1.
Architect as Strategist
Eben HewittEben.Hewitt@gmail.com
Software Architecture Conference, New York City 2018
Patterns for creating and communicating your technology strategy

2.
this is water

3.
xerox

4.
you

5.
meEben.Hewitt@gmail.com

6.
the paperclip maximizer

7.
The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you.
But you are made out of atoms which it can
use for something else.
—Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a
Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk

8.
Strategy Patterns for architects & tech leaders

9.
We cannot create the right
technology strategy if we
think like technologists.

10.
…we would make what would appear as
merely a Shopping List of Shiny Objects

11.
This is about 1) how to make a technology strategy that’s right for
the business, using tools from business strategy consulting

12.
Even if we made the perfect technology strategy, how would the deciders know? Would
they believe it? Would they want it? This is also about 2) communicating it so they do.

13.
It’s about the secret to happiness in life

14.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 500BC
Strategy is the art of
making use of time
and space

15.
--Jomini, Switzerland, Art of War, 1803
Strategy decides where to act;
logistics brings the troops to this point;
tactics decides the manner of execution

16.
--Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History, Oxford
Strategy is about getting more power than
the starting position would suggest.
Strategy is the art of creating power.

17.
Strategy is about determining a balance between
ends, ways, and means: identifying objectives, and
the resources and methods available to meet them.
--Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History, Oxford

18.
Strategy enables
understanding
your landscape,
systems,
organization,
competitors, and
customers

19.
• Are resources devoted to
the right areas, to the most
important customers?
• Are we creating products
and services that can thrive
in a market in different time
horizons?
• Where should we spend
money? Where should we
cut costs?

20.
Where do skills need
to be added or
strengthened?
Where can productivity
be improved?
What culture, attitude
& skills are required?

21.
Architecture comprises the set of strategic
and technical models that create a context for
position (capabilities),
velocity (directedness, ability to adjust), and
potential (relations),
at the intersection of business and
technology.

22.
1: Non-Functional Requirements
• Availability, Scalability, Interoperability, Extensibility,
Maintainability, Monitorability, Manageability, Testability,
Security, Performance
• In a formal document, state the metrics, do the math to show
how each is supported
• Concerned with where data center boundaries are crossed,
where system components cross, which means protocols, data
formats

23.
You can never try to escape one danger
without encountering another. Prudence
consists in recognizing the different dangers
and in accepting the least bad as good
--Machiavelli, The Art of War
2: Making Trade-offs
Any trade-off eventually reduces to a trade-off of time & money

24.
“The man who invented the ship
also invented the ship wreck”
--Paul Virilio

25.
3: Containing Entropy
Stating a vision around which to rally,
showing a path in a roadmap,
garnering support for that vision through
communication of guidelines, standards,
creating clarity to ensure efficiency of execution
and that you’re doing the right things and doing
things right

26.
Business Objectives Should Be Directly
Supported by the Tech Strategy
• Grow shareholder value
• Grow earnings per share
• Increase revenue
• Manage costs
• Diversify or create new revenue
streams
• Cross-sell more products
• Increase market share
• Increase share of wallet
• Improve customer retention
• Reduce product error/defect
rates
• Improve safety
• Improve time to market/speed of
operations
• Grow through acquisition

27.
Part 1: Strategic Analysis Patterns

28.
World
Industry
The Strategic Analysis Patterns Architecture
Five
Forces
Company/Business Unit
MECE
Dept/Portfolio
APM
Process
Posture Map
SWOT Value Chain
Life Cycle
Stage
Ansoff
Growth
Matrix
Strategic
Feedback
Loop
7S
Futures
Funnel
Principles,
Practices, Tools
Scenario
Planning
PESTEL

29.
MECE
• Suits of Cards
• Seasons
• Profit = Revenue – Cost
• Should I buy this software package?
• (Technical Factors, Non-Technical Factors)
• Summarize lots of data
• Force thinking in sets
• Help arrive at the optimum arrangement of information:
• Includes everything
• Does not double count at any level of the hierarchy

30.
PESTEL
• Industry-specific
• What actions do the current Political, Economic, Social,
Technological, Environmental and Legal climates suggest?
• Here you are only stating facts. Use as many data points as you can,
and raw data. This shows your starting context so they can trace your
argument.
• Then make Recommendations: “Diversify product features
represent a variety of customer payment schedules, refresh
cycles, length of sales cycles and offer a variety of
pricing/payment models to absorb sudden fluctuations in
broader economy to improve our resilience posture”.

31.
Political ex.
• Direct Travel & Tourism GDP growth is expected to accelerate
to 3.8%, up from 3.1% in 2016, making a strong foundation
• Government bans and restrictions on travel, burdensome visa
restrictions, prolonged labor stoppages or political unrest
• As nations seem to be looking increasingly inward, putting in
place barriers to trade and movement of people, the role of
Travel & Tourism becomes even more significant

32.
Economic ex.
• Travel & Tourism investment in 2016 was USD 806.5B, or 4.4%
of total investment. It should rise by 4.1% in 2017, and rise by
4.5% pa over the next ten years to USD 1.3T in 2027
• Fluctuations in the US dollar, Euro, and other foreign currencies
can create sudden pockets of places where travel unpredictably
becomes undesirable for a period of months
• Introduction of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could require
additional infrastructure if it enters mainstream for payments
• Millennials save at a higher rate than other generations

33.
Social Ex.
• Working trends such as work from home, telecommuting, video
conferencing replacing business travel can act as substitutes
• Threats of terrorism hurt travel to unpredictable specific places
for short periods
• Ratings/reviews continue as strong currency. Millennials love
rating and reviewing, and they trust reviews and user-generated
content more than any other demographic. Expect more
qualitative ratings for content within apps and social media, and
newsfeed algorithms that sort and display content based on
those ratings

34.
Technological Ex.
• Software industry now focusing on 1) Internet of Things, 2) Artificial
Intelligence 3) Virtual Reality
• The “cloud wars” have moved from competing on storage & compute
to competing on cognitive capabilities, as witnessed by DSaaS &
MLaaS, the willingness to open-source previously differentiating
tools such as Kubernetes and Mesos
• Self-driving cars could mean fewer people need to stop for the night
• There are now more than 5 billion unique mobile users around the
world = 67% of the world’s total population now using a mobile
device
• In China, with the latest figures from Tencent indicating that more
than 870 million people in the country now use Weixin, the platform
known as WeChat in the English-speaking world.

35.
Environmental Ex.
Scarcity of raw materials, pollution targets
Carbon footprint targets set by governments
Millennials more interested in doing business with ethical and
sustainable companies

36.
Legal Ex.
GDPR, other European data regulations
Franchise “co-employer” law suits
ADA compliance
Industry-specific laws that might change your business or
technology sourcing abilities

37.
Porter’s Five Forces

38.
5 Forces: Threat of New Entrants
• The existence of barriers to entry (patents, rights, etc.). The most attractive segment is one in which entry
barriers are high and exit barriers are low. High barriers to entry also almost always make exit more difficult.
• Switching costs
• Access to distribution channels
• Government policy
• Capital requirements
• Absolute cost
• Cost disadvantages independent of size
• Economies of scale
• Product differentiation
• Brand equity
• Expected retaliation
• Customer loyalty to established brands
• Industry profitability (the more profitable the industry, the more attractive it will be to new competitors)

39.
5 Forces: Threat of Substitutes
• Ease of substitution
• Perceived level of product differentiation
• Number of substitute products available in the market
• Availability of close substitute
• Buyer propensity to substitute
• Relative price performance of substitute
• Buyer's switching costs

40.
5 Forces: Bargaining Power of Customers
• Degree of dependency upon existing distribution channels
• Bargaining leverage, particularly in industries with high fixed
costs
• Buyer switching costs
• Buyer information availability
• Availability of existing substitute products
• Buyer price sensitivity

41.
5 Forces: Bargaining Power of Suppliers
• Employee solidarity (e.g. labor unions)
• Degree of differentiation of inputs
• Impact of inputs on cost and differentiation
• Presence of substitute inputs
• Strength of distribution channel
• Supplier concentration to firm concentration ratio
• Supplier switching costs relative to firm switching costs

42.
5 Forces: Industry Rivalry
• Sustainable competitive advantage through innovation
• Powerful competitive strategy
• Competition between online and offline companies
• Level of advertising expense
• Firm concentration ratio
• Degree of transparency

43.
How to Use the Five Forces
• Make a slide for each Force, and list how the company is
positioned within each force.
• Then make your Claim regarding how an aspect of your
proposed technology solution or direction supports or defends
against that. How do these circumstances inform your
technology strategy?
• For each of the threats, state in red, yellow, green if the threat
seems high, medium, low
• In a conclusion slide, make recommendations on business
strategies, technology strategies

44.
Porter’s Value Chain Analysis

45.
Using Value Chain Analysis

46.
Life Cycle Stage
Value
0
50
100
150
Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline
End of Life
Value
Value

47.
Ansoff Growth Matrix
Current New
NewCurrent
Market
Products
Diversification
Strategy:
Develop new
products in new
markets
Product
Development
Strategy:
Develop new
products in current
markets
Market Penetration
Strategy:
Gain market share
with current
products in current
markets
Market
Development
Strategy:
Develop new
markets for current
products

48.
SWOT Helpful Harmful
InternalExternal
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item

49.
People, Process Technology Map
• Must look at all three in any analysis
• People
• Use a 9 Box
• Process
• List all your processes out in categories
• Assign a current posture for each process
• Not all will be central to your strategy. The ones that need work might
have a technology solution or gap, or at least might help explain why
something is broken but you’re not addressing it.

50.
Process Map

51.
Process Detail

52.
Process Posture Assessment

53.
Application Portfolio Management
• Make a new product in same market
• Make a new product in new marketCreate
• Spend to grow this existing product to maintain
positionInvest
• Salvage this damaged product
• Spend on architecture or featuresRemediate
• Phase this product out, ramp down investment
• Plan for migrationRetire

54.
• Item (Cash cows, necessities)
• Item (Dogs to retire, product possibilities to stop
considering)
• Item (Wildcards to Prototype)
What products are
possible?
APM: Alternate Simplified View
What products should
be ‘just good enough’?
What do we not do?
What products are
best-bets?
• Item (Leaders to Invest in)

55.
Futures Funnel

56.
Scenario Planning
• This helps you understand the business future so you can best map your
strategy to it. You can do this regarding the business itself, or regarding
your technology world alone.
• Scenario Interviews: get stakeholders and interview them individually to
determine what matters to them, where they think the business is going,
why. What is happening to customers and competitors?
• Identify the critical uncertainties and issues to address in the workshop.
• Develop Scenarios in Workshop: identify several significantly different
possible outcomes and the forces that could lead to those. Consider how
those forces are linked and if they have a low or high probability and low or
high impact. Then the team can develop the potential histories that lead to
those opposing outcomes.
• Make a Plan: what actions can decision makers take now.
• Make a recommendation using Ghost Deck.

57.
Principles, Practices, Tools
• What we Build (Principles / Tenets)
• How we build it (Practices)
• What we build it with (Tools)
• How we know it works (Metrics)
• Put it in a spreadsheet to spawn remediation projects & improve
alignment
• Then show it in a Sankey Diagram

58.
Meta-Pattern: Current State Assessment
 Frame only the Problems
 Collect data
 Consider business readiness, application, data, infrastructure
 Use Lifecycle Stage
 Use Value Chain Assessment
 Categorize/cross-reference lists into People/Process/Tech
 Determine business/tech owners as the RACI A & R
 Score on 2 axes: Ease of Implementation & Impact
 Plot a bubble chart
 Repeat with Opportunities
 Focusing only on problems maintains the status quo

59.
Strategic Feedback Loop

60.
McKinsey 7S
• ActionStructure
• ActionStrategy
• ActionSystem
• ActionShared Value
• ActionStaff
• ActionStyle
• ActionSkill
3 “Hard” S
4 “Soft” S

61.
McKinsey 7S Matrix
Structure Strategy System Shared
Value
Staff Style Skill
Structure ----------------
Strategy ----------------
System ----------------
Shared
Value
----------------
Staff ----------------
Style ----------------
Skill ----------------
Use this matrix to check alignment of each item against each other item to see where you need focus,
which ones support the others, where you need to make changes.

62.
World
Industry
The Strategic Analysis Patterns Architecture
Five
Forces
Company/Business Unit
MECE
Dept/Portfolio
APM
Process
Posture Map
SWOT Value Chain
Life Cycle
Stage
Ansoff
Growth
Matrix
Strategic
Feedback
Loop
7S
Futures
Funnel
Principles,
Practices, Tools
Scenario
Planning
PESTEL

63.
Part 2: Strategic Communication Patterns

64.
Communications Strategic Patterns Summary
• Rented Brain
• Strategy Map
• Stakeholder Map
• Decision Framework
• Technology Radar
• Use Case Map
• Directional Costing
• Ars Rhetorica
• Ghost Deck
• Ask Deck
• Good/Better/Best
• Fait Accompli
• Dramatic Structure
• Roadmap
• Tactical Plan

65.
Rented Brain
Speak truth to power by acting as if you were a consultant who
isn’t an employee.
If your arguments have structure, you will help drive success

66.
Strategy Map
Mission Statement
Vision Statement
Strategic Goal 1 Strategic Goal 2 Strategic Goal 4Strategic Goal 3
Initiative 1
Initiative 2
Initiative 3
Initiative 1
Initiative 2
Initiative 3
Initiative 1
Initiative 2
Initiative 3
Initiative 1
Initiative 2
Initiative 3
Summarize your strategy in one slide. Then break it down on subsequent pages

67.
Stakeholder Map
• You need to know how decisions get made, who makes them, and
figure it out quickly in order to get people on board before the
meeting and know whom to invite to the meeting.
• Interview people from sales, strategy, product, developers,
marketing, leadership to get their input into your strategy so it’s 1) a
better more holistic plan and 2) theirs too and they’ll agree to it
because they see themselves reflected.
• List the stakeholders who are internal and external to your business
unit and your company. List the functions, the roles, the names.
• Those external stakeholders might be customers, patients, auditors,
patrons, purchasers.
• Once you make this you can assign roles in RAPID and RACI.

68.
Decision Framework

69.
Technology Radar
The process of strategy evolves through a series of states, each
one not quite what was anticipated or hoped for, requiring a
reappraisal and modification of the original strategy, including
objectives. It evolves.
–Strategy: A History

70.
https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/byor

71.
Use Case Map
• For the use case breakdown of what you want to do, show
• what the business benefit is
• The Features: what they get
• The Data Components required
• The System components required to build it
• The Customer success measure

72.
Use Case Map ex.

73.
Directional Costing
•What’s the cost of a sprint?

74.
Directional Costing 2
• Oh, and this all assumes that there is no delivery cost, no
documentation to write, no marketing, no customer training, no
communications to do, which there likely would be all of those if what
you’re doing matters. Throw those in and you’re around $5M. But no
one expects you to do that, usually because they’re paid out of other
cost centers.
• There is labor in the operations team now. What about the DBAs and
the GNOC and the networking folks? Maybe it’s a month for a couple
of them so that’s another $50 grand.
• Oh, and this all assumes that the day your thing goes live, you’re
done. The project is over for you and so you close up shop and it’s
all free. What about the ongoing run costs?

75.
Ars Rhetorica
• Ethos or the ethical appeal, means to convince an audience of
the author’s credibility or character. You show that you know
what you are talking about, that you are the right person to
make this recommendation because of your experience.
• Pathos or the emotional appeal, means to persuade an
audience by appealing to their emotions.
• Logos or the appeal to logic, means to convince an audience by
use of logic or reason. Include data, charts, statistics, trends,
facts.

76.
Ghost Deck
• Start at the end, with the claim that is your insight/conclusion
which you will unpack the long math for
• Put it first
• Create empty slides for your outline, which is an argument for
your strategy
• Add the headlines only that you will have to fill in
• End with the Ask
• “Therefore, Executive: You do this (my tech strategy which follows)”
• Now your team can work on gathering data, filling in the
arguments in parallel

77.
Ask Deck
• Context
• Exposition: Executive Summary
• Imperil the Hero: Book of Job
• Statement: show how we are in bad shape or how there is a new opportunity
• X number of P1, P2, P3 contributed to Y amount of downtime YTD
• Trend P1, P2, P3 totals up X% over past 3 years
• Identified 60 items of technical debt
• Identified the 12 most impactful
• Save the Hero: the Path Forward Vision
• Roadmap
• How long will it take?
• How much will it cost?
• Who will do the work?
• Ask for Decision
• Appendix: Show Your Homework
• Use strategy patterns herein

78.
Dramatic Structure
• In dramatic structure as outlined by Aristotle in The
Poetics, there are two parts to a play:
• Reversal throws the action in new direction
• Recognition means the protagonist has an important
revelation

79.
Dramatic Structure: Chekov’s Gun
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the
following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there”

80.
Dramatic Structure: MacGuffin
The thing the spies are after
but the audience doesn’t
care about.
It’s super important but not
revealed or emphasized.

81.
Shock & Awe/Book of Job
• Shock and Awe was a military tactic designed in 1996.
• Its goal is to paralyze the will of the adversary to fight: overload
an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events such
that the enemy would be incapable of resistance
• For us, it is a metaphor for a show of decisive force such that a
decision point of the executive is required, by you making clear
the need for swift action, using the Scope & Forcefulness of
your argument.

82.
Fait accompli
• Make sure there is a decision meeting and everyone knows
what it is
• Chat up the people in the decision meeting before hand to hear
their concerns, determine if they are on board
• Have the meeting in little individual meetings with each
stakeholder leading up to the ‘real’ meeting so it’s already done
by then

83.
Good/Better/Best Recommendation
• Create three options, each with different scope and cost and
time and outcome (what they get)
• Be clear on each of those: make it a menu
• Be sure you are happy with any of the options
• This patterns gets them to choose which of your three
recommendations to do, instead of whether to say yes or no to
you
• They know things about upcoming climate or events and will
welcome the flexibility. This saves you time because you’ll end
up making options anyway if you don’t do it up front.

84.
Roadmap
Pre-Plan
Jan18 Mar18 Jul18 Oct18 Mar19 Sep19
Architecture
Dec19
Milestone 1 Milestone 3
Future State
Realized
• Item
• Item
Milestone 2
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item
• Item

85.
Tactical Plan
Category Tasks Accountable Responsible 26-Feb 5-Mar 12-Mar 19-Mar 26-Mar 2-Apr
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Item Alice Bob
Category 1
Accountable must be only one named person

86.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest
route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise
before defeat.
--Sun Tzu