Pizza as a service is flawed

The concept of pizza as a service is flawed, but not in the way you think.

If you seen Lucifer on TV, you know that he asks the suspect what he desire the most, and this is the question we must answer when doing business development.

As a customer, what do I truly want? Is it pizza as a service ot something else I want?

When I was 18 on Sweden, the only way to get beer or wine legally was to drink it at a restaurant. But regulations in those days were that you needed to order food to get alcoholic beverages.

This is why we had half a pizza and several large beers at the local pizzeria before going to the next place.

Today, my main reason for getting a pizza is when we are at the stable and don’t have access to a kitchen or time to prepare a meal.

Another classic reason for ordering a pizza is when you have a hangover and want lots of calories. Typical example in Sweden is New Years day that is peak pizza.

What are then the most important capabilities for the local pizzeria then. First of all, it’s the location. Second, if you serve pizza at the restaurant, you need to be able to provide alcoholic beverages.

That you have pizza as a service is less important, more important is to cook food with cheap ingredienses that could be served fast, both at the restaurant or to take-away.

If you want to share a moment with friends and family, pizza as a service is not highest priority unless you have a customer segment that crave for pizza.

Belief, fact resistance and analytic capabilities

As an Enterprise Architect, one of the skills you need is an analytic capability.

However, as seen the last weeks, this is a missing skill from a number of architects and self proclaimed analysts.

If you dissolve or reject information that doesn’t fit with your beliefs, there is huge risk that you draw the wrong conclusions and suggest wrong actions.

IMHO, with that mindset, you are not fit to be an architect or an analyst, and shouldn’t get at job in that role.

Business automation and creativity

I would like to challenge Tom Graves statement that Not every process could be automated.

Can you automate a creative process like writing a manuscript?

As a business process it’s fairly well described on a high level, but is that enough for automation?

First, if we would could feed a logline into to process, would we get out a first draft for a feature film? 

Second, if we feed the same logline into the process one more time, would we have the same result?

Third, if we gave feedback to the process about what we fought about the first draft, would the process adapt and rewrite the story based on experieces it gathered?

With AI we already have an engine that could write stories, based on the input.

The questions are then if we get the same story twice and if the engine learns from feedback.

If the AI-engine repeats history and delivers the same story from the same logline, then it’s a repetitive process. 

If it’s a different story each time, but doesn’t learn from feedback, I would more categorize it as a randomizer, probably worse than a blind hen.

But if the engine learned from feedback, it would be much smarter, more akin of a very skilled person 

So, yes in the future, all processes could be automate. The question is if they should and it is more of an ethical question than technical.

Log-line for Enterprise Architecture

If you want investors to read your manuscript for your next blockbuster movie, you need to write a catching log-line, otherwise you letter ends up in the trash faster than a blink of an eye.

The format is very simple, yet very hard to write in one sentence.

It starts with the hero, her journey of change and the force that tries to stop her.

They don’t give a damn about which typewriter you use.

EA is not different, board and CxO level want to hear a good and simple story that will give them their investment back. They don’t care about EA methods.

Who need to change, what is the change and what are the risks for change not to happens. Then time and budget on a high-level.

Easy? Then you also have a nice job in the dream factory.

Same type of EA but different

Most of the time when I’m doing Enterprise Architecture, I have been working with large established companies, with lots of legacy, doing same things as usual.

Last year I described how we used EA in a small startup for film production.

This year, I have been working with Care by Volvo and it is quite different architecture assignment in several ways.

Before, you drove to a car dealer, bought a fossil fuel vehicle and paid with your money.  This is the normal business model for automotive industry and have been for ages. 

We are now establishing a new business model where you subscribe to a car on-line, directly from Volvo and you can have a fully electrical vehicle. Volvo owns the car and maintans it, you drive and recharge. If you l want, you can end the subscription period. 

Huge changes to the business model have an enormous impact on legacy IT-systems, and how to solve this long term is really Enterprise Architecture.

I see that there are three different types of EA that starts in the same place, i.e. with the business model. Legacy modernization, startup (Spotify, Tesla) or disruption of existing business model (Netflix, Volvo etc)

It has been very clear this year that those who don’t understand different business models can’t propose solutions for a disruptive business.