Evolving Situated Software to Enterprise Software

I have been thinking on whether situated software happens in the enterprise. And I figured out that it not only happens but it is a common occurrence. It occurs at the edge of the enterprise, inside departments where business people know themselves and their processes very well. This software is primarily driven by the business outside the scope of IT departments.

The problem with a lot of these situated apps is that they tend to grow. As they grow, the scope of their reach increases sometimes encompassing other departments, accumulating more operational data and becoming more mission critical. At a certain point this software is no longer situated. It is now more general. And the business no longer wants to manage it. It as now become the responsability of IT.

Solving this evolution from the edge to IT, from situated software to robust, scalable software is something that has never been addressed by the IT vendor community. A case in point is Microsoft Sharepoint, a platform where departments can create their own apps but which rapidly becomes an IT maintenance nightmare as these apps evolve. At OutSystems we stumbled on the solution of this problem. I believe a lot of vendors will follow suit.

If you are interested in understanding how OutSystems did it, drop me a comment.