Old World, New World: From Projects to Products, and More.

There’s a major new ethos emerging that is going to disrupt a lot of organisations (and careers), with regards to the delivery of systems and services: moving from being project centric to product centric.

Just to be clear, “Product” in this context refers to the processes and disciplines related to the development and delivery of products – not the purchasing or acquisition of existing products from someone else.

The purpose of this post is simply to get some basics information out to you, so that you can start to do your own research and thinking (mainly because I’m also going through that process myself) about what being product centric means.  On a related note, I’m going to write a Solution Architecture Handbook based on my experience, because there’s a real lack of good information out there about that; in preparing for that I’m increasingly seeing a major transition between two worlds – of which the project/product centricity is one aspect.

Old World / New World: Some Definitions

Let’s start with the “what”, as that will provide a point of reference. Here’s my current view of things that often typify the old and new worlds – I’d love to hear your thoughts on this:

Old World	New World
Projects	Products
Project teams and Support Teams (Throwing things over the fence) IT and Business	Holistic Product Teams
Waterfall, Agile (Underground)	Agile (Mainstream), Continuous Delivery, DevOps
Big Upfront Design / Architecture	Emerging Architecture
Emergence of Digital, Digital Projects	Digital as a natural blended element
Software and Infrastructure	Infrastructure as Code

Obviously some big labels there – massive over simplification – and the intent is not to define any false dichotomies as things aren’t always so binary; additionally, I’m not trying to suggest that these are collectively mutually exclusive, for example, being project-based doesn’t preclude you from doing continuous delivery.

Some other factors to consider are the increasing maturity and pervasiveness of:

1. Automation, specifically regarding development and deployment pipelines.
2. Cloud-based platforms and offerings.
3. Open source.

Unknown to me until very recently, Joshua J. Arnold arrived at a similar place (back in 2016 – the last point in the table below is credited to Maria Alfredeen – details in the linked content), although my understanding is that he’s orientated along product-thinking lines:

Plan	Forecast
Resources	Teams
Push	Pull
Requirements	Experiments
Projects	Initiatives
Dates	Cost of Delay
Big risky releases	Continuous Delivery

So What?

Firstly, the emergence of “Product” as an ethos for delivery (and more) feels to me a lot like how the emergence of Agile felt back in the day (circa 2000-2005).  Something that significant is definitely something you want to be aware of – not just in terms of how you or your organisation may want to work, but also in terms of skills and experience you may want to acquire.

As I learn more about product-based thinking, I find that knowledge tends to fit well with my knowledge of Agile – they are compatible.  Then, as I work with various teams and organisations, I’m increasingly seeing situations where product oriented thinking appears to be desirable, feasible and viable.  For organisations already working somewhat successfully with Agile but in a project context I think the introduction of product thinking may help them further evolve.  For organisations not even at that stage it might be that product thinking helps them evolve faster or by a more direct route, even if the first step is to break down the IT / Business divide; or, it paints a bigger and more strategic picture for them rather than simply a transformation that is delivery focused.

What Do You Think? / Further Reading

Do you agree with my broad definitions of what often typifies the old and new worlds?

Are you seeing a similar transformation in a community, team or organisation that you’re a part of?

For anyone wanting to start exploring the world of product, Mind the Product run a comprehensive network of meet-ups, globally.  I’m a semi-regular participant of their Wellington events, which I have posted about previously (see: Customer Inspired; Technology Enabled – Product Tank Wellington MeetUp with Marty Cagan and Fireside Chat with Zheng Li, VP of Product @ Raygun – Product Tank Wellington MeetUp).

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Customer Inspired; Technology Enabled – Product Tank Wellington MeetUp with Marty Cagan

The Product Tank Wellington meetup ran a really cool session recently called “Customer Inspired; Technology Enabled” with internationally recognised product guru Marty Cagan.

As you can imagine, someone of Marty’s calibre provides a lot of great wisdom.  Some reinforced or reinvigorated stuff I think I already knew, but much was also new.

Here are my old-school hand-scribbled notes (2 pages) if you’re interested (or neglected to take your own, tsk tsk): Customer Inspired, Technology Enabled with Marty Cagan – 12-Feb-2018 – Adrians notes

Note to anyone doing architecture: broadly speaking, anywhere it says “product” I think we can swap with “solution”.  Which is why I’ve tagged this #ArchitectureInTransformation – architects need to (at least) be mindful of this stuff.

Also, in this context  when we talk about “product” we mean a technical product of some kind (i.e. software/technology related) – not something like floor polish or mint scented vacuum bags.

Key Takeaways and Gems

Asking customers what they want

If you’re looking for where to take your product, the short answer is “don’t”.  Instead, invest your time in asking customers about their problems.

You should not rely on customers to tell you about which direction to take your product, or what new features or capabilities to add, because:

1. They don’t know what’s possible – they generally aren’t technologists. (The clever technologists should be the people on your team).
2. Great (new) ideas have to be discovered.  For me personally, Marty was making a strong connection to empiricism – in that you can’t rationalize your way to a “new” idea.

The way to flip the question is to be to ask your customers about things that they do know about: their problem, their constraints.

Another reason why you can’t reliably ask customers what they want is because they themselves don’t actually know what they want until after they’ve seen it.

Engineers

Marty spoke repeatedly and at length about the importance of involving engineers in the product process.  He cited several cases where new successful products had emerged from the techies – essentially from random ideas they had on the fringes of a project, where their inventiveness (based on their deep understanding of the technology) led to something entirely new.

He suggested giving developers time for discovery – something in the ballpark of half an hour a day.

Overall his message was clear:

1. Work with strong engineers that are passionate about your vision.
2. Do not shelter them – expose them to the full business context; expose them to customers.
3. Provide them with constraints, not requirements.

Requirements First?

Speaking of requirements (whilst talking about agile) he neatly flipped the old Analyse > Design > Build model around:

1. Knowledge of the technology…
2. > enables design…
3. > drives desires/needs/requirements

Essentially this comes back to the same point posed by “asking customers what they want” – if customers don’t know what is possible then the requirements will always fail to get the most out of what the technology is capable of.

Are you Agile?  Really.

I had to laugh – Marty’s position on Agile was that it’s a no brainer, like why are people even asking this question.  And it wasn’t just the words that gave me a wry grin, it was also his tone: dry, cuttingly sardonic, with a hint of tactful incredulity and thinly veiled loathing.

Point is, there’s a difference between thinking you’re agile and being agile.  Try these two refreshingly straightforward questions:

1. How soon can you test?
2. Does shipping out a release mean you’re finished?

The correct answer to #1 is that if testing is done at the end, it’s too late; if you’re agile you’re testing as early as possible and not just at the end.  If you only test at the end, then that’s where you are putting all the risk.

#2 Is a really key one; it’s about the difference between releasing something and solving a problem.  The common misconception is that when you’ve put out a release, you’re done; but whilst getting stuff delivered is great, you’re only actually “finished” if you’ve solved the problem you set out to solve.  Shipping out a release merely gives you an opportunity to see if you’ve really solved it.

So, if you iterate – great; iterate, test and keep shipping until your target problem is solved.

Roadmaps

Much of Marty’s talk sounded like heresy… in that it would certainly sound blasphemous to many people I can think of.  His discussion on product roadmaps was no exception.

Roadmaps tend to assume that 100% of the ideas on them are good ideas.

The reality is somewhat different.  Marty cited Google: in their experience, for every 10 ideas they have (on a roadmap) only 1 tends to pan out.

Bad use of roadmaps relate back to the second point in “are you agile?” – in that people sometimes confuse delivery with completion.  People walk around with roadmaps and release schedules and focusing on getting stuff delivered.

So if that’s all wrong, what does right look like?

Essentially it comes back to having a strong product vision.

My notes on this part of the talk are scarce – a sign that I was either too deeply engrossed to write, or I agreed with what he said and felt no need to note the obvious.

In either case, the key takeaway for roadmaps takes heavily from the points above: focusing on the product vision – which I think we can safely extrapolate to:

1. Understanding the customer and their problem.
2. Giving your teams constraints and time to come-up with the unexpected.
3. Iterating until solved, not just shipped.

Roadmaps and Agile

From a philosophical perspective, roadmaps are rational – they plan out what is to happen; whereas agile is empirical – it learns from what has happened.

Roadmaps attempt to answer the fundamental questions: how much will it cost, and when will we get it?  And as Marty acknowledges – that’s not an unreasonable thing to want to know.

Agile can answer these questions but only once you’ve done enough work, to provide enough meaningful experience, on which to base a forecast.  Marty elaborated on that theme in terms of a “high-integrity commitment”.  I don’t have any notes on that so allow me to refer you to Marty’s blog:

• https://svpg.com/managing-commitments-in-an-agile-team/
• https://svpg.com/the-alternative-to-roadmaps/

Teams

• Measure teams as a whole; not in terms of “functional” teams, but product (solution) teams.  (What does this mean?  Think about the difference between “shipping” and “solving” and you’re pretty much there).
• Provide teams with a competent and confident product manager.

Product Managers

The final subject I want to cover is around product managers – specifically good ones; it’s important to me because it’s highly relevant to what I see as a architect in solution-architect / domain-architect / enterprise-architect / consultant space.

Marty placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of having a good product manager.  For him the product manager is like the “CEO of the product”, where CEO refers to the calibre of the person in that role, and because good CEO’s know all the elements of their business.

Product managers need to be smart, creative and persistent.

The product manager should must have a deep understanding of:

1. The customer(s).
2. Industry trends.
3. How your business works.

The reason you want a good product manager is because this is type of invaluable knowledge and wisdom they’ll bring to your team, and to your product.

WSAF Meet-Up on the “Brand” of Architects & Architecture

For those who couldn’t make this meet-up, here’s a summary of what was discussed (or at least some of it, it was one of those organic discussions that took it’s own path, and I don’t have a lot of notes as I was too busy actively listening or blabbering making insightful contributions).

The basic question was around: how are architects perceived, and what is our “brand”?  We tried not to focus on specific types of architect too much (i.e. enterprise vs solution), although we tended to focused on solution architecture.

This raised initial discussion around:

1. What does it mean in the context of Agile – which we decided to come back to, but then didn’t.
2. Distinguishing between architects and architecture – the latter will always be needed regardless of who does it and what they are called.
3. The correlation between governance and architecture – where there’s a lack of good governance there is often a lack of good architecture or appreciation of architecture in general.

This led to a significant discussion around “can we define the benefits of (solution) architecture, and the risks of not doing it”?  Whilst this is hardly a new problem it is one that we really need to put to bed.  The obvious challenge is not merely to define it, but to do so in a way that is broadly and easily understood.

We also discussed what would logically follow next – assuming you had the ideal definition, what would you do with it ?  But unfortunately the conversation took a turn and I don’t have any notes.  From memory, there weren’t any major epiphany moments arising directly from this.  Sad.

People Who Do Similar Things

The topic then came up of comparing what architects did with people who do similar things.

One of the attendees mentioned her brother, whom is effectively an architect but doesn’t like to call himself one, but unfortunately we didn’t (or weren’t able to) dig into exactly why that was.

There was also a connection made between the role of a program manager and an architect.  Personally I can see how this might be the case in terms of seniority and leadership, but in other areas the correlation is much less clear.  Perhaps it is such that in some cases a program manager takes on some architectural leadership responsibilities when there is an absence of architects or effective governance.

Later on, this broad topic came back with a comparison to service design.  The widely agreed takeaway was that architects should add this to their general toolbox, the toolbox we all have of skills and ideas that we get from various places but don’t always get to use “for real”.  Service design feels like one of those – something it’s worth knowing a bit about – just enough to be dangerous.

Focus of the Solution Architect: Technical or Business?

We discussed the focus of the solution architect role – is/should it’s focus be technical or business?  There’s no doubt SA’s need a foot in each camp, but is one aspect inherently more dominant than the other?  And because this is about brand, i.e. perception, I asked people to consider not just how they see this for themselves, but also how they think non-architects perceive it.

I asked everyone to think about a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 was all business and 100 was all technical.  I then asked them to silently (in their own heads) come up with the answers to those two questions.  I then drew the scales up on the board and invited people (without changing their minds) to put their scores up.

As you can see, people see solution architecture as a largely technical role, and their perception of how they think others perceive it is similar but not identical.

It makes me wonder about engineering architects (people who architect buildings, etc) – do they have a similar or comparable issue with brand?  Are they perceived as being largely technical, and is this how they want to be perceived?

It Ain’t What They Call You, It’s What You Answer to

We then got on to names – what do we call ourselves.  Sadly the list wasn’t very long and we didn’t really push past the obvious, but it was an interesting enough starting discussion for a Friday afternoon.

What’s wrong with “architect” – well nothing in my book, I still think it’s a useful term, and I still often compare myself to a building architect when describing what I do to a lay-person.  But that didn’t get in the way of our discussion.

“Digital Strategist” came up, but then we realised that’s probably taken.  Later someone adroitly evolved this to “Digital Capability Landscaping”.

“Principle _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _” made it up onto the whiteboard, a brave start but leaves just a tad too much to the imagination.  Typical architect, right?  In  my notes I wrote “(domain)”, implying the name of the domain you’re a principle in is the key – but what are those domains?  perhaps it goes back to the technology vs business discussion – do you go for a technology or business domain?

Someone suggested “Technologist”, and “Solution Design Thinking”.

I’m quite proud of one I dreamt up later: “Trade-off Merchant”.

The conversation then took a turn when someone suggested we pull up Google Trends with “enterprise architect” and “design thinking”.  We then played around with other terms.  I must admit I was pleased to see solution architect is still trending upwards. What is Google Trends? see Wikipedia.

Final Tidbit

Someone mentioned a neat little resource: http://openmodels.org/

“The openmodels.org website hosts the Open Model Initiative, a project to collaboratively develop enterprise reference models for everyone to copy, use, modify, and (re-)distribute in an open and public process.”

The WSAF would also like to thank Middleware NZ for hosting us and providing drinks and nibbles.

Were you an attendee?  Got anything to add to my semi-random collection of notes?  Add a comment 🙂

Design Thinking Entrée, with Blair Loveday, et al (#ITEA 2017)

Coming out of the ITEA conference, I referred to three magical signs that (IT) architecture is going through a positive transformation; #3 was around design thinking, a topic that a number of speakers covered in varying depth.  Amongst those was the heretic Blair Loveday; I mean sheesh, the guy’s a BA Chief Culture Officer, what blasphemy is this, him presenting at an architect conference?

Blair and the others spoke enough about design thinking to wet our appetites, but not nearly enough to constitute a meal; so, based on what I got from the conference and after some digging of my own, here’s my quick overview of design thinking – a sort of entrée to get you started.

In a Nutshell

I’m conscious that I’m partially trying to appeal to IT architects, let me do so by using the term ‘scientific method’, because it’s going to get a bit touchy-feely later on.

According to wikipedia, Design Thinking is comparable to the scientific method (feedback is obtained by collecting observational evidence and measurable facts) but with the addition of also considering the human aspect, or emotional state.  The inclusion of the human dimension is a key theme that you’ll find throughout design thinking literature.  For example, use of empathy is one of the specific techniques suggested for during the ‘learn from people’ phase.

The Three Lenses

One of the concepts Blair used to describe design thinking was a “the three “lenses” that you’ll see repeated in design thinking literature: desirability, feasibility and viability.

Blair respectively described these people, business and technology lenses, and then talked about then in the context of innovation – by type, depending on which lenses overlapped.  The central overlap of all three was “Experience Innovation”, which sounds fine but with all due respect is just a smidge too touchy-feely, even for me, on Monday – but that doesn’t matter.

Design thinking, according to Blair, is centered on the people / desirability lense – which is in keeping with Wikipedia’s view vis-à-vis the scientific method.  You’ll notice that this puts emphasis on emotional and functional innovation.

The thing I really like about this model is that it’s simple yet useful, calls out the human part (which is pretty essential) and provides one of several good anchors to understanding design thinking: making stuff that “is cool” or “just works”, for people.

Getting to Grips: Four Into One

Trying to understand design thinking by reading about it online is a little like talking to people who witnessed a traffic collision: everyone’s got a slightly different view.  Given how long design thinking has been around that’s probably not surprising.  I found a number of approaches.  What I’ve done below is to try and distil the main phases from the 4 interpretations that I studied:

The colour groupings are my own, looking for commonality across the different approaches, and are only indicative.  The four approaches are based on (from top to bottom): Design thinking example video (wikipedia), IDEO, Stanford University’s ‘Taking design thinking to schools initiative’ (wikipedia), and ‘A Framework for Design Thinking’ (Creativity at work).  Links to these references are below.

The third process, from Stanford, is the one Nick Malik referred to in his talk at ITEA 2017.

Chris Tuohy’s talk on experience’s at Westpac also touched on design thinking.  The Westpac approach has seven phases (not including an 8th step which seems to be a decision point at which the prototyped ideas are passed into a delivery-focused design and build lifecycle.  Unsurprisingly, these seven phases are all in common with those suggested by the 4 approaches above.

Distilled Comprehension: One from Four

Here’s my general take on what things a reasonable design thinking process should include:

1. Learn from people: 
   1. IDEO seem to refer to this as “Insights”, observation, learning from extremes, interviews, immersion and empathy, and doing this all through the three lenses.
   2. Getting an idea of people’s motivations, habits and delights is a good place to start.
   3. A concept I came across more than once was the idea that people on the extremes (think bell curve) are good at helping to explain ideas that the mainstream are less able to articulate.
2. Find patterns:
   1. Look at what you’re learned, try and make sense of it.
   2. Look for themes, apply intuition.
   3. Put yourself in the shoes of the users, leverage empathy.
   4. Distil design principles.  For example ask the “how might we” question: if a design principle or theme says “x” ask how you might turn that into a specific idea or prototype (and remember the three lenses).
3. Generate ideas: 
   1. Don’t prequalify ideas out, just generate them.
   2. As IDEO say, “Push past the obvious”.
   3. The emphasis is on creativity.  Basically this is the divergent thinking (creating choices) phase.
4. Make tangible, prototype and test: 
   1. This is the complementary convergent thinking phase (making choices).
   2. Make things tangible and real through prototyping.  Use any method you like, but make sure it’s using something that will resonate with your audience.
   3. Refine and improve.

Some of the descriptions include steps that come after what I would consider to be the core of design thinking (e.g. delivery).  I don’t think that’s necessarily bad.

You could say these were “steps”, implying a formal process; obviously you want to take time to understand before you race off and prototype stuff, but to put constraints that are too formal on the approach would do it a disservice.  For example, the phase of generating ideas and prototyping them could (and even should) be an iterative process.  After all: how many iterations = how long is a piece of string.

Finally, I got hold of Peter G. Rowe’s book “Design Thinking” from the Wellington public library; I haven’t made serious in-roads yet, but it looks interesting.  One of the things about it I am keen to explore the author’s views it given he’s coming from the perspective of a “real” architect (i.e. buildings, not IT).

Further online reading and viewing:

• Wikipedia – check out the example video, it’s a really nice little summary.
• IDEO – some useful content for sure, but not a lot of it (unless I did a “man-look”).
• Creativity at Work

WSAF Micro-Unconference on the “brand” of architects + Digital + design-thinking, etc

Okay, so over at the WSAF’s regular coffee meet-up we (again) blundered into the “What the hell do we do again, and doesn’t everyone love us?” topic.  Rather than have a good short chat about it over coffee, some bright spark suggested we have a slightly longer great conversation about it with alcohol.

I posted notice of this impending unconference both on the WSAF’s linkedIn group – which you’re all most welcome to join (here) and on our meet-up group (here).

The date and time of the unconference is TBC, but it will almost certainly be on a Friday, very probably starting at 3pm, and go until 5-6pm-ish.  The venue will be the offices of Middleware New Zealand.  Date – likely to be one of the following (we’ll confirm soon): Sept 1st, 8th or 15th.

To start framing up the conversation I put this together (see diagram below).

Goal of the unconference

Apart from the usual highly desireable secondary benefits (i.e. drinking responsibly with like minded peers) the goal is to start identifying some specific things we can do to start actively transforming architecture so that we can keep doing rewarding work, and our stakeholders get consistent value of our involvement.

#ArchitectureInTransformation

3 Ideas from Nick Malik on Design Thinking (#ITEA 2017)

Following the 2017 ITEA conference, I recently reiterated what many of us have known for a while: that traditional architecture and architects are endangered.  I also promised to share some of the great ideas from that conference – practical concepts that you can use right now, and which started to demonstrate how architects can still be relevant and add value.

I’d like to start with ideas from a really valuable talk given by Nick Malik, a 37 year industry veteran who describes himself as a “Vanguard Enterprise Architect, Digital Transformation Strategist, Author, Blogger, and General Troublemaker”, currently Senior “Principal Consultant – Enterprise Architecture” with Infosys.

The subject of Nick’s talk was “Using Design Thinking to Develop your Enterprise Architecture Core Diagram“.  In this post I’ll briefly introduce this key concept as well as some of the other ideas that I wrote down during Nicks talk.

#1 – Actually Understand the problem

The first thing I wrote down was incredibly obvious and shouldn’t need reiteration: taking sufficient time to actually understand the problem.  Nick emphasised bringing people into this process – actually talking to people to really understand what they need, so that we “build solutions that people want to use”.

The quote that came to mind during this bit of the presentation was Eisenhower’s “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.”  Why did I think that?  Well, some people will equate “understanding the problem” with analysis and documentation, where the scale of the analysis and documentation corresponds to the perceived scale and complexity of the problem.

But that’s not what was meant – it’s more around the quality of the discussion, and ensuring that there is real understanding of what the problem is, and what is needed.

In my view, the challenge here for some people (and architects) is that doing this well requires quality interpersonal engagement.  I wonder how often we end-up with solutions that are system-centric rather than people-centric?  I suspect it’s partly due to that fact that some of this stuff is hard – it’s easy to let the technology control you.  But I also think there’s another aspect to it – that some people who are good with systems & tech aren’t always as confident with people, and so the people-centric part loses out.

Interestingly, the design thinking page on wikipedia contrasts design thinking with the scientific method; whilst both approaches use iteration, design thinking consciously “considers the consumer’s emotional state”.  Having quality discussions with people doesn’t necessarily equate to discussing emotional state, but even so, I think that the organic relationship between these concepts is apparent, as is their relevance to arriving at better and more holistic solutions.

So, focus more on having quality engagement with people and taking the time to understand.

#2 – The Core Diagram and Design Thinking

The heart of Nick’s talk was the Core Diagram, and using Design Thinking as a way to developing it.  The crucial idea I took from this was connecting the existing and accepted (although possibly under-utilized) architectural concept (the core diagram) with the “modern” technique (design thinking) which has become somewhat hijacked by a market that is “going digital”.

I say “modern” with the slightly sarcastic quote marks because the roots of design thinking actually go back a long way before it became vogue in the current “digital” era. That said, “digital” is relevant to architects because it’s the current language of business, and those not conversant in it risk being marginalised, regardless of what people think digital means.

Before I go too much further I just want to point out that I am new to the concept of the core diagram – at least regarding the specifics of the concept as Nick describes it.  My goal here is simply to help spread the word on this as a idea, because I think it has value.

Nick has been writing about core diagrams for some time (circa 2012), and I wonder how much the approach to developing them have changed?  I haven’t yet properly read and digested the original approach, but it’s now 2017 and Nick is connecting the development of core diagrams with design thinking – I’m not sure whether this represents a fundamental shift in the approach, or a natural evolution that recognizes shared principles that were always inherently there.

The reason I mention this is that if you go searching online you’re going to find articles from a few years ago (c’mon, 2012 isn’t that long ago) , and you might (incorrectly) feel compelled to dismiss them out-of-hand as not being contemporary and not solidly connected to “design thinking” as is currently vogue.

So, what’s a core diagram?

As with a lot of good ideas the key concept is relatively simple, according to Jeanne Ross (Director, MIT CISR):

“For most companies, I think some kind of picture is essential for understanding the expectations for a business transformation.”

The bold is mine.  Nick included this quote in his deck – having taken it from an email Jeanne sent him in 2011.  Nick described it as “the best advice we all ignored”.

Actually Nick, I think I might have a tongue-in-cheek explanation for that – there’s currently no wikipedia page for Core Diagram 😛

Jeanne describes it as:

“a simple one-page view of the processes, data, and technologies constituting the desired foundation for execution.”

One-page is key.  What you’re after is something that everyone wants to put up on the wall, in their office or the teams shared space.  You want it to support a wide range of discussions and thinking across all your stakeholders – especially those who are responsible for, or have a lot of influence over, the end result.

Here’s some links for you:

• “Enterprise Architecture As Strategy” by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill and David Robertson, on Amazon.
• “What is a core diagram?” MSDN blog post by Nick Malik, 2012.
• (Slides from) Open Group Presentation on MSBI method of creating Enterprise Architecture Core Diagrams on slideShare, 2012.

A Brief aside info Marketecture

As Nick was describing the core diagram I couldn’t help but mentally connect it with Marketecture and effective marketecture diagrams.  In Nick’s view they aren’t the same thing, and I can see why he says that – but it’s subtle, multi-dimensional, and I’m still thinking about it.

I’ve previously found a number of useful definitions that help capture what I think marketecture is (which I sketch out in “Appendix: The Mysteries of Marketecture” in this post).  In summary it’s:

a business perspective, including concepts such as licensing, the business model and technical details relevant to the customer; it can also serve as an informal depiction of the systems structure, interactions and relationships that espouse the philosophy behind the architecture.

We had a very brief discussion whilst walking out at the break, Nick’s view was (and assuming my recall is accurate) that marketecture is designed to assist the “sale” of the solution, with the underlying implication that relates to the “transactional” nature of the sale; where as “you can take a core diagram to governance meetings”.

I guess it depends on what is meant by “sale” – there’s the commercial sense i.e. trying to sell faster processors to end users, but there’s also the idea of “selling” a solution as being viable to executives and governance bodies.  From a philosophical stand-point I think good marketecture and core diagrams have that in common.  There’s no doubt a lot more to explore here.

 

#3 – Ideation Techniques

Design thinking, and the concept of rapidly coming up with ideas deserves more time and space than I can give it here, so to get you started, let me just give you a couple of the ideas Nick shared:

• Reverse Brainstorming – Instead of asking, “How do I prevent this problem?” ask, “How could I cause the problem?”  The idea is that by initially focusing more on the problem you’re then better equipped to start considering solutions.  It reminds me of the 37 Signals piece called “Have an Enemy”: “Sometimes the best way to know what your app should be is to know what it shouldn’t be. Figure out your app’s enemy and you’ll shine a light on where you need to go.“
• SCAMPER – an acronym of activity based thinking process which help you think out of the box: Substitute, Combine, and so on.  It’s been around since 1953.

 

#ArchitectureInTransformation

Is the Tide Turning? #ArchitectureInTransformation

Good news, I think, from the 2017 IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference, which I attended earlier this week.  As is well known, “Traditional” architecture, and Enterprise Architecture in general, has been on the endangered list for a while now – but I’m starting to see really positive signs that (some) architects are bouncing back and starting to successfully adapt.

In due course, I’ll share some of the many notes and great ideas I captured during the event, but before I do I just wanted to quickly preface the whole thing with this overarching theme (that architects are starting to adapt) – because it was a theme that permeated much of the conferences content – and from what I could see these ideas were generally being embraced by the attendees – but it’s still very early days…

So what are these magical signs?

#1 – Attitudes

It was clear from the architects I spoke with that they recognised the need to adapt, have a positive attitude about doing so, and are on that journey.

#2 – Platform as a Product

One of the clearest signals was from Mike Nooney, who shared with us how Air New Zealand are developing their platform strategy.  A key takeaway here was “platform as product”, in other words, start thinking about your organisations platform and systems as a product (and everything that mental-model entails).

Of course it’s a non-trivial exercise – there’s lots of deep and subtle implications in the statement.  I’ll be looking into this more (a lot more, I’m sure), but for now I suggest you start by thinking about what good products are and how they come into being – i.e. “it’s not just about technology”; thinking about the entire ecosystem: end-users, API-users, support, marketing (and so on); and how you’d actually work with the other human beings across that entire ecosystem to make it happen.

It’s worth noting that there’s a spectrum here; in some circumstances you might simply get away with (or start with) a simply terminology change: “(Digital) Platform” instead of “EA”, although obviously a deeper change is likely to be needed at some point.

#3 – Embracing ‘new’ techniques, such as Design Thinking

Design thinking is one of several approaches that have been gaining serious traction in recent years.  Sure, some of the core concepts inside some of these approaches are not necessarily new, but they’ve reached a level of maturity and market presence that means ignoring them isn’t wise.

There’s this fuzzy nexus of concepts – Digital is one, taking a (platform as) product centric view is another – think of it as the new/emerging paradigm for how the mainstream now conceptualises systems.  Design thinking, and related approaches, are a part of that paradigm.

The good news for architects is that, as mentioned above, the core stuff inside these approaches isn’t necessarily new – it’s stuff that as architects we kinda mentally do already, so the leap isn’t as big as it looks.

Positive evidence of architects taking this sort of approach on was visible in several presentations beyond Mike’s:

1. Nick Malik emphasised the importance of gaining a deep understanding of the problem, and whilst he didn’t refer to design thinking directly I found it to be a pretty easy mental leap from his advice to leveraging design thinking as one of the ways of getting there.  Update – as per Nick’s comment below, design thinking was a focus of his talk – my memory here isn’t quite as accurate as I’d like it to be (thanks for correcting me).  I’ll share more on this in due course, including links to where you can get Nick’s thoughts first hand.
2. Nick also made reference to several books including “Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations” – and whilst this isn’t billed as “design thinking”, (as a newbie) I can see some parallels.
3. Blair Loveday did a whole session on design thinking – the fact that this even happened is itself an indication of how things are moving in architecture circles.
4. Chris Tuohy spoke about his experiences with Agile and culture change at Westpac – design thinking was explicitly called out as being part of their approach.

So whilst “traditional” architecture may be dying, I’d think the good bits from that legacy will continue – with some new additions and perhaps adapted a little in terms of tactics and approach.  When you realise that such a major transformation is slowly happening right before your very eyes, and that you’re part of it – that’s pretty cool.

#ITEA – https://www.conferenz.co.nz/events/it-enterprise-architecture