Patterns

Abstract: Building successful e-commerce applications requires more than a clever business model, many different products and organizations must come together. A typical e-commerce transaction will traverse the Internet, client browsers, Web servers, business logic components, security systems and back-end databases. In this environment, many partners must coordinate their activities. This article examines how rhythm can have a powerful effect on keeping these separate organizations in sync. Rhythm is the recurring, predictable exchange of work products within a software development group and across their customers and suppliers. This article describes what rhythm is and how it has a significant effect on e-commerce. To illustrate how to take action to improve rhythm, we also present several organizational patterns. These patterns are similar to those found on the book Design Patterns, but focus on organizational problems instead of design problems.