Software Development as a Wicked Problem - Increment

Many years ago, I joined an organization in the throes of change. The company was in the process of replacing a venerable Lotus Notes–based system with a newer customer relationship management (CRM) product, and I was tasked with integrating data from the CRM with other syndicated and publicly available data sets. The requirements were complex, but the system design evolved through continual, often animated discussions between the development team and key business stakeholders in an environment characterized by openness and trust. The system was delivered on schedule, with minimal rework required. Five years later, I was invited to participate in a regional project at the same company. The goal was to build a data warehouse for subsidiaries across Asia, driven by the corporate IT office located in Europe. Corporate’s interest in sponsoring this effort was to harmonize a data landscape that was—to put it mildly—messy, with each subsidiary taking a bespoke approach to data management to

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• Novia Chao