In this episode we’re looking at foundational stuff: In order to be successful you must first define success and then orient your actions in a way that moves you towards success. When applying this mindset to software, we have a range of outcomes over which we measure success. As we drill into each one we find there are areas where we can take action to improve our outcomes.
Define what success looks like for you
The 345 Method is a way of getting you to success. You start by looking at the following areas that are affected by your technology solutions:
- Rapid Delivery
- Available & Scalable
- Secure
- Quality & Bug-Free
- Costs Optimised
- Functional & Lovable
- Standards Compliant
You use a consistent scoring system
You use a scoring system from 0 to 10 that allows you to assess where you are. The scoring system is like this:
0 I’m the worst in the world at this
1 I’m the worst in my industry at this
2 This is seriously detrimental to my business
3 This has a negative impact on my business
4 This is holding my business back a little
5 I’d like to improve, but I’m doing OK
6 I’m contributing to the success of my business
7 I compare well with others in my industry
8 I’m one of the leaders in my industry, we’re providing competitive advantage
9 I’m the best in my industry at this
10 I’m the best in the world at this
Find the pain points so you can overcome them
When you have a score against these criteria you can establish where your main pain points are so together we can drill into them and fix them. You can use our reference framework that we call the “6 Strata” or “6 Layers”, that provides you with a framework for action. This allows you to cover all the bases.
The main learnings from the podcast…
Rapid Delivery
- We use 3 dimensions to look at rapid delivery: Development velocity, release cadence, elapsed time.
- Development velocity can be improved in a number of ways:
- Choose the right technologies and tools for the job (Technology)
- Use them in the right way (Solution)
- Ensure your team know how to use them (Skill)
- Make your team work in the right way (Development Process)
- Release cadence can have a number of root causes that you should tackle:
- Manual infrastructure provision
- Manual deployments
- Manual testing cycles
- There can also be legitimate reasons to have a slow cadence, but try to keep a good process wherever you can
- The elapsed time between writing code and it going live is too long
- This is often the flip side of slow cadence
- Look at automation in your testing and release processes
Available & Scalable
- Availability
- For your solution to be available it means you can recover from any sort of loss.
- You might express this as RPO (recovery point objective) – how much time / data loss you can tolerate
- You might also use RTO (recovery time objective) – how much time is required to restore the service
- Scalability
- For a solution to be scalable, it means you can increase capacity when demand is high and reduce capacity when demand is low
- Scalability can be hard with physical infrastructure as it takes time to provision, is expensive, and is hard to scale down
Secure
We all want secure systems, right?
- Your ability to be secure will depend on a number of areas. Mostly, these are:
- Technology – you have chosen the appropriate technology
- Solution – your solution is designed with attack vectors in mind
- Operational processes – make sure production is locked down and cannot be tampered with
- Regular reviews – keep reviewing your security on a regular basis, and have a means of feeding the recommendations from security reviews into your backlog
Summary
That’s a very quick whistlestop tour of the episode. Start by defining success and then talk to us about how you can deliver software faster and better with the 345 Method, and unleash your inner software superhero.
Listen now…
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