Backbone and edge - architecting the balance between continuity and change

Backbone and edgearchitecting the balance

between continuity and change

Tom Graves, Tetradian ConsultingIASA Architecture Summit, London, April 2013

Hi.

I’m Tom.(That’s all of the PR stuff out of the way...)

Governance.(Okay, it’s not a popular word...

but we do have to face it,otherwise nothing works...)

Waterfall?

or Agile?

or what?

(the only thing that’s certain is that one-size-doesn’t-fit-all...)

A practical answer:

All of them, together(Waterfall, Agile and Mixed)

by using an architecture-pattern called

backbone and edge...

CC-BY GardenOfEaden

…agility needs a backbone!

Practice-stuff

Practice-questions look like this slide• work in pairs, if possible

• work fast – max. 1minute per question

• record as you go, with notes or sketches

Get pen-and-paper or tablet ready now…

(There are ~12 practical questions in this session)

Design and governance

#1

Assertion:Everything in the enterprise

is connected with everything else.

(If so, we can start anywhere.)

Practice-question

What’s your problem?Start anywhere:

Pick a practical challenge from your current context to work with here.

Trade-offs and uncertainties

#2

Too many trade-offs?

stability adaptability

continuity(exploitation)

change(innovation)

sameness(economy-of-scale)

uniqueness(market-of-one)

‘control’ ‘anarchy’?

Waterfall Agile

versus

versus

versus

versus

versus

Practice-question

What trade-offs do you face?Summarise some examples for your

current context.

Design for uncertainty

CC-BY Todd Hudson via Flickr

…requisite-variety

Design for uncertainty

© AviationExplorer

…requisite-inefficiency

Design for uncertainty

…requisite-fuzziness

Practice-questions

What are the uncertainties?

How do you work with this?Summarise the requisite-variety, variety-weather, requisite-inefficiency, requisite-

fuzziness and suchlike in the context.

Everything-as-a-service

#3

Assertion:Everything in the enterprise is or represents a service.(If so, we can describe everything

in the same consistent way.)

A tension exists between what is, and what we want.

The vision describes the desired-ends for action;values guide action, describing how success would feel.

Why anything happens

A service represents a means toward an end – ultimately, the desired-ends of the enterprise-vision.

The nature of service

Product

CC-BY Kiran Kodoru via Flickr

Product is static…

…a kind of ‘proto-service’

Service

CC-BY Igor Schwarzmann via Flickr

Serviceimpliesaction… …action

impliesservice

Services exchange value with each other, to help each service reach toward their respective vision and outcome.

Relations between services

Each service sits at an intersection of values (vertical) and exchanges of value (horizontal)

Values and value

Services serve.(That’s why they’re called ‘services’…)

What they serve is a shared vision,via exchange of value.

(And if we get that right,they can sometimes make money, too.)

CC-BY AllBrazilian via Wikimedia

It’s also always about people…

…‘service’ means thatsomeone’s needs are served

Practice-questions

What is this service?

Whom does it serve, and why?Summarise the context as a service

– its inputs, actions and outputs,actors and stakeholders,

values and value-exchanges,and its overarching ‘why’.

Interactions during the main-transactions are preceded by set-up interactions (before), and typically followed by other

wrap-up interactions such as payment (after).We can describe ‘child-services’ to support each of these.

value-add

(self)

customer-facing

supplier-facing

In more detail

Services link together in chains or webs, as structured and/or unstructured processes, to deliver more complex

and versatile composite-services.

Supply-chain or value-web

Practice-questions

What are the interfaces between services?

What is exchanged between each pairing of services,

or along chains of services?

What Exchanges take place before, during and after each main-transaction?

Backbone and edge

#4

“Let’s do a quick SCAN of this…”

Making sense for design

“Insanityis doingthe same thingand expectingdifferent results”

(Albert Einstein)

ORDER(rules do work here)

Take control! Impose order!

“Insanityis doingthe same thingand expectingdifferent results”

(Albert Einstein)

“Insanityis doingthe same thingand expectingthe same results”

(not Albert Einstein)

ORDER(rules do work here)

UNORDER(rules don’t work here)

Order and unorder

A quest for certainty: analysis, algorithms, identicality, efficiency, business-rule engines, executable models, Six Sigma...

SAMENESS(IT-systems do work

well here)

UNIQUENESS(IT-systems don’t work

well here)

Same and different

An acceptance of uncertainty: experiment, patterns, probabilities, ‘design-thinking’, unstructured process...

THEORYWhat we plan to do, in the expected conditions

What we actually do, in the actual conditions

PRACTICE

Theory and practice

algorithm guideline

rule principle

Sensemaking creates clarity for action

Making sense with SCAN

Practice-questions

What do you need to be certain about?

What is always going to be uncertain or unique?

(‘Messy’ – politics, management, wicked-problems, ‘should’ vs ‘is’, etc.)

What will always be ‘messy’?

ORDER(a sense of ‘the known’)

UNORDER(a sense of ‘the unknown’)

We need governance that can adapt to work with the full spectrum.

A spectrum of uncertainty

One of the hardest partsof working with uncertaintyis to build the right balance

between known and unknown- between backbone and edge.

Backbone and edge

order(rules do work here)

unorder(rules don’t work here)

fail-safe(high-dependency)

safe-fail(low-dependency)

analysis(knowable result)

experiment(unknowable result)

BACKBONE EDGE

Waterfall(‘controlled’ change)

Agile(iterative change)

Backbone, domain and edge

order unorder

fail-safe(high-dependency)

BACKBONEsafe-fail

(low-dependency)

EDGE

plan

actual

Waterfall(‘controlled’ change)

Agile(iterative change)

Mixed(guided change)

analysis(knowable result)

DOMAINexperiment

(unknowable result)

A spectrum of services

Choices:everything we place in the backbone

is a constraint on agility;anything we omit from the backbone

may not be dependable.It’s not an easy trade-off…

Vision and valuesare always part of the backbone:

values as ‘shared-services’.

A spectrum of servicesalso implies

a spectrum of governance:governance of governance itself.

Practice-questions

Which services fit more in backbone, domain or edge?

What governance to apply to each: Waterfall, Agile, Mixed?

If Mixed, how would the appropriate mix be identified and governed?

Viable services

#5

Use the Viable Services Model (direction, coordination, validation) to describe service-relationships to keep this service on track to purpose and in sync with the whole.

Keeping on track

These flows (of which only some types are monetary) are separate and distinct from the main value-flows.

Investor and beneficiary

Practice-questions

What are the interdependencies for this service?

What is needed from other services for this to be viable?

Identify what is needed from value-web, direction and investor/beneficiaries.

More on the big-picture

#6

“We create an architecturefor an organisation,

but about an enterprise.”

“We create an architecturefor an organisation,

but about an enterprise.”Tom Graves, Mapping the Enterprise, Tetradian, 2010

Whose architecture?

Organisation aligns with structure, enterprise with story.We need a balance of both for the architecture to work.

“An organisation is bounded byrules, roles and responsibilities;

an enterprise is bounded byvision, values and commitments.”

“An organisation is bounded byrules, roles and responsibilities;

an enterprise is bounded byvision, values and commitments.”

Tom Graves, Mapping the Enterprise, Tetradian, 2010

What architecture?

Organisation aligns with structure, enterprise with story.We need a balance of both for the architecture to work.

If the organisation says it ‘is’ the enterprise,there’s no shared-story - and often, no story at all.

Whose story?

The minimum real enterprise is the supply-chain - a story of shared transactions.

Whose story?

The organisation and enterprise of the supply-chain take place within a broader organisation of the market.

Whose story?

The market itself exists within a context of ‘intangible’ interactions with the broader shared-enterprise story.

Whose story?

“Customers do not appear in our processes…

…we appear in their experiences.”

“Customers do not appear in our processes…

…we appear in their experiences.”

A question of perspective

We must create the architecture around the shared-story- not solely around our organisation’s structures.

Chris Potts, recrEAtion, Technics, 2010

Every service has its own myriad of stakeholders.

Whose story?

value-flow(‘how’,‘with-what’)

value-flow(‘how’,‘with-what’)

These are distinct flows – don’t mix them up!

values(‘why’)values(‘why’)

moneymoney

Values, value-flow, money

Always start from values,not money.

If we focus on money,we lose track of value.

If we focus on the ‘how’ of value,we lose track of the ‘why’ of values.

Always start from the values.(Not the money.)

Practice-questions

Who are the stakeholders for this service?

What are their respective needs, priorities, drivers?

Identify what is needed to balance the relations and priorities of all stakeholders.

In sourcing via supply-chain, services are ‘outside’, and boundary-of-identity and boundary-of-control are same.

Sourcing: supply-chain

In insourcing, services are ‘inside’, and the boundary-of-identity and boundary-of-control are the same.

Sourcing: insourcing

In outsourcing, services are ‘inside’ boundary-of-identity but ‘outside’ boundary-of-control.

Sourcing: outsourcing

Practice-questions

Who ‘owns’ each service?

What is each respective boundary-of identity and

boundary-of-control?

If a service is outside the boundary-of-control, how is it managed and ‘controlled’?

Architecting for change

#7

Everything changes…

Practice-questions

How does each service change over time, and why?

How do you manage migration into and out of the backbone?

Identify governance needed to manage this, and governance of governance itself.

Structure and story

Afterword

Nice view of structure, but…

…where are the people?

Start with structure, or process...

…but include the people-story!

What did you discover in doing this?

What will you do different on Monday morning?

Questions and insights

•Governance (Waterfall, Agile and Mixed)

•Perspective (Inside-out and outside-in)

•Design for uncertainty (Same and different)

•Design for change (Backbone and edge)

Thank you!

Contact: Tom Graves

Company: Tetradian Consulting

Email: tom@tetradian.com

Twitter: @tetradian ( http://twitter.com/tetradian )

Weblog: http://weblog.tetradian.com

Slidedecks: http://www.slideshare.net/tetradian

Publications: http://tetradianbooks.com and http://leanpub.com/u/tetradian

Books: • The enterprise as story: the role of narrative in enterprise-architecture (2012)

• Mapping the enterprise: modelling the enterprise as services with the Enterprise Canvas (2010)

• Everyday enterprise-architecture: sensemaking, strategy, structures and solutions (2010)

• Doing enterprise-architecture: process and practice in the real enterprise (2009)

Further information: