As an Advisory / Consultant or previous Solution Architect at Salesforce.com when I meet my customers for the first time I ask about the vision, I ask about the pains, I ask about the global picture and how they visualize their digital transformation. One thing that I see in common is the enthusiasm about the change and even the nervousness…. But above all, I discover the need for all features and processes. My job is to build the right strategy and architecture to achieve the entire dream in the right cadence and order. My passion is to see the global change broken into small pieces build into releases and backlog wrapped by strategy.
Let me share how I see strategy...
I want to start with a comment, it doesn't matter if you are building a product or planning a project, this post can serve you. Also, as an Agile fan and certified... I use its vocabulary and methodology... keep it in mind and feel free to ask about it.
Enjoy reading.
When you’ll look for strategy in the dictionary, you’ll find a receipt with definition and Ingredients - Strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.
Let’s explore,
Plan - Usually when talking about planning we think about the timeline, Gantt chart, and other Project Management deliverables. But this is only one aspect, as a solution architect my planning is about the data model, business processes, business model canvas, scalability, trust, and more... I’ll give a few tips and will enhance it in my next post ‘Solution Architecture’.
So how trust is related to business processes? Trust is vital. It ensures the changes the business makes are accepted by users. If users do not accept a system improvement or new process, then all the effort to make the change is redundant. How businesses communicate these changes to the users directly impacts the level of trust between them. To communicate effectively, businesses must understand how tools and processes impact their users on a day to day routine, and make the needed adjustments with a lack of disruption in mind. In the end, users should be considered and viewed as the most important business stakeholder.
Business Model Canvas - A great tool that should get its own post (Especially for Agile fans) but I do want to give you in a high-level how it helps to understand the business model in a straightforward, structured way and should be the product fundamentals. Business Model Canvas is a strategic management template for developing new or existing business models for Product Owner/Manager essential. It is a visual chart with elements describing a company's or product's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. It assists companies in aligning their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs. Using this canvas will lead to insights about the customers the company serves, what value propositions are offered through which channels, and how the company makes money. I use this Canvas to understand companies' business models and processes at a high-level and as a base ground to platform architecture. Implementing the Salesforce platform is like developing a product - MVP, backlog and releases, users experience, and more, that's why I recommend using the same methods, elements, and planning.
Goals - Each company has its own goals, Most innovative, profitable, best customer experience, and more... Talking about goals, for me is talking SMART.
Setting SMART goals is helping clarify ideas, focus on efforts, using time and resources more productively, and increasing success. Also to consider, before starting a new project or implementing a strategy, it becomes a little difficult to define objectives straight away. So, in order to give companies/project teams a clear objective, I start with an excellent approach by using the SMART method.
Companies want success in all areas, and I'm here to deliver it. In order to do it, I need the Success definition - and it is different from company to company / project / product, etc. That is why when planning the Strategy, MVP, and platform architecture, It is important to be knowledgeable about the Specific (Customer 360 for Sales/Service), Measurable (Indicators like ROI / AHT), Achievable (Motivation is the Key), Relevant (Be focused - if it is not MVP relates, send to backlog) and Time-based (start and end time) objectives.
Uncertainty - When planning/building a product/project there are lots of areas where we are lacking information, the best practice is to do Risk Management. But when we talk about uncertainty another parameter that causes it, is Time.
Time in tech has lots of influence (also in life, but let's focus on the subject matter), the goal is to be adaptive, agile. The main reason I am an Agile fan, not just because it works, is the ability to adapt to the change. when implementing a 40K users system with complex architecture and integrations that is planned for 3 years project - changes will occur, technology will change (e.g Salesforce have 3 releases a year), the ability to change the system and architecture through the releases and receive constructive feedback from users is to minimize the uncertainty.
So when we plan our roadmap/pipeline and we keep in mind our goals and partners /resources we have 80% of the ingredients to generate Success, and add the right architecture following the best practice while combining it with SMART goals and you are ready to strategize.
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