I had the pleasure of spending yesterday at the Leading Edge Forum event in London, listening to some of my research peers, leading figures from the world of technology, and others, about the need for organisations to build up new capabilities to cope with both "Big D" ("Uber-esque") and "Little d" (self, from within) disruption. … Continue reading Curiouser and curiouser
Category: Digital Architecture
Back at the beginning of 2014 I wrote a handful of articles exploring a simple model for making decisions about where to put effort and investment into things digital that I termed "Digital Architecture". Nearly two years on, I thought it worth revisiting the technique as I have had quite a number of opportunities now … Continue reading Digital Architecture revisited
"So what's the difference between IT and Digital?" That's a heck of a googly to receive at the end of a 90 minutes workshop. (For American readers, a googly in cricket is what a curveball is in baseball, but we Brits don't play baseball. We play rounders. When we are seven.) Anyway, an interesting question, … Continue reading IT vs Digital
To finish off this short series about the Digital Architecture framework, let's take a look at what we can learn and infer by looking across, and up and down, the quadrants. The functions and services that span across the top two quadrants are the way in which businesses differentiate themselves (unless, of course, you … Continue reading Digital Architecture: the rows and columns
The final quadrant of the Digital Architecture framework is the one which I believe poses most challenge to traditional models of management of technology (and maybe even management of people) in businesses today. The external-facing supporting activities that, for the most part, boil down to how we communicate with other people. For many years, this … Continue reading Digital Architecture: Comms services
Continuing the tour around the quadrants, we come to the external-facing, core product-related activities that a business conducts. This is the area in which there has probably been the greatest change in the past decade as a result of digital technologies - first with the Web, and latterly with smartphones, tablets and the world of … Continue reading Digital Architecture: Product services
One of the things that I was told in my two years of working in the software supplier world was that "there are only two sorts of people; those who make products and those who sell products". As on the day I heard it, I still believe that there is a one word, Anglo-Saxon retort … Continue reading Digital architecture: Production services
In my last post I introduce a simple 2x2 matrix that can help to classify services within an organisation to help make sense of how digital technologies impact and can be managed effectively. We'll now look at each of the four quadrants in turn, starting with the Support services. These internal business functions, processes, departments … Continue reading Digital Architecture: Support Services
The two-by-two matrix is the stock-in-trade of the management consulting industry. There's a reason for that - they are generally pretty useful, and help to put a bit of classification onto things that helps conversations about what to do next. As mentioned in my previous post, there are a number of technology architecture frameworks that … Continue reading A framework for Digital Architecture
Update - November 2015 - I've recently revised the Digital Architecture model Just before the Christmas break I wrote an article that explained why I think we are entering a new phase for technology where everyone needs to be able to understand something of the architecture of technology within the businesses they operate to make … Continue reading Becoming a digital architect
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