Outside-In Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-Based Products

"Outside-in thinking complements any approach your teams may be taking to the actual implementation of software, but it changes how you measure success. A successful outside-in team does a lot of learning and not much speculation."

—Tom Poppendieck

Build Software That Delivers Maximum Business Value to Every Key Stakeholder

Imagine your ideal development project. It will deliver exactly what your clients need. It will achieve broad, rapid, enthusiastic adoption. And it will be designed and built by a productive, high-morale team of expert software professionals. Using this book's breakthrough "outside-in" approach to software development, your next project can be that ideal project.

In Outside-in Software Development , two of IBM's most respected software leaders, Carl Kessler and John Sweitzer, show you how to identify the stakeholders who'll determine your project's real value, shape every decision around their real needs, and deliver software that achieves broad, rapid, enthusiastic adoption.

The authors present an end-to-end framework and practical implementation techniques any development team can quickly benefit from, regardless of project type or scope. Using their proven approach, you can improve the effectiveness of every client conversation, define priorities with greater visibility and clarity, and make sure all your code delivers maximum business value.

Coverage includes

• Understanding your stakeholders and the organizational and business context they operate in

• Clarifying the short- and long-term stakeholder goals your project will satisfy
• More effectively mapping project expectations to outcomes

• Building more "consumable" software: systems that are easier to deploy, use, and support

• Continuously enhancing alignment with stakeholder goals

• Helping stakeholders manage ongoing change long after you've delivered your product

• Mastering the leadership techniques needed to drive outside-in development

Carl Kessler is vice president of worldwide development with the IBM Software Group. He has led large software development organizations at IBM for more than a decade, primarily in the enterprise content management, systems management, security, and networking arenas. Prior to his product development assignments, Carl was with IBM Research where his roles included director of software technology and chief information officer. Carl is a senior member of the IEEE and holds several patents.

John Sweitzer is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology with more than twenty-six years of experience developing architectures for large complex software systems. He currently leads the IBM Software Group's outside-in design initiative, a subset of outside-in development that addresses design practices that impact the consumability and business relevance of integrated software products. Previously John was the chief architect for the IBM Autonomic Computing initiative, and prior to that, chief architect for the Tivoli systems management brand. John was a founding member of the DMTF standards committee for the Common Information Model, authored a book about that model, has several external publications, and holds numerous patents.