Why you might want to shift down as well as left…?

OK, for some time we've know about the potential benefits of optimising and driving efficiencies by 'shifting left'.  The term being applied to moving things earlier in a process to improve efficiency, typically by reducing the amount of work and / or people required to do a task later in the process flow

In the diagram below, if we think of a process running in stages from left to right, the more we shift tasks ‘left’, the greater the efficiency we can achieve, or at least that's the theory.  So if we're developing software, as an example, the more we can build in quality into the early stages of the development lifecycle the less downstream quality testing and subsequent rework we hopefully need to do.  Or, if we think of an Incident Management process the more we get the first level support teams to fix incidents, the fewer second and third level experts we need to dedicate time and effort to work on incidents, and so on…

NB - One thing to be cautious of in any ‘shifting’ approach is the motivation for doing it. Of course everyone acts with good intentions in any corporate environment and always looks at the holistic needs of the Organization (don’t they?), however just in case this isn’t true ‘Shift Left’ can quickly become ‘Shit Left’! The latter term so coined because often different parts of a process are owned by different teams with different budgets, in which case ‘shifting left ’is effectively making it ‘not my problem’ anymore, and the motivation for the move is not to optimisation the overall landscape or process but to save money from a particular budget or get someone else to fix a thorny problem that the original team no longer wants to deal with. So exercise some caution when employing a ‘shifting’ approach, that any move of is done with noble, holistic intentions for true optimization and not merely to optimize a part of the process or delivery by making it someone else’s problem!

So, hopefully all good so far, but how do we ‘shift down’; down to what?

To answer that, let's introduce another diagram…

In this simple diagram below we can visualize some Business Capabilities being supported by functionality and Capabilities provided by Digital Products.  These Digital Products use different Technologies and Components managed by different teams to design, build and support these Business Capabilities throughout their lifecycle. In order to provide what the customer needs each Digital Product delivers differentiated functionality through their Capabilities and Offerings (not shown in this diagram for the sake of keeping things simple!)

Hopefully this all makes sense so far... but in this model each Digital Product actually relies on some of their Components they manage to enable the functionality they ultimately provide to the customer. So in the Diagram above, Teams 2 and 4 provide and manage Capabilities within each Product that in turn enables Teams 1 and 3 to then create the functionality that is used to support the Business Capabilities

Let say in the example, each product provides Capabilities that support a Sales Process.  One Product is focused on content creation for the Sales Teams (Team 1), and one manages the content and experience for a customer portal (Team 3), but in both cases they have teams that support them in content management (Teams 2 and 4 respectively)

If we were to introduce the concept of a Platform this could help significantly to improve efficiency of the overall model and allow the two Digital Products, in the example, to focus on adding value and developing what the customer needs.  They can spend less time on the 'basics' of managing and integrating the ‘mechanics’ of content and more time on working with their respective customers, improving the experience and enhancing the Offerings and Capabilities they provide

The Platform, in this example, underpins and enables the Capabilities that are consumed by both Digital Products through the compelling Offerings that it provides; reducing unnecessary cognitive load for the Product Teams, allowing them to focus their energy on where they provide the most value.  Equally this approach reduces the amount of ‘accidental’ duplication across the Organization, in terms of the the technology Stacks used, how they are provided and by who. So instead, we can look at how best to intentionally optimize the Teams, expertise and technology by providing Capabilities and Offerings that can, through a Platform be aggregated and reused by multiple Digital Products, where it makes sense to do so. So the approach might look something like this

…a model in which greater efficiency is effectively enabled by intentionally 'shifting down' certain Capabilities to be provided from a Platform rather than ‘unintentionally’ allowing duplication of enabling capabilities to be driven from multiple Digital Product across the Organization. In the example, the original Capabilities provided by Teams 2 and 4, and their associated Technology stacks, is replaced by a new consolidated / aggregated Platform serving both Digital Products through the Offering it provides

As you gain more insight through modelling and understanding the business and customer needs (through Value Streams, Business Processes, Business Capabilities and Customer Journey's, etc.) along with the technical stacks and vendors that exist within your Organization, it will hopefully enable you to look at how things can then be optimized within the existing processes and Digital Products or to identify and move parts out or ‘down’ into Platforms to improve the overall outcome, efficiency and effectiveness across the whole organisation

This is a very superficial look at what a Platform is and how it can be used - but hopefully an understanding of how we can add the option of ‘shifting down’ as additional means for optimisation. For an excellent overview and deeper dive into Platforms and their benefits, I would strongly urge you to looking into Gregor Hohpe's work and his latest book 'Platform Strategy - Innovation Through Harmonization'

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and what your plans or experience is in 'shifting down' onto Platforms!?