The Composable Trinity

When it comes to Composable you may have heard a lot about architecture but that is just one part of the trinity and is the most technical part. The three parts of the Composable Trinity are Composable Business, Architecture and Staffing.

Composable Business

Composable Business is a new way of thinking of your business. The first step is to look at the core values and what makes you the company you are. This is your vision, your mission, your core business practices. These are the things that will almost never change and if it takes a long time to make changes then that is ok because it will not affect you day to day. Once you do that then you need to look at how to make the rest of it easier to change. This is done by making the other parts loosely coupled to each other. The reason main reason you want to structure your business this way is to protect yourself from disruption. Now disruption comes from many source. It could be another business coming into the market in the way UBER did to taxis. However it could also be a lack of resources used to make your product or it could be a company you work with that just went bankrupt or were forced to temporarily close. Switching to a new raw material or new provider of a service is simpler if you prepare in advance just in case this happens. Your IT team knows all about doing this for your server farms. They have them in different flood plains, they have backup providers and all that. They can help you prove why this is so important.

Composable Architecture

Next is Composable Architecture. Although you are tempted to skip this section thinking you know what it is I suggest you read it anyways because many I talk to think Composable Architecture = MACH and this is not true although MACH is a good example of an implementation of Composable Architecture. A true Composable Architecture means that the front end is not tightly bound to any one service vendor or platform. In a lot of cases you will hear platform vendors tell you their solutions are composable but then you ask them how you use one product without the others. There are many other examples but I will use Sitecore as I know that platform well. Sitecore Content Hub and OrderCloud are architected to allow you to use API calls to get what you need and to do what you want to do. They are Composable Ready. On the other hand Sitecore XM/XP is not Composable Ready in that you cannot simply make API calls to get what you need and do what you want to do. In many ways you are tied to JavaScript and a cookie. Now this is changing as they move into XM Cloud but Sitecore XP 10.x is what I am talking about here.

Ideally the front end should just receive the content it needs not having to know anything about where it came from just understand the format and display it and provide the actions needed for the customer to interact with it. To do this you need something in between. I will not dig deeper here but if you want to discuss more reach out. My point is that the front end JavaScript should NEVER make a direct API call to your content provider or commerce provider etc.

Composable Staffing

The point of Composable Staffing is to ensure you have the staffing resources you need as your business or architecture changes. The pandemic has brought this need to light as has the war in the Urkraine and elsewhere in the world but staffing disruptions can come for other reasons too. Here is a list of some reasons staffing needs to be Composable:

• People changed careers during the pandemic because they needed a job and retail closed down. Then when retail reopened people had other higher paying jobs.
• The stress of the pandemic caused many teachers, nurses and people in other careers to say enough is enough and leave to work elsewhere.
• When the war in the Ukraine happened, tech workers in Poland, Belarus and other surrounding areas became unavailable. This caused a shortage of workers.
• A strike can cause disruption as well. Whether it is a local strike or a countrywide strike like we saw in France this affects staffing.
• When your company changes parts of the business to respond to disruption there may be need for staff that have a different skillset. In some cases you can do retraining but in other cases you need such radically different skillsets that you need to find people who have those specific skills.
• A natural disaster happens in a local area such as a flood or storm or forest fires.

The key to Composable Staffing is to make sure you don't have all your eggs in one basket. Many companies are fighting for workers to go back to the office. They insist on local workers as well. This is counter to the Composable Staffing paradigm. When workers are spread out then when a disruption happens you can rely on workers in other areas to train a few others and continue to work although maybe slightly slower while the new staff catch up on the additional tasks.

Another aspect of Composable Staffing that sometimes does happen in tech but not as efficient as it could. On a project you have general resources for development, QA, etc that know a specific platform or are good at doing what needs to be done however when you run into a snag and it is specific to a given product or specialty. It makes sense to pull in for a short time a resource to look at the issue and fix it. Often what happens is that resource is hired for a 3 month contract even though they are only needed for a couple weeks or a month. It takes time to find the resource so sometimes the people solve the problem in that time but it delays the project.

Now this is radical and I spoke to a couple partners on this and they looked at me confused. The idea is you have a pool of specialists in given areas like Salesforce or CommerceTools or Netsuite or whatever other tech, I call them Super Heroes. You hire them on regular contracts for their specialty but when negotiating the terms you give them an 80% allocation. For the client this actually reduces their weekly budget which in some cases will allow them to more easily get approval. During this 80% of the time they work like Clark Kent doing a good job but it is more routines stuff. The other 20% of the time is reserved for if they are needed as a super hero. During this time they can be building up the knowledge base or mentoring others so the number of resources that know that specialty grows. They could be using that time to upgrade their current skills. However if an emergency happens then they put on their cape and the client pays that emergency rate to the partner and the super hero gets a rate bump too. They may only need them for a day, couple of days but to a maximum of 20% of the week.

This is a new model but I can see this being the norm in the near future is it means projects that are stalled because of a specific issue have the disruption resolved and can continue. Partners will benefit from the additional revenue for rescues.

Conclusion

In conclusion, companies that use all 3 parts of the Composable Trinity will be more successful in the coming years while those that do not are already suffering the impact. If you have questions reach out to me and I can help by answering questions or getting you in touch with experts to help with your specific needs.

You can join the Composable Mentoring Guild as well.