What is Agile IT?

Agile IT systems are based on new technologies that allow existing business processes to be modified and new business processes to be developed at the same pace as the user can articulate them. To achieve this, the traditional development process of Analysis, specification, programming, testing and release has to be ditched and replaced with a single step, iterative process.Because the processes most likely to be developed this way are the key, customer facing knowledge based business processes such as quotation, configuration, order processing, pricing and margin management, the key enabling technology at the core of such systems is business rules server capable of capturing knowledge coupled to an advanced graphical forms designer. Using this technology, business processes can be expressed entirely in terms of inputs, rules and outputs.Unfortunately, having this technology alone is not enough. To be really effective, Agile IT solutions have to be an integral part of the overall existing IT infrastructure. Ideally, this should be accomplished by first exposing the services available in the participating legacy systems and then calling these services as and when required within the new and improved business processes as they are developed. This type of architecture is termed an SOA (Service Orientated Architecture) and the resulting integration is termed Loose. It is not essential that this type of integration technology should be used, and agile IT solutions can and are being developed without it by relying on more traditional, hard, integration techniques.When selecting an Agile IT toolset, it is important that it should be able to participate in an SOA environment, even if its first uses are based on more traditional technologies.