Bi-Modal IT & Pace Layered Architecture
  • 18 Jan 2019
  • 2 Minutes to read
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Bi-Modal IT & Pace Layered Architecture

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Article Summary

Simplifying things bit, Bi-Modal or 2 Speed IT was introduced by Gartner as a way of describing how IT organisations could structure to deal with the side by side challenges of increasing the pace of delivery in some areas while taking it slow and steady in others.

Some articles which give a good and concise overview of Bi-Modal are:

While Bi-Modal IT sounds good in theory another idea was introduced by Gartner called Pace Layered architecture. In reality Bi-Modal IT is hard to deliver because your effectively splitting your IT team into two seperte teams (the sprinters and the marathon runners). This creates conflicts and challenges between the teams. I think the idea of a Pace Layered Architecture is more interesting because what it is saying is that parts of the architecture can be changed at different speeds and different risk profiles but that speed change is a technical thing and not a people thing. The people can interchangably work on different parts of the architecture at different speeds depending on what needs to be changed. This will get much more value from your assets.

An analogy for the Bi-Modal IT from above was the sprinters and the marathon runners. For Pace Layered Architecture you could imagine that your architecture is like a Motorway with different lanes that travel at different speeds. Your applications are assigned to lanes based on how difficult they are to change and manage. Your people can change between lanes depending upon what you need them to do.

Gartners Whitepaper on Pace Layered Architecture is available here - Click Here

Applying Microsoft Integration to Pace Layerd Architecture and Bi-Modal IT

Its great that building solutions with the Microsoft technology stack can help you in both of these scenarios. The below community resources provide excellent perspectives on how this can be done:

In this article Dan talks about how the Microsoft technology stack can be applied in building an architecture based on the ideas in Gartners Pace-Layered Architecture style.

This is a youtube video where Dan presents inline with his article above.

In this video Mike talks about some experiences and how 2 Speed IT can be achieved using technologies on Azure and through effective integration.


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