From 'Built To Last' To 'Designed To Change'

It took some doing and time for me to get to my next article. Finally, using a short break before the busy holiday season in our retail industry kicks in, to pen some thoughts. The subject this time is the changing paradigm for technology solutions or applications development and delivery in today's age and for the foreseeable future.

I could not think about any other apt headline to describe this subject I am about to delve into, than this phrase I coined ... "From Built-To-Last .. To .. Designed-To-Change". This takes inspiration from the headline from the Drucker Management Forum 2017. I replaced the word 'made' with 'designed'. Afterall, when it comes to technology solutions...design, whether functional, process, data or architectural is an essential foundation.

Looking back at how enterprise applications were built say just over a decade ago, one can't deny the fact that the pursuit was for perfection. Meeting that last business requirement, and delivering to the last tactical use case or test scenario was essential. Albeit, we had various frameworks to support this perfection from the right depth of requirements gathering, robust prioritisation and governance process leading to functional design sign-offs, well planned development phases and milestones, test and release plans resulting ultimately into a Go-Live. At enterprise scale, rolling out an average business technology solution would take anywhere from 8-10 months to a multi-year project to deliver. 

Add to that, the fact that besides a few tactical business users mostly participating in providing requirements, testing and sign off, not many others would see much of the evolution of the solution or capability until go-live. And that was the day of reckoning where one would hope the capability met all the needs outlined, to deliver successful business outcomes. Our motto was to build applications and solutions to last ! Seek perfection !

Clearly the game has shifted. In the time that it used to take to build enterprise class solutions in the past, businesses are now forced to reinvent inside out, driven by many disruptor factors not limited to but including dynamics of the marketplace, pervasive use of digital technology, fast changing customer behaviours and ever evolving business strategies and processes. This raises a key question ... How can technology and applications development stay relevant and drive top notch business results and outcomes in this atmosphere of turmoil and ambiguity?

New technology and applications delivery models based on capability 'product ownership' and using 'Agile' based frameworks are already becoming mainstream. Almost all industries seem to be adopting these frameworks. The focus of this article however is not on these frameworks. Rather, how their success ultimately depends on the four themes I outline below. The last one being the bedrock and foundation ultimately for success. These themes are heavily interdependent and one can't be successful without the other :

Business Engagement and Enablement : If you can't get this one right, you are starting off on the wrong foot. Technology has moved on from being a 'support' function and from even being an 'enabler', to.. in many areas, being the 'driver' of business. Whether it is in aspects of generating revenue, creating efficiencies or driving new business models, it is at the front and centre of business. This necessitates presence of technologists, and engagement between IT and business at all levels across the organisation. Starting with IT leaders having a voice at the overall business strategy table including the executive management, followed by close engagement at functional levels and thereafter at the drawing board where blueprints of critical initiatives are drafted, it is important for right skilled technologists to be part of the progression. In many cases, this unlocks 'art of the possible' using newer and innovative technologies, at the right stage of ideation and framing needs for new capabilities. This also creates opportunities to innovate, pilot and fail fast and learn before committing precious capital and expense budgets to projects and initiatives. Having a seat at the table and a highly business engaged IT organisation is however, half the battle. This needs to be coupled by a strong but pragmatic demand and governance framework for prioritising projects, outlining their interdependencies and framing and tracking the overall portfolio of tech investments.

Simplified Architecture : Simplification of Business and technology architecture is an essential component of the mix. As organisations grow, organically or via mergers, acquisitions or divestitures...architecture debt tends to increases. Technology decisions made along the evolution journey could have been focused on ensuring flexibility and speed which is important for organisations to grow and thrive. However, after a point, the differences and variations in doing similar processes differently across geographies, or having non aligned data, taxonomy and terminology definitions ... leads to complexity, increased operational costs, and come in the way of further speedy tech evolution. Adding to that complexity is the fact that historic solutions tend to be monolithic, blackbox and packaged solutions that may be heavily customised to meet specific business needs of the time. Whilst in the new world this may be acceptable to some extent for solutions that cater to internal corporate functions, as one starts looking at digital capabilities driving customer experience and also employee experiences, moving away from these legacy solutions is a tedious but essential part of the digital journey. There are four elements of modern architecture practices that in my view define success in today’s technology arena…

• It is essential to be working with a holistic and big picture business, information and process architecture with customer centricity as the focus, before getting to constituent processes and solutions. In many ways this provides opportunities to raise relevant questions to the business that helps break down organisational silos, seek process alignments and efficiencies and help outline clear metrics for insights and measuring success. Also drives critical thinking to drive organisational processes at strategic and tactical levels to be ultimately asking the crucial questions...what does this mean for the customer and for the shareholders.
• Cloud based technologies and advances in big data, AI and ML technologies have brought in a new dimension to the architecture arena. Successful organisations harness the power of cloud based solutions whether bought, built or a combination, to drive speed of execution and scale. Cloud native technologies cut down development times, reduce or eliminate complex support and maintenance and provide the much needed flexibility in the ‘designed-to- change’ paradigm. The watchout is cost management (subject for another article on its own)
• Any modern enterprise architecture discussion would be incomplete without highlighting the effective use of microservices and APIs as an integral component. Whether it is public APIs from the many services that can be bought from third party providers, examples being geo related, weather, information e.g. address validation, social sign ons etc. to use of microservices and APIs within the enterprise applications portfolio…These constructs help speedy and fast integrations maintaining the flexibility for future evolution of business processes.
• And lastly the architecture function itself has to be seamlessly woven into the overall business engagement, application development and delivery mechanisms rather than being an ivory tower 'department' with no muscle to execute.

Speed of execution : As they say, proof of the pudding is in eating it. However the key is eating it on time. Going back to the beginning of this discussion around disruption and change, it becomes of utmost importance to have business value and outcomes realised on time and as planned. Easier said than done. Per PMI*, on an average, 64% of projects complete on time and that too in orgs where maturity of value delivery is high. What drives this? The three other themes in this article are clearly important factors to drive speed. However, in addition one other key factor is adoption of structured delivery and project management practices. This helps define guardrails and criteria for success and helping track against those.

Talent - Skills & Competencies : By far the most important theme that pretty much determines whether you can be successful in all the other themes. Whether it is business engagement, modern architectural excellence or agility in execution .. none of these can be effective without right IT talent and talent management practices. Over the years, I have worked for organisations that have excelled in attracting and retaining talent and those that have been on the learning curve. The successful technology organisations are those that invest in talent, not just to attract and develop modern digital skills but equally and perhaps more importantly, on developing right behavioural competencies to create high performing teams. In my view two elements become very essential in this space

• Understanding and engaging with the business. Irrespective of whether you are a business analyst or engagement manager working embedded with the business, or a React /Angular.js developer writing code to deliver a specific functionality…, there is no substitute for elevating the knowledge of business across all IT talent. It is important to ensure that everyone in the tech org understands the relevance of their specific work in the broader business context, the outcomes and value it drives and impact to the business if their work is sub optimal. Specifically important are roles that need to be close to business. Not only they need to have a deep knowledge of the respective business area, but equally of technology and an ability to effectively communicate application and nuances of technology in business speak
• Personal and professional development and succession planning. Enhancing and keeping fresh with newer digital technologies is essential. As technologies evolve fast and quick, in-demand skills are scarce and become difficult to source. A dual approach of training and up-skilling existing talent as well as building a roadmap to essential newer skills to be attracted from outside, is important. Developing IT leadership competencies is the second key component. Competencies such as influencing without authority, conflict resolution, proactive collaboration, enterprise first mindset, information seeking, business assessment etc. are important to raise the effectiveness of the tech function. A strong personal and professional development plan encompassing the above, needs to be complimented with a strong succession planning framework for critical positions. This ensures de-risking against attrition and loss of rare skills including leadership.

As someone has said “Change is the only constant”. And this has never been truer than in today’s digital transformation context. Proactively managing the change, striving for progress over perfection and ensuring that applications and capabilities are designed for future perpetual change using above themes can potentially be an important ingredient in the recipe to keep ahead of the change, and of achieving success.

(All thoughts and ideas expressed in this article are my own and do not represent in any manner those of the organisation I work currently or have worked for)