You might wonder what Iterate's transformation has to do with the enterprise transformations that are the subject of this book. There is nothing in Iterate's story about Monoliths or Microservices or agile practices—but these are not the essence of a transformation. As this book points out, a transformation begins with the articulation of a new and innovative business strategy, one that provides real, differentiated value to a market. The pursuit of that strategy will be a long and challenging journey, requiring excellent people, deep thinking, and plenty of learning along the way. For those who are starting out on such a transformation, this book provides a lot of thinking tools for your journey.
For example, as you head in a new direction, you probably do not want to blow up the structures that brought your current success, however outmoded they might be. You need that old Big Ball of Mud Monolith (or consulting services) to fund your transition.
Another example: The first thing you want to consider is the right architecture for your new business model, and it probably won't be the same as the old one. Just as Iterate moved from having a pool of consultants to having clearly distinct venture teams, you will probably want to structure your new architecture to fit the domain it operates in. This usually means clarifying the business capabilities that fit the new strategy and structuring complete teams around these capabilities. So instead of having a layered architecture, you are likely to want one based on the natural components and subcomponents of your product (also known as Bounded Contexts).
Think of SpaceX: The architecture of a launch vehicle is determined by its components—first stage (which contains nine Merlin engines, a long fuselage, and some landing legs), interstage, second stage, and payload. Teams are not formed around engineering disciplines (e.g., materials engineering, structural engineering, software engineering), but rather around components and subcomponents. This gives each team a clear responsibility and set of constraints: Teams are expected to understand and accomplish the job their component must do to ensure the next launch is successful.
As you clarify the product architecture in your new strategy, you will probably want to create an organization that matches this architecture because, as the authors point out, you can't violate Conway's Law any more than you can violate the law of gravity. The heart of this book is a large set of thinking tools that will help you design a new architecture (quite possibly a modular Monolith to begin with) and the organization needed to support that architecture. The book then offers ways to gradually move from your existing architecture toward the new one, as well as presents ideas about when and how you might want to spin off appropriate services.
Over time, Iterate learned that successful ventures have three things in common:
- Good market timing
- Team cohesion
- Technical excellence
Market timing requires patience; organizations that think transformations are about new processes or data structures tend to be impatient and generally get this wrong. Transformations are about creating an environment in which innovation can flourish to create new, differentiated offerings and bring them to market at the right time.
The second element of success, team cohesion, comes from allowing the capabilities being developed (the Bounded Contexts) and the relevant team members to evolve over time, until the right combination of people and offering emerges.
The third element, technical excellence, is rooted in a deep respect for the technical complexity of software. This book will help you appreciate the complexity of your existing system and future versions of that system, as well as the challenge of evolving from one to the other.
The Iterate story contains a final caution: Your transition will not be easy. Iterate had to figure out how to meld a consulting pool with venture teams in such a way that everyone felt valuable and was committed to the organization's overall success. This is something that every organization will struggle with as it goes through a transition. There is no formula for success other than the one offered in this book: highly skilled people, deep thinking, and constant experimentation.
There is no silver bullet.