Modern Application Development IMB's Principles

Adopting these principles can help to guide your product decisions. Designing and building solutions that are loosely coupled and utilize interfaces for process communication will result in maintainable applications.

The following proposed principles offer guiding statements that should be considered in the development of your applications:

Guiding Principles
Application Principles
Architecture Principles
Project Governance Principles
Technical Principles
Infrastructure Principles

Guiding Principles adopted

Principle 1: Develop Open and Innovative Partnerships

We recognize that by developing trusted partnerships and collaborating across teams and the ministry, we create opportunities to find new ways of delivering efficient and effective services to program areas.

Principle 2: Service Focus

Solutions and services are designed from a client-centered and end-to-end digital service delivery perspective to increase the value they bring to the client.

Principle 3: Teamwork and Collaboration

We will create and empower cross-functional, dynamic teams to increase engagement, communication, talent, and opportunities to deliver value and services to clients.

Principle 4: Invest Wisely

Through effective governance and financial oversight, we will maximize IM/IT spending and optimize our existing investments to support the ministry.

Principle 5: Enable a Modern and Innovative Workplace

We will support collaboration, create efficiencies, and encourage people to work smarter, greener, healthier, and more innovatively so all feel valued and recognized.

Principle 6: Continuous Improvement

We believe in testing early and often. We will do end-to-end testing of processes, services, and technology, continuously improving in response to user feedback.

Principle 7: Proactive Approach to Security and Privacy

We are committed to supporting our clients to adopt a proactive approach to ensuring strong information security and privacy protection practices. By applying a privacy and security by design philosophy, we help our clients ensure that privacy and security measures are considered at project initiation and built in to the solution, rather than having to be retrofitted afterwards.

Application Principles proposed

Principle 1: Do No Harm

Only build what you can’t buy and buy what you can’t build.

Principle 2: Build/Buy Responsibly

Don’t contribute to technical debt.

Principle 3: Be Citizen-Centric

Everything you build is for the greater good. Citizens are the real product owners.

Principle 4: Today’s Build Could Be Tomorrow’s Burden

Like building responsibly, think about the effort required to maintain and evolve the application.

Principle 5: Nature vs. Nurture

An application will only be as good as the effort put into its evolution.

Information is a commodity to be shared; build with this in mind.

Principle 7: Keep It Small

Small code packages and small feature sets make for shorter delivery cycles, fewer changes, and overall better software quality.

Principle 8: Focus on the Developer

Select the best environment with the right tooling. Endorse a good set of Architecture Principles.

Principle 9: Develop for Networks

Application communication happens over the network, not in memory. It supports distributed development teams, increases application resiliency, and simplifies product deployment.

Architecture Principles proposed

Principle 1: Primacy of Principles

… TOGAF Principles, OCIO Digital principles, HADF principles

Principle 2: Adhere to Standards

… OCIO Digital Framework, GCIO, and Ministry Standards

Principle 3: Adopt a Set of Software Design Principles

Patterns and practices are the tools used to achieve the desired outcome of the principles. Follow fundamental principles for writing quality software such as:

KISS - Keep it simple, stupid
DRY - Don’t repeat yourself
- Do not duplicate work; this is a frequent source of errors
YAGNI - You aren’t gonna need it
- Are you going to need that feature? If not, leave it out
SoC - Separation of concerns
- Minimize tight coupling of code by separating core business logic from infrastructure and user interface logic; this will ensure that the module is easy to test and evolve

Principle 4: Adopt a Service Oriented Architecture

Single responsibility
- Objects should have only one reason to change; this helps to produce more loosely coupled and modular systems
Bounded context
- Limit complexity by reducing a solution into separate conceptual modules where, each module represents a context that is separated from other contexts (ie: bounded), and can be evolved independently of one another

Principle 5: API First

Develop your solution to be used by multiple client applications through a well described API.

Principle 6: Be Data Driven

Principle 7: Design to Be Secure

Design, develop, and deliver solutions that mitigate risks. Ensure security is addressed end-to-end and considered upfront.

Principle 8: Adopt Cloud

Whether public, private, or hybrid cloud, adopt a set of guiding principles for Cloud Computing and Use; include enablement, cost/benefit, enterprise risk, capability, accountability, and trust.

Principle 9: DevOps for Agility

DevOps is founded on product delivery. Agile is founded on the project’s success. Embrace the combination of the following:

Continuous integration (including Build management, test management, and automation)
Continuous delivery (including environment management and deployment management)
Infrastructure as code
Iterative development approach to support successful projects

Project Governance Principles proposed

These principles apply to the ministry governance process for the planning, intake, and approval of IM/IT projects.

Goals of Principles

These principles will help the project governance team ensure that we understand the scope of the work, and stay focused on outcomes
The principles should be simple, straightforward, and high-level

Principle 1: Enable the Right People to Make the Right Decisions at the Right Times

Principle 2: Be Easy to Understand and Follow

Principle 3: Be Simple and Efficient, With Each Step Adding Value

Principle 4: Be Timely

Principle 5: Add Value for All Stakeholders, While Maximizing the Benefits to the Ministry

Principle 6: Be Transparent and Enable Decisions That Are Objective and Fair

Principle 7: Apply a Common Set of Selection Criteria to All Proposed IM/IT Projects

Technical Principles proposed

Principle 1: Prioritize Principles

Any decision to ignore or reject core principles, so as to satisfy project goals, must be recorded.

Principle 2: Adopt Technology Standards That Aid the Business

Make friends in the business
- If the business understands why a standard needs to be adopted, they will be more likely to weigh the implications on impacts to their expected outcomes
Stakeholders drive the adoption of technical standards
- If a standard is seen as an impediment, then the natural pattern is to seek an exemption. Ensuring stakeholders are aware early on in the project lifecycle helps to develop adoption strategies
Involve the architects from the start of your project
- Architects are central to product viability discussions. Engaging them early will mitigate waste in the product development flow

Infrastructure Principles proposed

Principle 1: Plan for Needed Capacity

Solutions that evolve requirements need to be scalable in order to guarantee performance over the entire product lifecycle. Don’t overcommit up front; validate the ability to meet unexpected system demands.

Principle 2: Design for Scalability

Adoption and feature growth will result in unforeseen system demands. Ensure that the solution architecture is able to scale.

Principle 3: Achieve User Happiness Through System Performance

User expectations will change over time. Ensure that the architecture is adaptable and can satisfy performance demands. Assess how the solution is hosted and its portability.

Principle 4: Monitoring Enables Your Team

Understand what to monitor. Ensure that the available monitoring system can provide actionable metrics in order to provide the necessary information needed to resolve any issues that can arise. Knowing what can cause performance issues and monitoring for those scenarios will feed the product continuous lifecycle with data.