Chapter 6. Starting the Conversation

We’ve covered many topics in this book. We started by exploring the IT complexity dilemma, describing how the decisions IT teams make can impact the complexity of an application, which in turn can impact the cost and the organization’s ability to be agile and take advantage of industry developments.

We then discussed how to assess your organization and your products to understand what they are composed of and how those parts work together.

Then we looked at how adaptive architectures can give you agility in making decisions when used appropriately, taking care that they do not inadvertently add complexity and fragility.

Next, we discussed managing knowledge. How can you organize the information required to keep a modern application working correctly without contributing to system complexity or increasing system vulnerability?

Finally, we talked about innovation and showed how and where your investments in your organization can affect it. Will an investment positively disrupt your business? Will it simply enable the business to keep moving forward? Will it have a positive or negative overall impact?

All of this discussion was centered on one overriding concept: how do you create and encourage organizational change to improve your application and your organization? These are the kinds of questions you need to ask: Can you modify the course of your product or company to enable increased innovation? Can you drive disruption in your industry as you move forward? What do you need to do now to prevent your organization from falling into the trap, as described in Chapter 1, of becoming either fragile or rigid over time? Figure 6-1 recalls this danger.

Figure 6-1. An agile organization may fail over time by becoming either rigid or fragile

To drive the desired changes in your organization and your product(s), you must start the conversation about the necessary transformation.

This may seem easier for a CEO, CFO, COO, or other CxO in your company to do than it is for you. But change does not have to start at the top. It can start at the bottom or in the middle. In fact, meaningful change, such as the type that may be required for your organization to take advantage of many of the concepts in this book, may be harder to drive from the top down or the bottom up. It may be easier to drive from the middle out.

Why is that? Because driving the sort of change you need to get the outcomes you desire for your product offerings requires a few things:

• Knowledge and expertise about the products and their position in the industry. This requires an understanding of both the code and technology of the products and what the products do for your customers and the industry at large.

• Knowledge and expertise about the customers who are using the products and/or the prospective customers your company wants to use your products.

• Knowledge and expertise about how the business is currently being operated and what changes might be needed organizationally.

This is very broad knowledge, and it’s typically the type of knowledge required by an effective mid-level manager or executive. Any lower in the organization, and you likely won’t have the business operational knowledge; any higher in the organization, and you’ll likely lose the required connection with the product and technology details.

So, as a mid-level manager or executive, you are in fact in the perfect position to influence the types of changes described in this book.

But how do you begin the conversations? Start with a very high-level audit of the product and organization—the type of high-level adaptive assessment described in Chapter 2. Then assess how your organization is operating with respect to the structures and issues discussed in Chapter 1. How serious a complexity dilemma might you be facing? Are you deep in complexity or are you just brushing the surface? Are you already a fragile or rigid organization, or might that be in your future if you are not careful? Are you currently facing IT death or can you imagine a day when that might become a concern?

Document your findings as you go. Then, using this documentation, begin the conversation both up and down the organization. Moving down through the organization, focus on the impact of complexity and a lack of innovation. Talk about the value of adaptive architectures and knowledge management. Moving up through the organization, focus on the business costs of IT death, and how the opposing forces of complexity and agility affect how you can grow the organization. Focus on how these concepts impact the organization as a whole.

Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, these conversations may be simple or hard, and they may be well received or fall on deaf ears. But, sooner or later, they will begin to sink in, whether because they make sense to the right individuals in the organization or because some event or situation occurs that forces their recognition. Either way, this will be the moment when you can push for the changes you see as necessary to help your organization move forward.

Finally, continue to grow and learn. This book is just a starting point in your journey. Check out other books, articles, courses, and interviews by the author at leeatchison.com. Also take a look at the many other great books and courses offered by O’Reilly Media online, and the books Cracking Complexity Now by David Komlos and David Benjamin (Nicholas Brealey) and It’s Not Complicated by Rick Nason (Rotman-UTP).

This is a challenge. It may appear to be an insurmountable challenge, but remember the techniques discussed in Chapter 2 for conducting an audit. You don’t have to be perfect to be good. And to be good, you just need to start.