I joined the computer industry as a computer programmer, straight from school, in 1969. During a career that has spanned nearly 40 years, I have worked primarily in the area of applications development and systems integration. I wrote my first application in 1969; it was a Computer Aided Design (CAD) graphics application for hardware engineers to design Printed Circuit Boards. This application gave the board designer a tool with the necessary physical rules of the electronic components and how they could be used. In the early 1970s, I developed CAD and other applications to assist building architects in designing large public buildings, such as schools and hospitals. These systems assisted the architects and civil engineers in the design process of the building; by capturing the design, it was possible to produce all the necessary drawings together with the bills of materials for the building.

In the intervening 40 years, I have performed a variety of different roles, including programmer, analyst, designer, architect, project manager, and troubleshooter. The systems I developed were in a broad spectrum of industries, including manufacturing, banking, insurance, retail, utilities, and both local and federal government. Today, I am an IBM Fellow^[1] in the IBM Global Business Services division and an active member of the IBM Academy of Technology.^[2] My primary responsibility is to technically shape and ensure the technical health of large and complex systems integration and strategic outsourcing programs and bids. I am a Chartered IT Professional (CITP), a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS),^[3] and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET).^[4]

Looking back now on what we tried to achieve with the design and build of electronic circuits and buildings in the early 1970s, I am disappointed and somewhat disillusioned by the IT industry’s lack of success in its own adoption of engineering-based methods supported by computer-based tools to architect, design, build, integrate, and test IT systems. In today’s world, it would be inconceivable to develop a complex system such as the Airbus 380 without the engineering disciplines and without the engineering tools provided by the IT industry. The IT industry is significantly less mature at adopting engineering techniques to develop its complex systems. It can no longer rely on relatively immature practices often supported by office productivity tools such as word processors, presentation tools, and spreadsheets. The IT industry needs a broader adoption of true engineering-based techniques supported by tools designed for engineers.

It has been my personal experience in recent years that the overall cost and complexity of building bespoke (custom) applications or customizing Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) packages has increased—as has the risk. On further investigation, it is apparent that it is not the build cost that has increased, but the increase in the size and complexity of the integration of such projects into the systems landscape. From my own recent experience, the ratio of effort of new build to integration is 3:1. For every dollar spent on new functionality, the total cost is four dollars to cutover this function into production. This cost excludes end-user training. In an environment where both size and complexity of the systems landscape are continually increasing, there is a resulting increase in the costs of maintenance. In addition, organizations are burdened with a need to meet increasing levels of legislation and regulation. All of this results in reduced budgets for new development together with decreasing windows of opportunity to deploy new function in the global 24 × 7 service culture. IT innovation is being stifled. The methods and tools that are in use today, albeit limited, are in the main, primarily targeted at Greenfield system’s landscapes. The reality is that most organizations in the twenty-first century have an existing, complex systems landscape. When I refer to the systems landscape, I mean both the business and its enabling IT systems. These IT systems, in turn, are comprised of applications and their data deployed on often complex network and computer infrastructure. The documentation of such systems is typically poor and its ongoing maintenance is highly dependent on a small number of knowledgeable “system experts.”^[5] The IT industry needs a more structured approach to understanding these system landscapes.

This is the reality of the world in which the authors of this book, Richard Hopkins and Kevin Jenkins, and I, architect, design, and implement new systems for our clients in existing complex systems landscapes. It is time that the IT industry face up to the reality of the situation and the need for new development methods and tools that address these issues and take our industry into the twenty-first century.

An important first step in resolving this is to provide a name that describes both the problem and its solution. In the search for a name, the authors have turned to the building industry where new buildings are increasingly being developed on Brownfield^[6] sites. This is analogous to the majority of today’s new systems that are being developed on Brownfield systems landscapes; it is my experience that more than 90 percent of new development is deployed into a Brownfield environment. The challenges are not restricted to just the transformation of legacy systems, but with the integration into the Brownfield systems landscape itself.

This book describes a new approach to the development of future systems. It is a structured approach that recognizes these challenges, it is based on engineering principles, and it is supported by appropriate tooling. It is specifically designed to solve the challenges of Brownfield development.

Chris Winter

CEng CITP FBCS FIET, IBM Fellow

Member of the IBM Academy of Technology