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1 B. Joseph Pine, Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition, Harvard Business School Press, ISBN: 0875849466
the model. And telecommunications can create a model working from the same basic assumptions. If Marketing
that captures the ability to deliver data to a device, or and Product Management jointly decide to update the
between two devices, with mobile calls, home phone and product in a way that changes the core model, then these
VPNs mapped to the model. changes can be measured against the core meta-model
and reflected into the extended models developed for
Bringing stake holders together Operations and Finance.
Creating a meta-model for our products is just the tip of
Adding support for tandem bikes, for example, would
the iceberg though. By creating a formal definition of
require the core model to be updated to support a bike
our product we’ve formed the nucleus for a shared
with two seats and a more complex drive train. These
understanding of our product. We can use this
changes are then reflected into the Operational and
understanding to bring together stake holders across our
Finance models to determine the changes the impact of
organisation, accelerating collaboration by creating a
supporting the new model across the business. This
common product taxonomy and language.
information can be used by the stake holders as a group
to make an informed decision on the viability of the new
Bringing stake holders together
products this change enables.
Similarly, Marketing, Finance and Sales can use the
meta-model as a common point from which to determine
how much freedom Sales has is configuring and pricing
solutions for customers, providing us with a simple
Marketing Finance three-tiered approach:
1. Any solution constructed within the meta-model is
easily priced, offered to a customer, as its costs are
well known. This allows us to provide Sales with
Product complete freedom to work within the meta-model
when constructing a customer solution.
2. Solutions that require new product components—a
Product new type of wheel, for example—will incur an
Operations additional but easily quantifiable cost. A light-weight
Management approval process can be used to determine the cost
and ensure the opportunity justifies it.
3. Completely bespoke solutions—leveraging existing
and new components in the construction of a
completely custom solution—are still possible. In
this case the meta-model provides us with a toolkit to
Extending our meta-model to include departmental
simplify the design and costing of the custom
concerns, we create a common framework to share our
solution. While (potentially) expensive, a custom
understanding of the products we support. Marketing,
solution might be justified in some circumstances for
for example, might extend the core product meta-model
strategically important clients. A more onerous
to capture how products will be offered to the market,
approval process can be used to ensure that custom
showing how the product will be differentiated. Finance
solutions are only offered when the opportunity
will focus on extending the model to capture how
justifies it.
offerings will be priced and how these prices will be
associated with customers and accounts. Operations will Product meta-models provide business, sales and
extend the model to capture the detailed technical operations with a common yard stick. By measuring our
information required to configure, create and deliver the plans against this yard-stick we can ensure that
product, while Product Management will use the core conversations are grounded in fact, and drive them to
product meta-model, with input from customers and the successful and informed conclusions, enabling us to
other departments, to determine what configuration manage our complex product environment.
options should be offered.
Developing differentiation
Controlling the chaos? At a high level we can expect a product meta-model to
A product meta-model is a tool to help us manage the be common across an industry as we're all working with
complexity we typically face in taking complex products the same basic moving parts. If we’re all selling
to market. Rather than being forced to one end of the essentially the same product then we can expect our core
complexity continuum—either offering a small number product meta-models to be similar, if not the same.
of tightly constrained products to the market, or
unleashing sales to create bespoke solutions which may To establish differentiation we need to look at how we
not be profitable—we can used the product meta-model extend the core meta-model, capturing how we price our
to structure our operations, streamlining them to offerings, or how we assemble (and reassemble) our
accelerate adoption and to set the slider somewhere in products from the components through to how many
the middle, somewhere where we choose it to be. different versions of components we plans to offer.
The meta-model facilitates conversations between Extending the core meta-model forces us to answer
departments by ensuring that all stake holders are some basic questions about how we intend to manage
our business and approach the market. Pricing, for the core of their products while analysts are extolling its
example, is much broader than simply defining an ability to right many of the perceived wrongs in the
algorithm to compute a price from an inventory of current IT environment. The fine grain control of IT
product components. How much flexibility do we want provided by SOA enables a more pragmatic approach to
in setting the price? Do components have a fixed price? both technology selection and delivery. SOA is attractive
Or will they be priced via tariff table or pricing function? not because the technology itself is new—most of its
Do we want to bundle different types of products? What constituent technologies have strong heritages already. It
happens when a product is used across economic has emerged at a point in time when changes in the
borders? When and where are surcharges applied? And enterprise software environment promise to allow it to
how much flexibility do we have on deciding when to deliver where previous generations of technologies have
apply a surcharge? Are accounts tied to a business unit, a failed.
region or are they managed globally?
Combining the product meta-model with a service-
Differentiation will be captured in how granular we oriented architecture, we can create an IT estate
make different areas of our model, as more a more designed to support the business—as opposed to the
granular meta-model provides us with more flexibility existing product-facing systems that seem to work
and a greater ability to differentiate. A sophisticated against it.
approach to pricing, for example, will provide more
flexibility and a greater ability to differentiate though A more organic approach
highly customised pricing; however, it also implies The new world of SOA promises an end to the mega-
increased developed, maintenance and operational costs projects of old; allowing you to adopt a product meta-
required to support the additional complexity it brings. model and integrate it into your enterprise without
Another approach is to focus on providing a low cost launching another mega-project with its associated cost
product or service, minimising the complexity of our and risks. We can use the metaphor of city planning to
product meta-model to ensure low cost operation, but guide our approach. Paris wasn’t built in a day, and
trading off flexibility in the process. neither will be the city landscape that is your new IT
estate.
Our product meta-model, once fully developed, will
mirror our business and approach to the market. A meta- Paris started small, on an island in a river bend.
model to support low cost operation will be different to Gradually, over time, it grew into a cluster of villages.
one focused on better customer support, or providing New villages were founded then expanded until they
mass-customised products. Within this framework, could touch each other. Eventually the villages merged
business units driven by cost will seek to minimise together, forming the interconnected enterprise that Paris
complexity, while those wanting to differentiate will is today. It was an organic approach that didn’t rely on
enrich their area of the model to capture this single grand design. The population developed and re-
differentiation. developed the landscape as required, reacting to the
environment changing around them while working
We will have, in effect, taken our business strategy and toward the common goal of developing a harmonious
formalised it. We can then use this formalism to create city.
an IT environment that is explicitly aligned with our
business drivers and operation. We’re poised to deliver We can use a similar approach to manage the transition
on the much promised, but never realised, business-IT from our old project- and application-based world to a
alignment. new world founded on the twin principles of our product
meta-model and a service-oriented architecture. To do
Realising the model this we need to establish a clear, long-term plan
At this stage our product meta-model is little more than capturing our strategic goals. Then we need a joined-up
information. While this is valuable as tool to facilitate approach to IT planning and delivery that connects our
discussion, we need to operationalise the model if we strategic goals, to tactical imperatives, to the realities of
want to leverage its full potential. Rather than simply our current IT environment.
using the model as a planning tool, we want to realise it
in software, embedding it in operational systems where Capturing our strategic goals
the efficiencies provided by IT will allow us to focus on The product meta-model provides us with the starting
leveraging the model rather than managing its operation. point to capture our strategic goals. Our first step is to
take the meta-model and render it in a suitable technical
Doing this creates a significant challenge; delivering an language, creating a version of the model which can be
IT estate that is capable of realising the agility, directly supported by information technology. A
flexibility, compliance and innovation latent in the technical language, such as the Unified Modelling
product meta-model requires us to break with the Language (UML)3 , is used to capture the concepts and
problem and product centric approaches of the past. relationships expressed in the meta-model to create a
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has recently technical product meta-model.
emerged as the technology to deliver all this and more2 ,
as it promises to usher in a new wave of enterprise
development. Vendors are integrating SOA concepts into
2 Peter Evans-Greenwood, CapITalise: A game for the whole company to play, Capgemini