ABSTRACT
The question of change is not one of whether or not a change should be made, but why, when, what, and how, in roughly that order. The organization is pursuing a steady course of meeting client needs by producing products based on successful architectures. It is generally understood in the company that obsolescence will call for retiring each of their well-architected product lines from operational service in due course. This chapter is concerned with the prerequisites for being able to answer the following questions: What is the present status and pace of the evolutionary course? How long might it last? When should architecting begin for the next product line and its supporting organization? It shows how an excellent organization might view its own progress, past, present, and future. Two tools, annual state of the organization reports and 10-year plans, help assess the status and future of organizations undergoing evolutionary change.
