Tag: factory

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Factory Approach to Service Engineering – Preamble

Machine Keyboard Code

World of Perspectives

We all see the world from different perspectives, and the sum of perspectives help us to get a better/fuller understanding of our world.  In this article, we share a perspective on engineering services for business.  This perspective can be summarised as: Intelligent Laziness – strategies to achieve equal or better productivity with equal or less effort and minimal stress. To illustrate how we try to achieve this, we will use five metaphors:

  • Factory
  • Pattern
  • Framework
  • Process
  • Service

PowerPoint Summary: A Factory Approach to Service Engineering

The Factory – First Glance

When people think of factories, they imagine the primitive/simple product-focussed line that spews out large numbers of identical, low-value items.
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But there is another perspective; the advanced/composite service-focussed systems that create a few bespoke high-value units to specific customers.
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There are similarities, in that both are repetitive and they both transform inputs to outputs. But there are significant differences too.  The primitive factory involves lower risk, and less complexity whilst the advanced factory multiplies risk due to composition and customisation.  There is a direct relationship between value and complexity, and it is often the case that the advanced factory uses outputs from primitive factories.

But factories occur in software engineering too, and the underlying principles apply here too.  Whereas it is common to talk of dichotomy in software engineering: is it a science or an art?  Software factories do not suffer such ambiguity.  For every factory, whether hardware or software, two principles always apply:

  • The outcomes are predictable
  • The process is repetitive

Careful study of any system reveals re-occurring things/trends the production of which can be achieved with the factory principles.  This is equally true in a McDonalds restaurant as in a Rolls-Royce workshop. This is also true in software engineering, especially service engineering.

The Pattern

The re-occuring things/trends in a factory are patterns.  The predictability of the output of a factory and the fidelity of repetition depend on patterns.  Patterns are fundamental to factories.  In a factory, there is a need to understand what is to be produced and the patterns that are involved in its production.  Each pattern is a kind of template.  Given certain input and application of the template, a given output is guaranteed.  A factory is likely to involve mastery of one or more patterns, depending on the type of factory.  Fewer patterns generally reflect superior understanding of the problem domain.  However, some patterns go through special evolution (exaptation) and could become the focus of a factory in their own right.

The Framework

The collection of patterns required to create a given output can be described as a framework.  A good analogy is a box of Lego.  It is a composite of patterns, which can be put together to create the structure illustrated on the box/packaging.  The framework identifies all requisite patterns for a given output, and usually in a given technical/business context.  Each pattern in a framework form synergies and are known to be beneficial in the specified context; examples of frameworks include building regulations (hardware) or Oracle AIA (software).

The Process

Of course having all the pieces of a Lego is insufficient to construct the picture on the box.  The process elevates the framework from static to dynamic.  The process describes how the patterns in a framework are to be sequenced and aggregated in a way that delivers synergy and the best output.  The framework is a snapshot, whereas the process describes a flow from conception to completion.  For business services, the process is the first point where IT and business meet.  The process shows how value can be created while hiding (abstracting) the taxonomy/ontology of patterns and the framework(s) employed.

How does all of this come together, especially in our daily lives as software engineers serving businesses?  And how does this help our clients (the business) better compete?  Join me in the next instalment where I will be looking at the benefits, business connection, and potential future impact.

—
Oyewole, Olanrewaju J (Mr.)
Internet Technologies Ltd.
lanre@net-technologies.com
www.net-technologies.com
Mobile: +44 793 920 3120

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Factory Approach to Service Engineering – Business

Business Service Factory

From Technology to Business

In a previous article, I looked at how some metaphors can be used to understand the engineering of software (services).  Of the five listed below, I introduced the first four.

  • Factory
  • Pattern
  • Framework
  • Process
  • Service

The first three have a clear technical focus; the fourth is a gateway between the technical world and the business world.  The fifth though is where the business focus becomes paramount.

IT is an enabler – no one invests in technology for itself, rather it is for what IT can do for business.  The service is the business perspective on the process.  It focusses on how all those patterns and frameworks abstracted within those processes can be put to work for business. But even business is not without patterns!  Every business operates in a sector, and belongs to a genre.  For every business genre, there are certain must-have competencies common to all participants, as well as some differentiators that are peculiar to some players.  The build up from our patterns to the processes must be honed to effectively serve out clients; the business, who themselves have clients: the buck-paying end-users.

 

The Service as Business Nexus

The reliability, efficiency and quality of our technical processes must feed into our business clients and aid their agility.  A business that is supported by factories at different levels (pattern, framework, process) is more able to adapt to a changing environment.  Such businesses are able to recombine solutions at different levels of granularity to address emerging needs.
It is vital to make a distinction between software-engineering per se and service-engineering.  At the different levels of the vertical hierarchy of software, there are factories that have no alignment to any business whatsoever.  They are simply technology enablers.  The focus here is on services, i.e. software that is “client” driven.  In a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) there is an intrinsic/instinctive alignment to business.  I go even further to speak of a “fundamentalist SOA“, characterised by the following principles:

  • Build Best
  • Owner-Agnostic
  • Interdependent Services
  • Service Ontology
  • Attritional Evolution

We should build on Steven Covey’s (The 7 habits of highly effective people) principle of interdependence and Steven Johnson’s (Where good ideas come from) ideas of next-adjacent, serendipity and exaptation.  Everyone should not build everything.  No one should build just for themselves.  But let every output be seen as a target (service) for the genre or sector/industry rather than the department or the company.

There are significant benefits to this mindset:

  • Cheaper solutions: due to successful scaling of a few best patterns
  • Easier, Faster: due to extreme specialisation of the most successful patterns
  • Simpler Maintenance: due to deep understanding of the pathology of the patterns
  • Fewer Faults, Quicker Fixes: due to clear modularity/decomposition of the patterns
  • Better Scalability: due to to built-in fundamental qualities of patterns
  • More/Better Output: as patterns are re-composed at higher levels of abstraction

But these kind of solutions are themselves products of a new learning.  This learning is focussed on the core nature of the problem rather than its specifics.  It is meta-learning that looks for patterns in the problem domain and then maps each to a resolver in the solution domain.  This Weltanschauung delivers, and it is an enabler for federation of output as seen in open-source software.  It is a value well demonstrated in Amazon Web Services.  Without this mindset, corporations like YouTube or DropBox would not have gotten off the ground.  With it, the evolution of novice to expert is more likely to be successful and the duration of the transform is more predictable and much shorter.  One expects that all this would also produce more of Jeff Bezos “work-life harmony” for those involved.  As well as better and cheaper output for those buck-paying clients, at all levels!

Plus ça change … ?

Computers know nothing! Deep-blue would not know how to crawl out of a pond if it fell into one. But we can teach it to.  We communicate with machines through patterns; the patterns represent an abstraction of our language and knowledge.  The patterns help us to teach machines, and thereupon to delegate to them.  Better abstraction means we can get more out of the machines. The patterns are our bridge to the nebulous machine world.

Increasing the variety and the speed at which we add abstractions will hasten the metamorphosis of ideas to reality.  Each one extends our metaphorical bridge; from the machine end to the human end.  As we do so, alterations to our present reality will emerge ever faster, as our most abstract ideas and desires are projected across bridge of abstraction into new and tangible experiences.  The foundation of all this is and will be unavoidably linked to those principles that we started with earlier: the factory, pattern, framework, process, and service.
That is my (view point) perspective.

Good day and God bless.

—
Oyewole, Olanrewaju J (Mr.)
Internet Technologies Ltd.
lanre@net-technologies.com
www.net-technologies.com
Mobile: +44 793 920 3120

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Factory Approach to Service Engineering

Service Factory

Rhema Bytes: A Factory Approach to Service Engineering

Service Factory
Service factory abstraction

When most people think of a factory, the imagery that is conjured is one of mindless repetition, and the generation of large numbers of low-value items. A good example is a nut & bolt factory. In this world, value accrues to the investors from the little profit made on each one of the millions, or billions, of items.

This does not tell the full story of factories. There is another view that most of us do not readily think of. I call this genre, a compositing factory. Good examples are found in the many custom bike shops found across the USA. Many of who arrange engines from Harley Davidson, and kit from other suppliers, into dream-machines especially tailored for their high-end clients.

Both perspectives have one thing in common. In real life, there are the designers that articulate a general template of the “thing”. And there will be the producers that directly replicate the template, or customise it before replication.  The nut & bolt represents the former (direct-replication), while the custom bike shop illustrates the latter (customised-replication). There are templates and meta-templates for both bike and nut. The nut template will be driven by permutations on materials, size and strength, whereas the bike template is a composition of an engine, frame, gears, tyres and some other bits.

In SOA architecture and design, we are also concerned with templates (ABB and SBB in TOGAF). Our templates are sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete, sometimes composite, sometimes atomic. Whether as a reference architecture, or a component design, the focus is on a template that solves a generic problem. However, most of the time, these templates are not to be replicated verbatim. Their value is almost always realised in some composition or aggregative context. Some intelligence in application being sine qua non.

For any enterprise, there will be a minimal set of services that must be realised for the organisation to be a meaningful participant in its sector. In addition to these core services, there are others that help to differentiate the organisation. These can be regarded as the macro templates. At the micro level, we find that each genre of service must complete certain tasks in order to deliver meaningful value to clients. Once again there could be differentiation by way of order, algorithm or complement, but by and by there will be a minimal set of tasks, that all must do.

If we apply the mindset of the custom bike shop to our architecture practise, we should see quite a few tools in-house that we can use/reuse. Some that can be bought, and a few that we need to fabricate. I have found that while many enterprises adopt the “reuse-buy-build, respectively” principle, not all evaluate the comparative costs of these options before making a decision. The consequence is that build, and buy, usually outnumber reuse in most organisations. In the cases where there is reuse, existing services are rendered functionally ambiguous to cater for slightly different use cases.

In a previous article, “Rhema Bytes: The Business to SOA Nexus”, it was argued that architecture should seek to create a platform of agnostic services that are well suited to serving the genre of an organisation, rather than the organisation specifically. If one were to decompose an enterprise, top-down, it should be somewhat easier to identify functionality at its most granular level. Top-down decomposition helps identify functionality at the highest level of abstraction. The analysis of each granular functional unit can help determine the comparative value of reusing, building or buying services that provide the required competence.

So, for a new business initiative that delivers services X, Y. and Z. We could ask if there is a Harley Davidson engine that fulfills that X, a Volvo axle (Y1), Saab transmission (Y2), and Toyota electrics (Y3) that deliver Y, and if a component Z5a is truly unique, or needs to be built, alongside Z1..Z3, and Z4c that do not already exist in our catalogue.

Each service, whether bought, built, or reused, is then properly catalogued as to the value it provides, its comparative costing, and what contexts it is to be used in. Such a compendium, built over time, makes it much easier to assemble solutions. Every installment of this approach makes the next assembly simpler and quicker. This is because most unique use cases/scenarios are covered off in the early solutions, and subsequent projects will reveal fewer unseen scenarios.

A lasting benefit of this mindset is that federation and outsourcing is made that much easier, since the templates for the product/service or its composition are predetermined. This means that production and assembly can be separated, and the build and testing are more effectively decoupled. In a previous article, “Rhema Bytes: SOA Services Abstraction” one such model for templating service genres in a SOA is explored. Combining this mindset with the pieces identified in that article should result in a flexible, nimble and responsive “service factory”.

Presentation: AFactoryApproachToServiceEngineering.ppt
—
Oyewole, Olanrewaju J (Mr.)
Internet Technologies Ltd.
lanre@net-technologies.com
www.net-technologies.com
Mobile: +44 [0] 793 920 3120