taxonomies. As a starting
point, we used Jim Coplien's org patterns and we mapped them
into a pattern language diagram, from where we fitted other
org patterns from different authors. (Unfortunately, and due
to time limitations, we only placed about other 20 patterns
other than those provided by Jim Coplien. I have continued
this task independently, but I want to get more feedback
before I go placing more patterns.)
5) A list of immediate tasks to be done:
a) spread the word about the activities of this workshop
b) document what we did (this document)
c) contact writers to get clearance for editor rights
to treat each pattern with an individual copyright
d) determine policies for the web site
e) taxonomies
f) document pattern language structure
g) Explore the concept of a "context web"
h) keywords
i) make list of users
j) future meetings (OOPSLA, ChiliPLOP, PLOP98)
k) video/infomercial
--"Mike Beedle" <beedlem@fti-consulting.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>