Living in a world of constant technological change
Change. It is a constant in all of our lives. The sun rises and falls — never staying in the same place. In technology, we see the same thing. In some areas, change is slowing, but it is changing rapidly regarding the technology used to develop software products. Take a look at Amazon Web Services (AWS). The rate at which they release new features and capabilities is impressive. I once saw a statistic that engineers at Amazon were deploying code at a rate of every 11.7 seconds on average within a year of moving to AWS. Granted, those are small incremental changes, but that is a high rate of change.
Why is it important to talk about change when discussing product technology strategy and architecture? Because it can have a significant positive or negative impact depending on how you take change into account.
The Cost of Ignoring Change
Ignoring change means increased technical debt, missed opportunities, and potential loss of competitive advantage. You can find yourself left behind if you allow the world to change around you but do not change with it. Sure, you can hope your competitors do the same thing, but all you have to do is look at companies like Uber, Airbnb, and the like to see how organizations can leverage changes in technology to disrupt entire markets. If you can’t change with changes, you will get left behind.
Three Foundations for Embracing Change
So, how does one embrace change rather than watch it pass them by? There are three foundational elements of product technology strategy and architecture that, if appropriately adopted, can set you up to take advantage of change rather than be injured by it.
Innovation
The first of these foundations is Innovation. We all talk about being innovative but is it baked into your processes? Do the processes you follow for developing your strategies and designing your architectures have a stage for actively considering innovation? Not just how do you innovate, but how do you set yourself up to constantly develop and test potential innovations. Are you watching as technology change occurs and taking advantage of it to bring new value-adding capabilities to your customers?
Adaptability
The second foundation is Adaptability. While innovation is about finding new value-adding ideas, testing them, and delivering the ones that work, adaptability is about building in the ability to change your systems and strategies quickly as the changes occur. Can you promptly adopt changes if your cloud provider releases a new service that can cut your operations costs in half? Or, have you poured virtual concrete around your architectures and strategies such that they are complex, slow, and costly to change? Having strategies and architectures designed to embrace change will position you to take advantage of the opportunities change presents rather than being left behind by it.
Attainability
The final foundational element is Attainability. Best is the enemy of the good (Voltaire). Done is better than good (Elizabeth Gilbert). No value of innovation or adaptability will be realized unless you can deliver to your customer. Your strategy and architecture processes also need a focus on iterative deliverability. What needs to be done now? What can be put in the parking lot? Do we need to design a specific portion out, or is it sufficient to identify how we would interface with it and postpone the details on the other side of the interface for a future iteration? How do we quickly move from strategy change to architecture adaptation to implementation?
When integrated into your strategy and architecture processes, innovation, adaptability, and attainability can enable an organization to respond to change quickly and with clearly targeted value. Ignoring these will allow your competition to move ahead of you and make you obsolete in a worst-case scenario.
In future blog posts, I will take a deeper look at each of these foundations, delve into a little more detail, and finally provide some templates for strategy architecture planning processes built upon them.