Sociotechnical Architecture as Enabler of Product Thinking

Product thinking has been growing as a philosophy and approach to build software products and the organizations around. The goal is to be user-centric on the product discovery and delivery and with that create better systems to maximize the value exchange with the customers. This all sounds nice, however how can we achieve that, namely: how can we setup an organization (and teams) and also a technical architecture to support that? In this talk I motivate that in order to achieve those goals we should consider a Sociotechnical Architecture approach. This systems thinking approach enables us to have a more holistic strategy on optimizing the "system of systems" involved in the product development activities. By adopting such an approach (instead of "simplistic" and "siloed" approaches) we enable considering all the different systems and their interrelations to maximize the overall goal of implementing product thinking vision: bring the "right things" to customer at high-velocity.

More on this topic on: https://esilva.net/sociotechnical

Transcript

1. @emgsilva esilva.net Sociotechnical Architecture as enabler of Product Thinking Eduardo da Silva (Principal Tech Lead @ bol.com) @emgsilva | emgsilva@gmail.com | esilva.net
2. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Continuous Learning Loop Product-led Org (Service) Product Product Thinking: customer-centric product discovery & delivery
3. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software."
4. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Product Thinking: customer-centric product discovery & delivery =>End Goal: To Maximize the Value Exchange with Customer Value Exchange Value $$$ Product-led Org (Service) Product
5. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Now… How can we “maximize the value exchange with customer” (continuously + high velocity + ...) Value Exchange Value $$$ Product-led Org (Service) Product
6. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva LEt’s talk about Restaurants... ...some traits to make “Great Restaurants” (products)
7. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Trait 1: Your staff defines The Restaurant cooking and experiences If you want an amazing French food and drink experience you need to have French chefs and French wine experts; and they have to work together to come up with great combinations Your teams and org shapes your product
8. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Trait 2: Chefs cannot cook, serve the food and do the dishes at the same time... If you want to run your restaurant smoothly and have a strong team for a long time, you need to have enough people and skill to support the different tasks without having people “burning out” (or leaving) Your teams must have the right conditions to build the product for your customer
9. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Trait 3: Kitchen + Serving + Wine + ... = Restaurant Your restaurant has different parts and people working on them (in parallel); however, you want to understand and optimize how it all comes together in order to maximize your “product” (value to customer) Your product is the combination of different value streams, owned by different teams in the organization but aligned to maximize value for customer
10. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Trait 4: don’t hand recipes to your chefs… Empower them to discover new recipes Do you want to achieve unique experiences (and value exchange) for your customers? Then enable your crew to "experiment & discover" how to maximize that! Your teams discovers (with the customer) what are the best things to build in the product to maximize the value exchange
11. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva product thinking goals cannot be achieve by just looking at the “What”, we must also look at “Who” and “How” systems (Service) Product “What” enables maximize Value Exchange Value $$$ Who is doing this? (Teams) How are we doing it? (Product)
12. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Sociotechnical Systems view & architecture approach
13. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Sociotechnical Architecture is an Enabler of Product Thinking Remember the restaurant traits... 1: Your teams shapes your product 2: Your teams must have the right conditions to build the product for your customer 3: Your product is the combination of different value streams, owned by different teams in the organization but aligned to maximize value for customer 4: Your teams discovers (with the customer) what are the best things to build in the product to maximize the value exchange
14. @emgsilva esilva.net @emgsilva Thank you! More on this in: esilva.net/sociotechnical github.com/ddd-crew/ddd-starter-modelling-process @emgsilva | esilva.net | emgilva@gmail.com (ping me for advising/consulting/talks on this topic)