A word of warning, and an anecdote

As explained in the introduction of this chapter, the following sections are going to show how we can apply modifications in the previously created information system and, more importantly, how the business alignment principles followed at design time help make these modifications easy. An extremely important warning at this point is that the same functional approach that was followed to create the system must absolutely be used when evolving it; otherwise, we will risk negating every care that was taken in the first place in a few bad moves. Again, I cannot stress enough this remark, since not following it may ruin all the efforts put into the design of the system beforehand and, thus, render the development process pointless.

Let me give you a real-life example that illustrates how important this piece of advice is (I actually believe this is the biggest risk warning in this book and the one that I hope you will remember as the most important...