Building Products & Platforms: System of Systems
Building Products and Platforms mandates a multi-faceted thinking that spans across all the technology layers of an organization as shown in the figure below:
The five dimensions enumerated below are the critical drivers that have a profound influence on the quality and organizational utility of the end products/platforms. As one can imagine, these are necessary but not sufficient lenses. The overarching culture under which they operate and the propulsive force provided by the technical and business leadership are all exogenous factors that impact the end outcome. In effect it is a “System of Systems” in play and that most certainly requires skills, rigor and vision.
a) Focus on Business drivers : Business needs, Go-To-Market Strategy, Reduced Time to Market, Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), building the “ilities” like maintainability, scalability, interoperability, etc.
b) Focus on User Experience or Product Exploitation Pattern: This puts a lot of onus on thinking about the ways in which a typical user would interact with or exploit the product/platform under actual conditions. The UI/UX elements assume primacy and provide space for more creative solutions to emerge.
c) Focus on Product Architecture Selection: This is one of the most pivotal components as it hardwires an organization to the expansiveness of its functionality and integration capabilities. To cite an example, one may choose to use open source technologies liberally which in turn could result in exposure to resource availability risk, integration challenges with other technologies besides the gradual build-up of tacit knowledge if managed with poor governance processes.
d) Focus on Data Throughput and Transformation: Products and platforms are the operators, and “Data” typically is the operand that flows through the system and in doing so also undergoes transformation in terms of its business and informational value. It is prudent to map this piece out upfront. This approach also pays rich dividends when thinking about advanced analytics for driving monetization goals.
e) Focus on Product/Platform Support and Evolution: Good product/platform engineers always pay adequate attention to the support and evolutionary nature of all such systems. The level of resources and skills that would be needed along with the rate of obsolescence of technology are important considerations. A product engineering mindset considers the entire value chain of the product/platform till it is sunset (Womb to Tomb).
All the aforementioned facets are intrinsically interwoven with ramifications on the “Total Cost to Value” for the end client. It is a sound software engineering regimen to address these elements upfront.
