CTO School MelbourneNovember 2016

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This Month’s Topic

Looking at your technology business through the lens

of the 3 horizons modelwith

Nigel FernandesSEEK

CTO School Melbourne

Thinking about technical strategy & growthNigel FernandesArchitecture Practice Manager

Objective:

Help you understand whether the 3 Horizons of Growth model could

work for you

THIS TALK IS NOT ENDORSED BY

Foundations of thistalk

Individual autonomy without collective alignment leads to anarchy.

~ Sam Newman

Platform = People + Technology

~ Scott Shaw

Software delivery capability is a function of the alignment of

the platform to the needs of the product.

~ Me

3 Horizons Model

3 Horizons Model

The Product side

Extend and defend core business

Build emergingbusinesses

Create viable options

Experienced business operators extend the core

Business builders develop new opportunities

Visionaries, champions create viable options

The People side

Transitional Architecture modernizes the core

Evolutionary Architecture guides growth with opportunities

Emergent Architecturebased on disruptive tech

The Technology side

Horizon 1Superior execution.

Extend and defend core business

Horizon 1

Transitional Architecture modernizes the core

Experienced business operators extend the core

We rely on experienced technical leaders who possess:

• A track record and love for working effectively with

legacy code

• The ability refactor as you go along and be disciplined

• The ability to strangle systems along functionality seams

• The explainers. The patient. The calm and steady.

People

Transitional Architectures aiming forSOA/Microservices as a strangler and for complexity management

Automated operations and effective team level support/on-call

New tech as a way of solving problems of scale: AWS, Docker etc.

New tech as a way of decoupling, managing blast radius

Focus on Inter-operability

Established pattern based decision making

Tech Radar as a Reflection Exercise

Activity

Get technologists in a room.

Ask them to reflect on Techniques, Tools, Platforms and Languages in use. Classify these as Assess, Trial, Adopt or Hold.

TIME modeling with Leadership

Activity

Sit with your leadership team

Ask them to reviewproducts and systems usingGartner’s TIME model.

Classify each into one of the four quadrants

Use the results as an input to decision making

STARS modeling with Leadership.

Activity

Sit with your leadership teams

Ask them to assess their products and the teams working on them Classify each as Start-Up,Turnaround, AcceleratedGrowth, Realignment orSustaining Success

Reflect on the implications

Patterns. Everywhere.

Logging. Metrics. Deployment. Secrets.

Horizon 2Taking advantage of new opportunity

Build emerging businesses

Horizon 2

Business builders develop new opportunities

Evolutionary Architecture guides growth with opportunities

We rely on Product engineers. Characterized by:

• Enthusiasm and passion. Evangelists.

• A Strong sense of optimism

• Comfort with working in higher degrees of uncertainty

• Comfortable with trading tech debt for speed, and the

experience doing it.

• Knowledge of the second system effects

• Ability to think on their feet, adapt fast, and thrive while

under delivery pressure.

People

Evolutionary Architectures guided by :Composibility of existing services to extend/create new products

Add new services to expose new capabilities/data

Invest in older software assets only where required

New tech as a way of attracting and retaining talent

New tech as a way of achieving shortened time to market

Optimize for code for flexibility not efficiency

Focus on Inter-operability

FFF Exercise with Teams on a regular basis

Activity

To help teams keep their focus on the things thatare important.

Use the FFF for nonfunctional requirements

Have teams determineThe dimensions

Trade off sliders with Teams on a regular basis

Activity

To help teams keep their focus on the things that are important.

To help keep product and technology teams honest.

Tech Debt walls mapping

Activity

Technical teams get uncomfortable with borrowing down on tech debt. Visibility helps deal with managing the debt versus productivity scales

Horizon 3Creating new viable businesses

Horizon 3

Emergent Architecture based on disruptive tech

Business builders develop new opportunities

Create viable options

We rely on Entrepreneurial engineers. Characterized by:

• Self driven. Champions and visionaries.

• Comfort with working with a lack of clarity

• Comfortable with building quick and dirty solutions

• Comfortable with throwing work away as products

develop and pivot.

• Ability to learn fast without a lot of formal support

• The courage to be different.

People

Emergent Architectures characterized by :Operating outside the boundaries of established systems

New tech as a market disruptor

New tech as a commercially defensible IP

Optimized for learning

Mandates the need for re-investment later

Horizon scanning

Activity

Workshop with the whole cross functional team and the entire stakeholder group to course correct and maintain engagement

The Emergent Organization

Experienced business operators extend the core

Business builders develop new opportunities

Visionaries, champions create viable options

Culture evolution

Ref:Connected Company – Dave Gray

Ref:Connected Company – Dave Gray

Thank you

Discussion notes

Wardley maps: (Matt Fellows and Ervin Van der Koogh)http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-town-planners-and.html?m=1and https://vimeo.com/189984496

Is there a Horizon 0 – the people and tech left behind after an organization has moved on, post the evolution from horizon 1 -> 2. What does that look like? (Liz Douglass – has upcoming talk at YOW CTO summit on this)

The 3 horizons model as applied to features and code flows within an application. 3 horizons of features, core feature set, potential high adoption/value-add/differentiator features, and long shots? How would you engineer these given this view? Would you put more rigour around networks and error case handling for horizon 1 versus 3 for example?(Oliver Jones)

Crossing the chasm & related HBR article : https://hbr.org/2007/07/to-succeed-in-the-long-term-focus-on-the-middle-term (Nish Mohanty and others)