Reaction to the Tech Central Station article on Development in a Box has been quite good. Thanks to Mark at ZenPundit for an extremely positive post, with extended excerpts. To Mark’s further point — yes, resilience in general (and Enterprise Resilience Management in particular) is directly related to other emerging concepts about the nature and operation of complex, interdependent systems. We’ll be exploring them on this blog and elsewhere.
Over at Tech Central Station itself, initial comments (the first six, as of this writing) run to the negative. Objections seem to focus on corporatism, state militarism, and an overall sense that the framework is simplistic. That perception is wrong, but in some sense understandable — a very short description in a very short article makes the Development in a Box framework seem much simpler and more linear than it actually is. In point of fact, the development of Development in a Box is evolutionary, designed to accommodate all players — public, private, large, small, local and international — and to be responsive to the full complexity of the particular situation on the ground. The planning process is iterative — driven by an ongoing stream of new information and improved practice as needs and conditions change. And the automated rules are modular, dynamic and flexible — they respond to complex, contingent circumstances, and can and will have to be changed continually to stay current with those changing needs and conditions. There is constant interplay between planning — which includes continual information intake — and the operation of the framework — which is dynamic, not static. Development in a Box is a framework for a marketplace solution informed by real-world complexities, not for rigid, top-down corporatism, or for utopianism.
Given all that, we make no claim that Development in a Box is a perfect solution out of the box. Actually, Development in a Box is not so much a solution as it is a framework for creating solutions — it is the beginning, not the end, of the solution-development process. Real solutions will be multi-dimensional and responsive to local needs. And they will be hard to create. Development in a Box is a way of accelerating such solutions and making them somewhat easier to achieve. We believe it is better to contribute to solution development than just to talk. Development in a Box is our initial contribution.
