In this post, the first in a series on development best practices, Chris Moore, Enterprise Architect and Practice Manager at Guidewire, shares his perspective on how developers can ensure the long term success of projects by thinking about the business vision, total cost of ownership (TCO), and documenting decisions to help your teams be successful in the future.
Is simply going live enough to define a project as successful? In my experience, a project’s true success hinges on aligning with the broader business vision, achieving expected outcomes, and seamlessly fitting into the operating model.
For some background about myself, I am an Enterprise Architect at Guidewire, where I’ve been involved since 2005, both as a contractor and now as an employee. With over 35 years in the insurance sector, I’ve worked across various roles within the technology space, encompassing nearly every aspect of the industry.
In this article, I’ll share summaries of some best practices for ensuring your project aligns with the business vision that I have found to work, and I’ll explore key strategies to lower the TCO while building for an uncertain future. In the coming months I will publish articles that take each of these areas and dive into the details.
The most important question a developer should ask
In every project I’ve worked on, I ask developers one key question, and their response of “no” often surprises me—though it comes up in 90% of cases.
“Do you understand the business vision for their future operating model?”
This may seem like an odd question for a developer, but without a clear understanding of the business vision, how can you accurately develop a user story that supports the broader goals? Without this insight, development becomes directionless, leading to misalignment between the product and the business objectives.
The reality is, many projects face uncertainty about the desired end state, which can lead to confusion about how to proceed. In such cases, focusing on minimizing total cost of ownership (TCO) is critical. This approach helps navigate the unknown and future-proofs the development.
In this article, I’ll share practices I’ve implemented to align development with the business vision, lower TCO, and ensure long-term project success. I’ll also discuss the importance of documenting decisions to leave a clear legacy for future teams—because we don’t want to be like early archaeologists trying to decipher hieroglyphics without the Rosetta Stone.
Minimizing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Often, the required end state is unclear. This ambiguity raises a critical question: how can developers proceed effectively without knowing the target? The answer lies in choosing options that minimize TCO. Keeping this in mind will assist where there is a need to build for an unknown future state. I will expand on techniques to fulfill these requirements.
When a solution has been decided on, or even after it has been developed, be it a user story or epic, it needs to be tested against the future state. This is in most cases a thought experiment, as the practicalities of physically testing the future state is not possible. Here we are able to create use cases to depict the operation of the future state and run them through the proposed solution or code. Doing this frequently and early will catch issues that will cause problems or raise the TCO. A future article will delve into the details of this approach to validate against the expected future state.
Documenting decisions is critical to success
When a consultant is assigned to an ongoing project, there is a handover period to bring the new consultant up to speed. These hand overs are never perfect and areas are missed or not explained in enough detail. What decisions have been made to keep the development aligned with the future state. These need to be documented in both the code with effective comments at a low level and at a higher level in documents, this is a legacy required to be left on every project.
We don’t want to be like the early archaeologists trying to decipher hieroglyphics, we need to be scholars with the Rosetta Stone at our disposal. I will publish a future article on leaving your legacy projects, both good and bad.
While these are my opinions, they are practices that I have implemented and found to be valuable, not only to developers, they are valuable to the client, delivering first class solutions that are built to last.
Conclusion
While going live is a significant milestone, it should not be the sole measure of a project’s success. True success for me is achieved by aligning the project with the broader business vision, achieving expected outcomes, and ensuring seamless integration into the operating model. By focusing on minimizing TCO and documenting decisions thoroughly, we can build solutions that are not only effective today but also adaptable for the future.
In upcoming articles, I will delve deeper into each of these and other areas. We will explore strategies for aligning development with business vision, techniques for reducing TCO, and best practices for documenting decisions to leave a clear legacy for future teams.
About the Author
Chris Moore
Enterprise Architect, Practice Manager
Chris Moore is an Enterprise Architect at Guidewire, where he's been involved since 2005, both as a contractor and now as an employee. With over 35 years in the insurance sector, Chris has worked across various roles within the technology space, encompassing nearly every aspect of the industry.