Reprogram your Architecture Language
Moving from Applications to Products and Projects to Services
by Christopher D. Hill
There is a call to action to think differently and digitally as we support each other on our Digital Enterprise journeys. See how reorienting to Digital Products and Service Delivery can lead to delivering more value, more opportunities and ultimately, more success across all disciplines in IT.
When I was growing up, my dad used to challenge us at the dinner table to reflect on the meaning of a different word each day. His intent was to teach us that words mattered, and that connotation drove behaviours. Word choice can be an important influencer in the transmission of ideas. As an IT Architect I know now that telling a good story is paramount to establishing an idea. As our enterprises pursue their digital ambitions, establishing the right vocabulary for these stories can mean the difference between success and failure of these ideas — in a way language is the source code of ideas.
The Opportunity for Change
Digital Enterprise starts as an idea and grows to encapsulate a culture, an economy and a revolution. According to Statista, “In 2023, spending on digital transformation (DX) is projected to reach 2.15 trillion U.S. dollars. By 2027, global digital transformation spending is forecast to reach 3.9 trillion U.S. dollars” with every single major player engaging in some type of digital transformation.
This level of change is inevitable and will affect culture globally. Being intentional and strategic with this change is a clear sign of leadership. My challenge to you is to start with the language we use every day. Instead of building an application, provide a product. Instead of completing a project, deliver a service.
In a traditional IT organization, we are very comfortable thinking of our ongoing day to day function as being tied to the delivery of projects that implement applications. We use the word application especially interchangeably with all aspects of IT delivery. We think in terms of application services, business applications, application versions and application currency. An application takes on the meaning of specific binary executable to the grandiose design and implementation of major technology applications. Even our processes are tuned to meet milestones on a project roadmap deploying applications. How many folks start your architectural submissions to register your application to meet project deadlines? Be honest…
Architecture is more than Application delivery, especially with an ever-growing list of technology possibilities that include hardware, software, cloud-based services, user supplied ‘Bring Your Own Technology’ (BYOT) and so many other components, endlessly reassembled to provide new functionality. So, let’s start by reprogramming this word “Application”
Digital Products
The industry at large has pivoted to think of technology solutions as Digital Products. Leveraging an established paradigm like “the product” provides ample, easily attainable and understandable characteristics that can help us model our vision of a digital enterprise.
Digital Product includes all technology solutions that deliver required capability in the enterprise. As I suggested earlier, this can include Applications, but more and more also includes SaaS, Hardware, Software of varying types and scopes. It is necessary to find language that increases the scope of possible solution paradigms and makes our model extensible enough to incorporate these different modes.
However, there is more to it than that — how we deliver these solutions is also changing with the establishment of our Digital Enterprise. Increasingly we are thinking of things in terms of lifespans and journeys. This iterative and evergreen approach to technology solutions requires different language compatible with the difference in approach.
Simply put, “products” constitute several characteristics that are more in line with how our customers expect us to deliver solutions today:
1. Lifespan — a products worth is dependent on features not versions. Products evolve over time and reflect the usefulness of technological beyond point in time deployments.
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2. Iterative Development — to accommodate an evolving solution set over a protracted timespan, a cyclical approach to development is required. Agile Methodologies are employed to provide focus on feature priority and need. Market demand, whether that is externally focused or internally driven provides the matrix on which features make it to market in which order, driving immediate value to customers.
3. Continuous Value — This long-term view allows for the incorporation of evolving and adaptive compatibility with business functions. Tools adapt to changing needs and refocus as priorities shift. In October of 2023, Forbes highlighted the shift of business priority to “The Value Economy” — “Business value now embodies a multifaceted approach that considers the interests and aspirations of all stakeholders, including customers, employees and shareholders.”
4. Customer Focus — to be successful while supported on a base of customer focus and objective value delivery, this value is measured objectively and delivered to term with the expectations defined through Service Delivery practices.
Service Delivery
There are two sides of this value coin. Designing value added products instead of merely developing applications is only the start of transformation because your business partners are looking for an engagement over an exchange. Value must be perceived to be real. Measuring and recognizing that value to demonstrate it’s worth becomes central to that engagement, and invariably that comes with the promise of a product and a service.
So, what exactly is a Service? This can be a tricky question to answer, but in the case of IT Service Delivery, a Service is often described variously as something that delivers Value by facilitating Outcomes without the direct ownership of specific Costs and Risk.
In the Business Management domain, if we think of those value outcomes as capability sets, then services are delivered for business functions by implementing capability through people, process and technology. An application is only a third of this proposition. Transitioning to a digital product delivered as part of a service provides a more holistic approach that includes the costs presented transparently and risks managed throughout the lifespan of the product. Value is then perceived not just by the delivery of the product, but by what the IT organization provides for operation of the product through the products lifespan, allowing your business partners to focus on their goals. By making the digital product the core of service delivery, this 1:1 connection between Product and Business goals are the key to realizing successful partnerships in digital transformation.
Bringing it all together
Products and Services are two parts of an entire framework of relationships between IT and Business. Having a platform for visualizing the relationships between Digital Products, their implementation, the Service that supports the product, and consumers of that product provides end-to-end visibility from demand to delivery. This is the differentiating factor in realizing the true benefits in Digital Enterprise — through transparency of the entire supply line, extending the benefit of every data point to every process and deliverable. Associating solution instances with Digital products allows for the most reusability of patterns and components, leading to savings of investment and effort. Understanding the relationship between Capability Delivery and Customer consumption provides valuable insights to Service Delivery and exacting measurement of success. Understanding how differences in regional or environment consumption and overlap in product capability provides strategic insights leading to efficient and cost-effective IT service delivery. Data without borders leads to results without limits.
It all starts with a few simple words:
Instead of building an application, provide a product.
Instead of completing a project, deliver a service.
Thanks so much for reading
Christopher David Hill is an Enterprise Architect and IT Consultant at Sun Life. He takes a “MacGyver” approach to solving technology problems, leveraging what business groups have at hand, while advising where investment is required to lead to advantage. He likes long walks off short piers, and reading novels where the main character has a hyphen in their name. You can reach him on linked in or by email at david.hill AT sunlife.com.
#ITOM #ITSM #DigitalTransformation #EnterpriseArchitecture #DigtalProducts #ServiceDelivery
