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The best laid plans were made to be broken. In this context that is a good thing. I can’t even begin to count how many customer interactions I have had where the agenda, the demo, or the plan we went in with is not what we actually executed. However, the most successful meetings I have had are where those agendas, demos, and plans adapt and evolve as the meeting adapts and evolves often leading to insights and learnings that neither the customer nor I expected. This idea invokes the thought of this concept of “Just in Time” (but informed) Enterprise Architecture.
I strive to apply this idea of Just in Time in my engagements as a Salesforce Enterprise Architect. These days I like to head into meetings with customers with nothing more than my grey matter, my laptop, and maybe some fresh whiteboard markers. My thought process is to have a wide range of tools, methodologies, frameworks, etc. at the ready and pull them into the conversation as needed, or Just in Time to be effective. This approach is informed by my secret weapon: the Salesforce Enterprise Architecture Methodology (see below).
Our lightweight methodology is business value led, pragmatic in its approach, and based on the key concept of a minimum viable product, “a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development.” In an earlier blog Brett Colbert discussed how we approach EA at Salesforce. What I want to focus on and what I am hunting for is this notion of minimum viable product, or Just in Time Enterprise Architecture. Eric Ries has written a few pieces on this concept of MVP including this blog post.
I feel strongly that this is something that can be applied whether you work in a corporate IT role or as a consultant. The idea here is I can take pieces of the above methodology and apply where it is needed based on the maturity level and true business needs of the situation at hand. Sometimes we go through all seven steps or maybe we just need current state and future state. We pivot and adapt to what our customers and the project needs are in order to be successful. Success is not the creation of complex documents and artifacts, but rather a shrewd application of discovery, situational analysis, and understanding of a rational way forward
Sound complex? Not really; after doing some research into this concept I have found a few guidelines that you can follow to make Just in Time EA work for you too. They include:
By no means is this a new concept. There is a Gartner article by Phillip Allega from January 2006, titled Enterprise Architecture: Just Enough, Just in Time. 10 years ago this was being discussed. Interesting enough there is a comment made how the architecture process cannot outrun the business requirements and needs to show value in less than six months. Strikingly, I think one thing that clearly has changed in the last decade is if you are not showing value in four to six weeks then you are clearly already behind!
The other component that makes this concept work is that we can apply this to one of the nimblest, agile platforms in the world; Salesforce. Being able to take prudent risks, keeping it simple, and always evolving makes Just in Time EA easy to do in relation to Salesforce projects. I was a Salesforce project manager for 4 years before coming to Salesforce as an employee and I was able to apply this idea of MVP to all my Salesforce projects. It made my team wildly successful with our business partners.
So, my challenge to the Salesforce community is hunt for opportunities to apply this technique. Start off going into meetings with looser agendas, and be open to offer for the attendee to pivot the agenda on the fly. Get used to working in an evolving meeting environment and listen for the true pain points, disruptive opportunities, and insights that simply cannot be scripted. Over time, this becomes easier and easier - soon you will be heading to meetings armed with just your grey matter and whiteboard markers. Happy Hunting.
