EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development

* Integrating tools and technologies across departments to support agile service development
* Re-designing the existing system to increase scalability and flexibility to meet business needs, customer demands and market trends

1. EA unchained Building an agile IT landscape for product development Gunnar Kiesel, Amsterdam, September 2023 EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 1
2. Hermes 3 Up to 11,000 delivery drivers deliver for Hermes. Up to 2.5 million deliveries per day. Hermes is the market leader in the large piece segment in Germany and the No. 2 in the B2C parcel delivery. > 45,000 collection points throughout Europe. > 500 active IT applications. The Hermes Group employs 18,255 people worldwide. 350 employees in IT. Over 16,500 Hermes ParcelShops throughout Germany. EUR 2.54 billion was the total turnover of the Hermes Group in the 2020/21 financial year. EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development
3. • cross functional product teams (BizDevOps) • capability oriented, small scale design (microservices) • cloud platform • continuous deployment • multiple productive deployments per day possible • rapid development of independent products • idea to market in a few weeks or even days EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 4 Rapid Software Product Development @ Hermes
4. Tedious Logistic Product Development @ Hermes EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 5 • complex IT landscape • high change frequency • lots of data interchange • some legacy systems • long, undocumented, interface chains • Conways Law applies • if changes to business products require change multiple business areas, multiple software products will be affected • each dependency between the software products increases time to market
5. „We‘re good at developing software products rapidly, but struggle with changes that effect multiple business areas“ EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 6
6. What is required to speed up change in a complex landscape? EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 7 • transparency • a thorough understanding of the landscape • design for change • constant change as a base concept for the IT landscape • tools • bring Enterprise Architecture ideas to life in an agile organisation • (a business culture that supports change)
7. What is required to speed up change in a complex landscape? EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 8 • transparency • a thorough understanding of the landscape • design for change • constant change as a base concept for the IT landscape • tools • bring Enterprise Architecture ideas to life in an agile organisation • (a business culture that supports change)
8. Transparency through Crowd Sourcing EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 9 • former dedicated roles now part of product teams • change in many places at once • many participants require knowledge • many need to contribute knowledge • information about the IT landscape must be available AND editable for anyone in the company
9. Transparency through Crowd Sourcing EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 10 unique logins / week At Hermes we have established LeanIX as an information exchange tool for everyone.
10. Transparency through integration EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 11 • crowd sourcing requires a lot of effort • other disciplines have invested in new tools as well • EAM can utilize this • integrations often require additional code • automatic tool integration delivers a high ROI
11. Transparency through integration 12 EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development
12. What is required to speed up change in a complex landscape? EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 13 • transparency • a thorough understanding of the landscape • design for change • constant change as a base concept for the IT landscape • tools • bring Enterprise Architecture ideas to life in an agile organisation • (a business culture that supports change)
13. An IT landscape designed for change EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 14 • business oriented • the landscape is aligned to business capabilities • small, self-sufficient elements • solutions are small, but can fulfill a business task by themselves • information from the source • information is not handed down through communication chains • don’t command – inform! • relay important results to whom it may concern • decouple!
14. Legacy Design EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 15 E-Commerce Client Order Management Logistic Center System Scanner- Interface Scanner- Backend Scanner- App • information handed down the value chain • communication in form of commands • change effects reach far and are often unknown • end-to-end communication is slow • resilience risk
15. • communication based on key business events • events describe what happened, not what should happen next • publish/subscribe pattern enables loosely coupled 1:n interfaces • standardized message formats facilitate information sharing • Event Driven Architecture supports direct information flows and decoupling EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 16 Redesign: Event Driven Architecture 22:47 - shipment arrival forecast for Friday 8- 10am 9:23 - parcel delivered at 9:23am to address XYZ
16. • enable change • asynchronous communication • obtain information at the source • change the way information is transmitted EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 17 Design for Change E-Commerce Client Order Management Transshipment Last Mile Disposition Last Mile Scanner „Info- Pool“
17. What is required to speed up change in a complex landscape? EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 18 • transparency • a thorough understanding of the landscape • design for change • constant change as a base concept for the IT landscape • tools • bring Enterprise Architecture ideas to life in an agile organisation • (a business culture that supports change)
18. Tools to bring Enterprise Architecture ideas alive in an agile organisation EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 19 Architecture Principals Maturity Models Integrated EA Tool self-service processes
19. EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 20 Architecture Principals as targets • Architecture Principles aren‘t new • now adress a wider ranger of stakeholders • targets instead of quality gates • must support decisions Architecture principles define the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise. They reflect a level of consensus among the various elements of the enterprise, and form the basis for making future IT decisions. TOGAF 9.1
20. EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 21 • can be used as target description • allow differentiation • can be more specific than principals • offer guidance by showing the next step to take • can be applied to a wide range of topics • make progress measurable Maturity Models
21. Use Case: Resilience EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 22 Maturity Model „Resilient Application“ Scorecard
22. Integrated EA Tool 23 EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development
23. Use Case: Utilizing PaaS/SaaS instead of IaaS EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 24 Cloud Product to Applications Application to Cloud Products Usage of Cloud Types
24. Digital self-service processes for a guided usage of platforms EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 25 All business events and objects are governed by a single business capability and respective applications. All business events and objects are available to all stakeholders in well defined formats. Architecture Principals Apache Kafka as Infrastructure
25. Use Case: Guided self-service access to Kafka EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 26 Kafka self-service software that supports our architectural approach while delivering value to DevOps teams. • Event registry with schema compatibility • Automated interface documentation (e.g. in LeanIX) • Audited assignment of rights • DevOps Teams are steered to EDA • No (manual) quality gates • Configuration and usage support • Self-service access to Kafka • Staging support
26. Use Case: Guided self-service access to Kafka EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 27 Development of Kafka Event Interfaces @ Hermes Germany
27. EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 28 Summary • agile software products are not enough, agile business products are required • to bring agility to the next level, we need… • transparency on the IT landscape • a landscape designed for change (e.g. by an EDA) • tools suited to agile organizations • a business culture that supports change • Enterprise Architects can bring ideas to life in an agile organization by using… • crowd sourcing and automated integration for transparency • architecture principals, maturity models and tools (software) for guided self-service
28. EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 29 Gunnar Kiesel Teamlead Architecture & Information Security Hermes Germany GmbH Essener Strasse 89 22419 Hamburg gunnar.kiesel@hermesworld.com This presentation and more https://speakerdeck.com/hermes/