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
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
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
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
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)
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)
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
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
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)
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!
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
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
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“
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)
organisation EA unchained - Building an agile IT landscape for product development 19 Architecture Principals Maturity Models Integrated EA Tool self-service processes
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
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
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
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
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
development 29 Gunnar Kiesel Teamlead Architecture & Information Security Hermes Germany GmbH Essener Strasse 89 22419 Hamburg [email protected] This presentation and more https://speakerdeck.com/hermes/