2. Agenda
A modern business typically needs to operate in multiple
markets simultaneously, and satisfy the overlapping needs of
different stakeholders.
The emerging architectural response to this challenge is to
configure the enterprise as a platform of services, rather
than a traditional value chain.
But this kind of transformation involves profound
architectural challenges, which business architects need to be
able to master.
3. Compare and Contrast Platform Strategies
We cannot
understand what
makes these
companies
different by
analyzing the
things they have
in common.
4. Compare and Contrast
Activity architecture
Marketing
R&D
Partnerships
Information architecture
Customers
Products & Services
Partners
Platform Strategy
Business Service
Management Structure?
Culture?
Similarities Differences
Which architectural
viewpoint helps
understand strategy?
7. Organizing Principles
builds management reporting
lines around job functions -- such
as product
management, development, softw
are testing.
where multi-disciplinary teams
work on specific feature sets
together.
Functional Organization
Product Organization
This is what Steve
Sinofsky preaches and
practices.
Manu Cornet’s cartoon
of Microsoft is thought
to be a coded reference
to Sinofsky.
Sinofsky left Microsoft
in November 2012.
8. MOTIVATION
VIEW
What the business wants
CAPABILITY
VIEW
What the business does
CYBERNETIC
VIEW
How the business thinks
ACTIVITY VIEW
How the business does
KNOWLEDGE
VIEW
What business knows
RESPONSIBILITY
VIEW
Who Whom
Six Views of Business
including business
service and platform
configuration
14. Audience-Making Platform (Media)
A Media information aggregator builds a relationship with end users and connects them to
various retailers and Contents / Services Providers. Source: Maat International
15. Key Platform Measures
how easily others
can plug into the
platform to share
and transact
how well the
platform attracts
participants, both
producers and
consumers
Connection Gravity Flow
how well the
platform fosters
the exchange and
co-creation of
value
Source: Mark Bonchek and Sangeet Paul Choudary HBR
16. Key Platform Capabilities
Making it easy for others
to plug into the platform
and enables interactions
between participants.
For example, Apple
provides developers with
the OS and underlying
code libraries; YouTube
provides hosting
infrastructure to creators;
Wikipedia provides writers
with the tools to
collaborate on an article;
and JC Penney provides
stores to its boutique
partners.
Attracting critical mass of
participants. Platform
builders must pay
attention to the design of
incentives, reputation
systems, and pricing
models. They must also
leverage social media to
harness the network effect
for rapid growth.
For example, developers
and users
(Apple, Android). Buyers
and sellers
(Amazon, eBay).
The Toolbox The Magnet The Matchmaker
Fostering the flow of
value by making
connections between
producers and consumers.
Capturing and leveraging
rich data to facilitate
connections between
producers and consumers.
For example, Google
matches the supply and
demand of online
content, while
marketplaces like eBay
match buyers to relevant
products
Source: Mark Bonchek and Sangeet Paul Choudary HBR
17. Platform Ambiguity
Platform Boundary Evolution
influence of discrete decisions
of entry into a particular
business
incremental adaptations in
relation to suppliers of
complementary components.
Interface Ambiguity
‘uncertainty in the market over
what constitutes the key
interface’ (Funk, 2002)
Questions
What are the core components
around which platforms in this
industry arise?
How to characterize
differences between platforms
in this industry?
Source: Pieter Ballon 2009
18. ComplementorComplementor
General Pattern
Where are the products and
services located?
How is the platform
designed and managed?
How does the platform
support indirect
relationships?
Where is the added value
located?
Questions
Consumer
Platform Business
Complementor
ConsumerConsumer
21. Four Types of Customer Behaviour
Comparison
• Choosing between
different solutions to
the same demand
Destination
• There is only one
place for the
customer to go.
Cost Convenience
• Choosing between
similar standardized
offerings
Custom
• Supplier adapting the
offering to the
customer’s
requirement
SupplyInfrastructure
Capability Requirement
MicrosoftArchitectureJournal
AsymmetricDesign
22. Strategic choices
The move from destination to product involves reducing the
exposure to integration risks by externalizing the exogenous
risks.
The move from product to cost involves reducing the
exposure to the technology and engineering risks by
standardizing the business model.
The move from cost to custom involves increasing the
exposure to integration risks again, but only the endogenous
ones.
Only the move from custom to destination faces the business
with the exo-interoperability risks.
25. Decoupling different levels of abstraction
Standardizing the
platform level
capabilities.
For example, a
standard approach to
customization.
Differentiating the
business level
capabilities.
For example, offering a
wide range of third
party products and
technologies.
26. Case Example: Business Service Company
Broad range of corporate
customers
Each corporate customer
had its own customized
solution
Solution architects working
with customers, focused on
customization and
innovation
Common platform of
shared services
Internal
Third-party
Customer-facing
Solution architects focused
on value-adding innovation
Customization process
faster, more consistent, and
more reliable.
Before After
27. New Challenges for Business Architects
Ecosystem
Mapping the ecosystem of
organisations, customers and contexts
within which business must to decide how
to act.
Indirect value
Defining the indirect value for our
customers beyond the immediate value
arising from their involvement with our
services.
Economies of governance
Establishing economies of governance in
the way business and other resources can
be brought together and combined in
individual interventions.
Horizontal accountability
Considering how to strengthen
horizontal accountability in ways
which hold accountable the
individuals who are dealing
directly with customers.
Agility
Developing the agility of systems
and processes to cope with
variation in the scale and scope
of individuals’ needs, and in
response to continued change in
economics conditions and/or
customer demand
28. Conclusion
A modern business typically needs to operate in multiple
markets simultaneously, and satisfy the overlapping needs of
different stakeholders.
The emerging architectural response to this challenge is to
configure the enterprise as a platform of services, rather
than a traditional value chain.
But this kind of transformation involves profound
architectural challenges, which business architects need to be
able to master.
29. MOTIVATION
VIEW
What the business wants
CAPABILITY
VIEW
What the business does
CYBERNETIC
VIEW
How the business thinks
ACTIVITY VIEW
How the business does
KNOWLEDGE
VIEW
What business knows
RESPONSIBILITY
VIEW
What the business is
Six Views of Business
31. Notes
Enterprise Architecture
Forum, 19 September 2013
RVsoapbox.
BlogSpot.com
twitter.com/
richardveryard
Future Events
Other Material and Links
Acknowledgements
Philip Boxer
AsymmetricDesign.com
Notes de l'éditeur
First version presented IASA UK Chapter February 2012Revised version presented IASA Conference April 2013
For example, a retail company can define its business model as providing a platform for manufacturers to sell their good to consumers.
Each of these companies has a distinctive platform strategy.Which architectural viewpoint (or business modelling language) is most useful for understanding the strategic differences between these companies?
Steve Sinofskyhttp://rvsoapbox.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/functional-organization-at-microsoft.html
Categories due to David S Evans
The traditional retailer acts as a hub in the food supply chain, aggregating food supply from fields and factories, and distributing food to workshops and private kitchens. This is essentially a positional strategy: the retailer seeks to establish and maintain a strategic position within a value chain, as the bottleneck/hinge point between upstream and downstream. Within the positional strategy, the business drivers are understood in terms of the economics of scale and the economics of scope.But if we shift from a value-chain perspective to a service-oriented perspective (effects-ladder), we can see that the retailer is providing a service (=delivering value) downwards as well as upwards – it is a food distribution platform for farmers and manufacturers as well as a food supply platform for consumers and catering companies.So instead of drawing the merchant in the middle, we can draw the merchant as a new kind of platform providing various kinds of market interaction.This takes us from a positional strategy to a relational strategy. No longer just focused on the economies of scale and scope, the relational strategy emphasizes how economies of governance are generated in relation to two kinds of demand context. The big question for a company such as Wal-Mart is how to balance the exploitation of each of these forms of asymmetric advantage.
Bill Bailey, Cressida Bonas, Miranda Hart, Jeremy Hunt, RobertPeston 71pSnoop Dogg, Salman Rushdie £10.08Tom Daley £10.68Mark Zuckerberg $100
The names for two of these four ways came from research on shopping behaviour by Gary Davies in which he distinguished ‘cost’ convenience (choosing between similar standardised offerings) and ‘comparison’ behaviours (choosing between different solutions to the same demand). The other two separated out circumstances where there was a demand particular to the customer, distinguishing offerings in which there was only one place for the customer to go ( ‘destination’), or in which the supplier would adapt the offering to the customer’s requirement ( ‘custom’) within their context-of-use. The point being made, however, was that the ‘destination’ form of offering required asymmetric governance because of the need to hold power at the edge of the organisation. What distinguishes this position in the cycle?If we think of the original development of pc-based spreadsheet programs in-house (destination), they soon became a limited number of alternative branded solutions (comparison) that in turn became dominated by the one offering all the others’ features in one package (cost). From here we have seen an increasing ability to customise the ways it can be used (custom) to the point where we are now looking at a new cycle of web-based solutions that we can build one-by-one (destination).http://www.asymmetricdesign.com/2006/04/managing-over-the-whole-governance-cycle/
PatternDescriptionComparison(WHOM-HOW)The demand is defined in such a way that the context from which it arises is ignored, but the service is coordinated in a way that enables it to respond to that particular demand. This characteristic corresponds to the "comparison" approach for the patient, who is looking for the best solution offered to his or her demand. For suppliers, this form of governance allows them to minimize their exposure to exo-risks by limiting the definition of demand that they will respond to (the user requirement); although, they are still faced by integration risks inside the business.Cost(WHOM-WHAT)Not only is the demand defined in such a way that the context from which it arises is ignored, but the response of the service is proceduralized, too, and there is no need for an explicit coordinating process. In this "cost" approach both the nature of the demands and the responses to them have become standardized. Now the integration risk is minimized for the supplier and the technology and engineering risks being proscribed.Custom(WHY-WHAT)An implicit form of coordination of how things work, often in the form of a particular budgetary regime, constrains the way the service is able to respond to the patient's condition. This characteristic corresponds to the "custom" approach, where the service is standardized but the way it is provided into the patient's context can be varied (mass customization). Here the supplier is exposed to integration risks again, as it builds more variability into the way its service works.Destination(WHY-HOW)Each of these three forms treats demand as symmetric to an implicit or explicit form of endogenous coordination. Only in the fourth case do we have asymmetric governance in which the endogenous and exogenous forms of coordination have to be aligned with each other. This characteristic corresponds to the "destination" approach, where the patient goes to that place where he or she can get a treatment exactly aligned to the nature of their condition. It is also only in this case that the supplier takes on the exo-interoperability risks explicitly.We are particularly focused on the risks associated with interoperability, not only because any given geometry is a particular coordination between its constituent services, but also because these are the ones that emerge as you coordinate across systems and organizations. (We have been following the recent developments around Hurricane Katrina with considerable interest because some of the public criticism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] clearly exposes difficulties in managing some of the interoperability risks.) How are we to think about the nature of these risks?
http://www.trainmor-knowmore.eu/75D2E63A.en.aspxhttp://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/02/knowledge_hoard.htmlThe I-space² is a model describing how knowledge moves from being undiffused (ie only known by a few people) and concrete (ie very specific to a single situation) to becoming more abstract (ie. generalised to apply to more situations) and codified (ie. more able to be articulated). At point 3 on the diagram the knowledge has maximum value to an organisation because it can be applied in a variety of ways to a range of problems but hasn’t leaked (diffused) to its competitors. It is inevitable, however, that if the knowledge is valuable it will soon become common knowledge. In the case of the lawyers, the idea of using collaboration software to get all parties together can quickly arrive at point 3 but as soon as the solution is implemented the knowledge is diffused and available to everyone—competitive value diminished rapidly.Boisot’s argument is that organisations which operate in a slow moving environment, such as flute makers where the way flutes have been made hasn’t changed in a century, should do whatever it takes to protect their intellectual property including doing everything to retain their master craftspeople. Fast moving industries require a different strategy: keep your mean time at point 3 as high as possible. This requires an organisation to continually rotate through the I-space spiral with new ideas—constant innovation.
For example, a retail company can define its business model as providing a platform for manufacturers to sell their good to consumers.