It was about SOA all along! Chapters 2 & 3

[cont. from previous post about my commented reading of Andy Mulholland’s book: “Mashup Corporations. The End of Business as Usual”]. After reading chapters 2 & 3, I realised that I should clarify something important. When I state that my writings on this blog were about SOA all along, I mean that SOA is probably the best value-adding, customer-facing, tangible web-based implementation (that I know) of a knowledge leveraging strategy. What I do not mean is that SOA is the only way to leverage organizational knowledge, nor do I mean that a company-wide change process to establish a knowledge sharing culture must incorporate some degree of SOA in order to be beneficial. Also, SOA is primarily concerned with online services on the Web but of course, not all transactions are online! Having said that, if the technological aspect of SOA might probably not apply in a meaningful sense to all businesses; its associated cultural implications should be relevant to all. SOA first advantage [over most other knowledge leveraging initiatives] is to be directly concerned with increasing/generating sales and this should help catching the attention of CxOs. In chapter 2, a fundamental principle of a SOA is explained: extending IT to the edges of the company. This does not only mean involving the customer-facing collaborators in the creation/evolution of the services to the customers, it means to involve outsiders as well. That is collaborators outside the firewall (to use a technical view) and not on the payroll (well, they could get paid but not with a salary). So, do get this straight: the suggestion is to enable outsiders to “add their own services that create new revenue stream”. The cultural change required to support this is to have your whole company at the service of the people at the edge: the front-line/client-facing collaborators and any trustworthy outsiders with an interest to grow your business (see my knowledge-driven and customer focused organization diagram ) From chapter 3, I will retain in particular the advantages of services (Web 2.0) over traditional Enterprise Applications, with the guiding principle of releasing control to communities of users. The importance of a legal framework also must be noted, in order to secure a service-enabled commercial environment that heavily involve outsiders.

It was about SOA all along! (Chapter 1)

[cont. from previous post about my commented reading of Andy Mulholland’s book: “Mashup Corporations. The End of Business as Usual”].

Here are my thoughts after reading chapter 1 of the book “Mashup Corporations. The End of Business as Usual”.

This book illustrates its arguments with the help of a tale of a fictitious company Vorpal going through the process of implementing SOA. The authors do stress that it is a rather idealistic scenario, but I couldn’t help thinking that the way in which the realization of the need for a more flexible infrastructure came about, was unrealistic for most organizations today. You have this young clever marketing manager who explains to the CEO how he uncovered a new unsuspected source of income. In order for Vorpal to benefit from it, it had to find ways to allow online ordering flexibility.

The thing is, if you currently work in a (relatively large) organization where a n-2 manager can simply request for a meeting with the CEO to talk about an exciting personal experience that may be of interest to the company, already consider yourself lucky. Then if you are among the lucky ones, if the CEO does listen to your entire story in details, then calls in on the spot the CIO or any other senior directors to listen to it too and give their opinion, consider yourself to be privileged to work with an exciting CEO with a modern management style. Now, if your story is likely to end up initiating a formal project in which you will have a leading role, please tell me the name of your company to add it to my shortlist of preferred employers!

Anyway, the authors’ intentions were not initially to consider all the likely resistance to SOA adoption. Instead, the Vorpal scenario helps us understand typical reasons for needing SOA and a typical implementation process with its cultural, organizational and technical impacts. In this second edition of their book, the authors have added chapter 7 “Overcoming barriers”, after realising how important the challenge to convince decision-makers of the need for SOA was in many companies. So, I’ll come back to this issue after reading this chapter.

The key concept I will retain from this first chapter is the difference between “Hub IT” and “Edge IT” and that “SOA flourishes at the edges”, just inside the firewall or literally outside of it.
I will quote a very useful definition of Web Services: “[they] are standard approaches to exposing the capabilities of a company’s web site or internal systems to other web sites or systems by bypassing the user interface and connecting directly to the underlying technology”.

To be continued…

It was about SOA all along!

I was recently introduced to Andy Mulholland by a mutual friend. After reading some recent articles on his blog I quickly realized I had to read his latest book about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) titled: “Mashup Corporations. The End of Business as Usual”. I ordered it on the famous mashup-rich website Amazon and started reading it yesterday. After only reading up to the end of the Introduction chapter, it suddenly stroke me: All my thoughts and ideas that initiated the articles on this blog since its creation in 2005 were calling for, relating to or assuming SOA! And the most amazing is that I never even mentioned SOA. My understanding of SOA was that it was a modern method to organize the IT infrastructure for a more flexible applications delivery. So, I had the technologist view (sorry but I’m an IT guy after all) and was missing completely the point. SOA is not just about delivering services and the IT infrastructure, it is first about the adoption of new business models and a conducive corporate culture. Business models! Corporate culture! To those of you who have been in touch with my blog for a while, aren’t these recurring topics in my writings? Oh boy, how this realization got me excited! So, I decided that I will keep posting about my reading of Andy’s book, and how it will surely make my understanding of the leveraging of organizational knowledge evolve to another level. I will stick here to this enlightening Introduction. It gives “five kinds of relationships upon which SOA will make the most impact” and the associated questions it will attempt to answer are: << How can you harness the ideas and energy of [innovators] eager to help [from inside or outside the company]? How can you bring your customers closer to your core business processes? How can you create a win-win relationship with your suppliers instead of an adversarial one? How can [IT enable] innovation to break new ground while protecting critical data? How can you best structure your IT resources to reflect the needs and new capabilities of SOA? >> The virtuous process of Human Capital Formation is concerned with the first question. My article on this process was focusing on the employees, but it could be adapted to cater for the contribution of people outside the company (I might do this when I have time). The second question relates to one of the most important concept I have written about on my blog: Organize the whole company around the customer-facing functions in order to be closer to the customers and therefore satisfy them better. See “knowledge-driven not simply customer-driven”, and “becoming a knowledge-driven organization in response to more knowledgeable customers in the luxury market” and also a more specific case “knowledge-sharing for a Retail Manager”. The third question is about the collaborative playing field of the Knowledge Economy where companies must collaborate with in fact not only their suppliers and customers, but even increasingly with their competitors. I will leave the last two questions more concerned with the company’s IT function/department for now. Of course, with my experience there is a lot I could say about it, but this blog was initially avoiding this subject and no doubt I will be drawn into it in later chapters. Let's read on...

Mesh working rather than Matrix working

Read this very good post by Andy Mulholland (Cap Gemini CTO) about the impact of Web 2.0 collaboration on organizational structure and working practice. Andy identifies the new working practice as Mesh working: http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2007/11/this_is_going_to_be.php Here is how Andy defines Mesh working: <<[…] The change in how people work is focused on Web 2.0, and I have chosen to label this as Mesh Working to differentiate it from Matrix Working. Matrix working is broadly the capability for individuals to work at the specific tasks in which they specialise for a variety of managers, and is made possible by using client-server to allow the separation of the client activity from the data consolidation on the server. However it is at heart a data centric transaction based working method where relationships both between people and systems are ‘managed’ through a close coupled environment. Put simply the relationships in Matrix working are always pre determined, fully defined and use known data. Put equally simply Mesh working is loose coupled, for both the people and systems, relying on forming the relationships required through the ‘interactions’ leading to the definitions of who, and what, should be found and used. The Mesh of people and systems is potentially a never ending huge open environment extending externally as well as internally rather than the closed internal world of Matrix working. […]>> A Mesh of people is really what I also have in mind when I think of a Web 2.0 collaborative environment. It is organized chaos. Andy ends his post with this good assessment of what this means from a competitiveness point of view: <<[…] Competitive advantage is shifting from the cost management of transactions in the back office to business optimisation in the front office and the external market. Globalisation is forcing all enterprises to compete in this space so ultimately Mesh working is being driven as a necessary response to a changing Business world. It’s a World that takes us way beyond internal agility, and flexibility, through Matrix working, and into external responsiveness through Mesh working. >> I totally agree with this conclusion. However, leaders need to be careful about what they first need to do about it. Essentially, it first depends on their organization’s current culture. Mesh working is not compatible with an environment with a heavy hierarchical structure, where horizontal communication – let along team working - other than for prescribed “routine” processes is scarce. You cannot declare mesh working, you cannot impose it. You need to nurture it, gradually implement a conducive organizational environment, starting with a clear and unconditional support from all the CxOs. A “do what I say but not what I do” behaviour will surely not succeed. If as a leader you want your collaborators to willingly share their knowledge outside routine business processes, you must lead by example. Maybe start a corporate personal blog accessed by all and use it to tell your vision. Mesh working is not a concept that can be applied only to the grass roots of your organization and leave the upper echelons unchanged. Mesh working implies a fundamental change structurally, culturally and technologically. All organizational values, processes and methods must be reviewed and progressively adapted to the new way of working. For example, the pay and reward mechanisms must cater for the new importance given to knowledge-sharing, idea generation and innovation. Now, Andy implies in his article that Mesh Working is in fact not an option and that it is happening whether you like it or not. Thinking that as a leader you have today a choice to ignore it would be like if in the late 80’s/early 90’s, you would have been thinking the same of the Matrix working brought by the networked PC and the Information Age that followed. “Symptoms” of Mesh working can very probably be detected in your organization. One obvious reason is that millions of people have already socially embraced this concept largely thanks to the Web 2.0 and, seeing the benefits, it is only natural that they try to extend this behaviour in the workplace. Another reason is that some of your customer or supplier organizations will have already made the transition to Mesh working, and their collaborators will expect the same behaviours from your collaborators. The pressure will therefore mount on all organizations to fully embrace the Knowledge Economy. Traditional Intellectual Property (e.g. Brand name, patent and trademark) will no longer suffice to build and maintain competitive advantages: Intellectual Capital leveraging through effective and efficient Mesh working is to become the key to successful business. Peter-Anthony Glick

The Age of Collaboration

Read the following article in CIO Today: http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0020006F2KP6&page=1 It starts with this unfortunately correct quote from an Accenture executive:

  << When it comes to collaboration, many companies have a long way to go. "We are early in the cycle, maybe the second inning," says David Smith, head of the human performance practice in North America for Accenture, a global consulting and technology services firm. "Companies are beginning to attack it. Very few are getting it right." >>

The Age of Collaboration as the article defines it below is a direct consequence of the Knowledge Economy, considering Knowledge as the most important asset: 

  <<[…] The 21st century is likely to be the age of collaboration because many of today's problems are complex, often demanding cross-disciplinary expertise. Collaborative technologies are also in demand by companies that have global staffs and greater numbers of employees who telecommute. Supply chains demand collaboration among dozens of companies. Some technical problems are so expensive to tackle that even competitors collaborate. For example, IBM, Samsung Electronics and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing cooperatively develop semiconductor manufacturing processes. ST Microelectronics and others recently joined them. Finally, there's evidence of a societal shift toward collaboration as more workers network around the clock via cell phone and computer. In the July-August 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Neil Howe and William Strauss discuss the effects of generational differences on this trend. Those born between 1982 and 2005 -- the first generation to grow up with mobile digital technology -- expect nonstop interaction and cooperation with peers. "They will tend to treat co-workers as partners rather than rivals ... and use information to empower groups rather than individuals," the authors write. […] >> 

And the article concludes with this short but to the point warning: 

  <<[…] In the years ahead, the winning organizations will be those that learn to be collaborative and share employees' knowledge. >> 

How many of these articles will be needed for the majority of leaders to finally understand the importance of a knowledge-sharing culture for their organizations? The ones who wait for their competitors to try it first will regret it. 

 Peter-Anthony Glick http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/