ComputerWorld.com runs an interesting piece, Five Web 2.0 App Dev Lessons for Enterprise IT, this week by Heather Havenstain about how an agile approach to application development permits an almost constant evolution of feature sets that are in line with users’ needs and suggestions. Dynamic scripting languages like Ruby, Perl and Python (sounds like a hoochie-coochie act at the 1908 Chicago World’s Fair, don’t it?) short-cut long lines of code, letting developers be faster, more creative and more flexible with their work. ‘Permanent beta’ the article calls it.

The ComputerWorld article underscores yet again how vital improvisation is to business in the Networked World — after all, what is improvisation if not ‘agile development’? The article also shows how ‘performance’ in business does not refer solely to folks standing up and holding forth in front of other folks. Apps are performance for an audience, too. The Five App Dev Lessons cited by ComputerWorld are straight from the improvisers’ playbook. Here they are. Our comments are in italics: (more…)