Breaking News: Gartner (NYSE: IT) ‘discovers’ patterns of social ties, calling them a ‘rare new idea,’ --

“Pattern-based Strategy is a good example of one of those rare new ideas that was given a chance.”

- Andrew White
Gartner Blog, August 2009

The IT research and advisory firm even trademarked the term, “Pattern–Based Strategy™”

All the towering hubris aside, pattern-base enterprise computing is rising fast in importance and utility.

Pattern-based organizational comprehension traces its origins to social network analysis, of course. Scholars have been using patterns of social ties to understand human organization and activity since at least the 1950s. It is positively not new, but it is very, very important.

Pattern-based thinking is among the first authentic IT efforts to embrace complexity for the benefit of business. The non-deterministic, emergent properties and language of social networks finally allows business to achieve intrinsic optimization. It allows business to accomplish comprehensive mastery of their information requirements, assets, roles, relationships and complete ecosystems – rather than serving IT.

Pattern-based IT strives to reveal critical network relationships and nurture the surrounding information environment. In turn, business fundamentally commits to creating and expanding continuous ambient value flows. A narrative of networks and innovation evolves. Above all, developing networks, roles & relationships is seen correctly as the principal activity of the business to achieve favorable outcomes.

With the pattern-based approach an ethos of thinking and conversation returns to enterprise IT. (Gasp!) 

The outcome of pattern-based IT is lower cost, far greater effectiveness, seamless interoperability, customer delight, well-being of people and great improvements in overall prosperity.

After so long, after decades of withering IT command and control, it is encouraging and rewarding to see the corporate establishment beginning to understand how their organizations really work. For example, with pattern-based IT, the popular IT acronym, PEBKAC, which stands for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair," may finally become obsolete forever.

One of the first pattern-based breakthroughs is the widespread organizational adoption of enterprise mashups. Patterns are the specs and wireframes of the future. Michael Ogrinz, an early enterprise mashup pioneer at BofA, provides a glimpse into the future of pattern-based IT in his book, “Mashup Patterns.”

Sample Mashup Patterns, by Michael Ogrinz

Harvest : Mine one or more resources for unique data

§ Alerter Mashups do not necessarily present data directly to a user. Intelligent Agents can be configured to automatically monitor various conditions and trigger alerts

§ API Enabler Create a custom API for static resources (e.g., web pages) so that they can be utilized as a dynamic data source

§ Competitive Analysis Extract pricing and product information or advertising trends from competing firms to compare against your own offerings

§ Infinite Monkeys Automate a repetitive task to a scale unachievable by normal human agents

§ Leading Indicator Use a mashup to regularly monitor information that may indirectly serve as a leading indicator

§ Reality Mining Incorporate environmental and behavioral data to better understand human interaction.

§ Reputation Management Use mashups along with Sentiment Analysis techniques to be scan for words that connote emotion and then rank how a document “feels”

§ Time Series Use a mashup to extract and store information at regular intervals in hopes of observing trends in the data

Enhance : Extended the capabilities of existing resources

§ Accessibility Construct an alternative application interface with no impact on the original code base

§ Feed Factory: Create an RSS/Atom Feed for a site that doesn’t expose a feed, and create new feeds by remixing existing ones

§ Field Medic Provide a temporary patch to a system when you are unable to correct the problem directly

§ Folksonomy Enabler Add community-driven tagging or rating features to existing applications

§ Fragility Reducer Add redundancy to mashups by leveraging multiple sources

§ Smart Suggestions Enhance productivity by using mashups to suggest material relevant to users’ tasks

§ Super Search Apply business specific knowledge to enhance user search activity so that results are obtained from multiple sites relevant to the problem domain.

§ Translation Pass content through a service to add clarifications or convert it to a different language

§ Usability Enhancer Construct a mashup “wrapper” (or façade) which exposes only the functionality necessary to use the system

Resources for Enterprise Mashups and Pattern-Based IT:

• Join the Mashup Patterns community for more examples of enterprise mashup patterns.
  
• The Open Mashup Alliance is the industry consortium to drive pattern interoperability forward.
  
• The third Enterprise Mashup Summit in San Francisco leads pattern-based enterprise and institutional computing action/research.