geordee

Products, Platforms and Protocols

In 2013, BMW and Toyota announced a joint architecture and platform for sports car. It led to two different vehicles - BMW Z4 and Toyota Supra. Essentially, the same vehicle under the hood, they remain authentic to their brand identities. Earlier, manufacturers and coalitions built platforms and shared across different models and brands. These platforms were developed over years, as long-term investments to support a wide variety of products. However, the technology, market and customer demands are changing faster these days. Advancements in material science are plateauing, and the architectures are converging. The companies then collaborate at a platform level...

Reverse Marketplaces

In 2022, we are quite familiar with the concept and convenience of marketplaces. Marketplaces help us to discover a wide range of products from multiple merchants. We read reviews, look at merchant ratings, compare prices, plan when and how to receive the shipments, and make payments through different modes. The sellers are businesses and buyers are both individuals and businesses. Typically, sellers absorb the cost of running the marketplaces. This is the pattern, which is common across all the marketplaces, whether it is B2B or B2C.

There is another important aspect of marketplaces. Marketplaces are not primarily concerned about inventory,...

Demand Driven

Traditional retail businesses are supply driven. Every retail business deal with the domain of supply chain. It makes sense when the constraints are at the supply side. Constraints in production, distribution and inventory. When we optimize the constraints in supply chain, the constraints move to the demand side. The need then arises to track, analyze and improve the demands.

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. And if you do not track it, you cannot measure it.

Let us take a brick and mortar retail business scenario. It is a classical supply driven business model. Of...

Enterprise Architecture & Economics

TOGAF describes Enterprise Architecture as a process, something to do. It optimizes the legacy of processes into an integrated environment, to support the delivery of the business strategy. It then recommends how to practice enterprise architecture, using the TOGAF framework.

There are many other definitions exist, each in increasing complexity and vagueness. Almost all of these definitions tell you what to do and how.

In the book Enterprise Architecture As A Strategy, the authors define it as a thought process.

Our use of the term refers to the high-level logic for business processes and IT capabilities. IT unit will...

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Failure Modes

Over-reinforced sections and under-reinforced sections. An over-reinforced beam fails suddenly and explosively, while an under-reinforced beam fails gradually and visibly. This has fascinated me during my college days, and I apply these principles in many ways at work.

One of the adaptations is to deliberately under-engineer the systems, which in turn shows the weak areas. For example, a system with high computing power may mask the weaknesses of software design, until it is too late.

This article is about the teams. Every team fails to deliver expected results at some point. Some failure modes are confident and silent, some are...

Evolutionary Architecture

Information and Communications Technology is an engineering discipline. Compared to other engineering disciplines, computer science and software are fairly modern. So, they end up loaning words from the more traditional disciplines. We don’t use the word architecture much in mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering. The most coveted word is design in those fields. But, when it comes to integrated circuits or information technology, we have architectures. The terms are analogous to building structures like buildings or systems like towns.

However, this analogy is a simplification of what happens in reality. While using modern approaches to software development such simplification becomes...

Data Mesh and Data Products

The progression of technology is like the oscillation of a pendulum. We see the trends swaying towards the faster, better, newer aspects of technology. Earlier we had data processing systems in every offices. One of the earlier use cases was to automate spreadsheets. Then the central offices wanted a copy of data from every branches. PCs were and common client-server computing was in vogue. When Internet took over we were back to browser-based thin clients. The branch office servers were eliminated and we have central ERPs now.

Data storage and processing are getting ever cheaper. There was a time, when...

Skills, Endurance & Performance

While starting to learn swimming, I could not even cross the short side of the pool. Once I learned the skills it became easier. Crossing the pool along the length was a distant dream.

As soon as the coach found me cross the short-side with ease, he increased the intensity. I had to return without taking a rest. The next step was to build endurance. I would say I am in this phase now. Swimming along the long side and back with a short rest.

The next phase would be performance. Hopefully, I would be improving my speed along with...

The How and The Why

Relax! the swimming coach shouted. I did not know how. I struggled to breathe, kick, pull and coordinate everything together. It was more difficult when I had to pull. I did not know why!

Then, one day the coach asked me to kick along the long side of the pull, raising my head occasionally to breathe. And I could do it with ease. At the end of the pool I was asking myself, how I crossed the pool with ease. It became clear to me that I don’t need to pull so hard to move in the water. Legs too...

Misconceptions

One day, I asked my friend to take a video of my swimming. Later we analyzed it over a coffee. We found that my right hand was quick to return and not “flying” over the water. So, next day, I fixed it. Consciously, I made my right hand do what my left hand did, except it was wrong. When the swimming coach arrived, he was wondering how I lost the technique so fast.

I was acting based on my misconceptions. It was a self-diagnosis. I was uninformed. It was damaging. Oftentimes, our actions are based on our misconceptions. Well-intentioned, potentially...