In 2017 most companies with significant technology footprints have made some attempt to adopt agile methods to improve organisational performance, yet the rate of failure remains high. IT departments continue to search for the holy grail of modular and scalable systems, yet remain encumbered with legacy systems that are anything but these things. In this session, Richard and Al explore some of the challenges around why these problems persist despite enormous organisational effort and expense. They share how an effective digital platform strategy may have some of the answers organisations need to evolve.

1. EXECUTING DIGITAL PLATFORM STRATEGIES: MORE THAN
JUST ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
Richard Glew & Alan Grimes

2. BETTER
FASTER
CHEAPER

3. THE BASIC ISSUE
• Slow painful delivery
• High degree of
coordination needed
• Business and IT mindset
(us and them)
• Project Culture
• Internal impediments to
delivering value
• Tech debt increasing over
time
Tightly
coupled
capability
Lower $$$
Better Service
Increased
Engagement
Customer Satisfaction
Sales Targets
Strateg
y
Strateg
y
IT
IT
IT
Busines
s
IT
IT
IT
Busines
s
Busines
s
Customer
Customer
Customer

4. FRICTION

5. ORGANISATIONAL
SUCCESS FACTORS
FOR YOUR DIGITAL PLATFORM
5

6. 1. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
HIPSTER CENTRALISATION
GROUPED BY CAPABILITY
CLUSTERED BY CUSTOMER
RETAIN STRATEGIC IP
consuming
that are
and
who

7. WHAT IS A
DIGITAL
PLATFORM? !
YOUR ORGANISATION’S CAPABILITIES
AS A SET OF SELF-SERVICE APIs
SO GOOD THEY ARE COMPELLING

8. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL
BUILD + RUN TEAMS,
NO EXCUSES
1

9. WATERFALL ERA
ANALYSE DEV TEST RUN
INFRA
DEV
- High degrees of specialism
(Lower-level languages, Bare
metal infra, manual installs)
- High translation cost between
contexts drives up batch sizes
- Reacting quickly is difficult,
more emphasis on getting it
right first time

10. AGILE ERA
ANALYSE DEV
TEST
RUN
INFRA
DEV
- Higher-level languages
- Test automation
- Virtualisation
- Traditional Infra and Ops
organisations begin to creak under
improved rate of release and shorter
planning horizons

11. DEVOPS ERA
ANALYSE DEV
TEST
RUN
INFRA
DEV - Cloud computing
- Infrastructure-as-code
- DB Migrations
- Blue/Green deployment
- Automated Configuration Management
- Build pipelines
- Containers

12. “I CENTRALISE FOR QUALITY CONTROL,
AUTONOMY WOULD BE CHAOS”
“10 AUTONOMOUS TEAMS ALL CONFIGURING MY
ESB WONT WORK”
“THE LICENSES FOR THIS OPS TOOL I
BOUGHT ARE SUPER EXPENSIVE”
“I HAVE 5 INFRA/DB/SECURITY PEOPLE AND 10 TEAMS”

13. HIPSTER CENTRALISATION
2

14. HUMANS AS THE INTERFACE
TEAM 1
TEAM 2
TEAM 4
TEAM 3
SECURITY
“This is how I ensure my
solutions are secure. It’s a model
with fewer moving parts, so I can
hold it in my head”
- managers, everywhere
PRODUCTION

15. TEAM 1
TEAM 2
TEAM 4
TEAM 3
SECURE
TOOLS + TEMPLATES
PRODUCTION
TECH AS
THE
PRODUCT,
API
AS THE
SERVICE

16. DESIGN-TIME
API
TEMPLATES
BUILD-TIME
TEAM
2
COMMON UI
TOOLCHAIN
RUN-TIME
DISTRIBUTION WITH CONSISTENCY
CONTRACT
TEST
ECOSYSTE
M
SECRET
MANAGEMEN
T
TEAM
1
AUTH
PLATFORM
FOUNDATIONS

17. DIVIDE BY CAPABILITY,
UNITE WITH APIS
3

18. https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar

20. PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE -
CAPABILITY MAPPING
Proprietary
Knowledge
Differentiation

21. PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE -
CAPABILITY MAPPING
Proprietary
Knowledge
Differentiation
Mobile Banking
Offer Bundling
Delivery
Infrastructure
Core Product
Payroll

22. PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE -
CAPABILITY MAPPING
Proprietary
Knowledge
Differentiation
Buy and Configure Custom Build
Outsource Partner
Mobile Banking
Offer Bundling
Delivery
Infrastructure
Core Product
Payroll

23. PLATFORM MODELLING

24. CLUSTER BY CUSTOMER
4

25. HUMAN CENTRIC DESIGN

26. CORRECTLY ALIGNED

27. LINKING TO STRATEGY

28. HOLD ON TO YOUR IP5

29. STABLE TEAMS, FLUCTUATING
DEMAND
Capacity
Line
Time
Demand

30. CAPACITY FUNDING
REDUCES COST OF DELAY

31. EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS

32. TO SUMMARISE
• Capacity funding creates stable, high-performing teams
• Capacity funding reduces cost of delay
• FTE Tech presence in areas of key IP - or risk bad
partnerships

33. WRAPPING UP

34. 1. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
HIPSTER CENTRALISATION
GROUPED BY CAPABILITY
CLUSTERED BY CUSTOMER
RETAIN STRATEGIC IP
consuming
that are
and
who

35. THANKS!
Al Grimes
Lead Consultant
agrimes@thoughtworks.com
Richard Glew
Principal Technologist
rglew@thoughtworks.com