Dynamic Work : service oriented architecture

N=1 and R=G

brucelynn — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:10:00 GMT

I had the chance to listen to business management gurus C.K. Prahalad at the recent London Benchmark for Business event (thanks again Katie). C.K.’s presentation on ‘Realising the Opportunity’ talked about embracing the positive potential of the economic turmoil as being a catalyst for changes that have long been brewing and are primed for embracing all of which echo the core themes of Dynamic Work

1. Fundamentally Change Industry Structures
2. Require New Approaches to Managing
3. Provide Exciting New Opportunities
4. Put a New Premium on Innovation
5. Demand New Organisational Capabilities

He talked about the need for a change in ‘Organisational Capabilities’ from...

1. Hierarchies to Networks
2. Investment Capacity to Collaborative Capacity
3. Organisation Structures to Velcro Organisation

Prahalad concluded that the ‘New Game’ boils down to

“N-=1”: Co creation of Personalised Experiences
“R=G”: Multi-institutional and Multi-Geograohic Access to Resources

‘N=1’ or ‘Co-Creation’ is ‘dynamic work’ to the extreme. Making your customers your workers to the benefit of both. In the SOA context, ‘co-creation’ is akin to Microsoft’s “Software Plus Services” (S+S) vision. Combining the power of software (the organisation’s workforce) with tapping into the ‘cloud’ of value add content and services (the customer base).

“R=G” is practically the very definition of Dynamic Work. He describes it as the “Emergence of Nodal Firms and Supply Webs”.

Dynamic Operation

brucelynn — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:09:47 GMT

I recently spoke at a meeting of Microsoft Alliance Partner Hitachi Consulting on the topic of Dynamic Work and Andrew Barlow, Hitachi’s Head of Strategy, shared with me their whitepaper on ‘Building an Agile Response to Change’.

What I like most about the paper it’s reinforcement that ‘agility’ comes from a number of different perspective and dimensions. In ‘Dynamic Work,’ I have looked the parallels between increasing flexibility in computer systems (eg. SOA) and ‘human’ systems (eg. flexible working), but Andrew takes the concept even more broadly. At the outset, he proposes...

“Agility is derived from two core enterprise-wide competencies:

· the physical ability to act quickly and appropriately (what we call ‘response ability’)

· the intellectual ability to find appropriate things to act on (what we call ‘business insight’)”

He goes on to explore four ‘pillars’ (see diagram above) of which the ‘Reconfigurable Structures’ piece particularly evokes the principles of flexibility in both system and organisational design...

Accenture’s ‘Green IT – Beyond the Data Centre’

brucelynn — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:07:45 GMT

Accenture, one of Microsoft’s top partners, has long distinguished itself in Business Process Re-engineering as a foundation to IT innovation and with that expertise have been a leading proponent of Service Oriented Architectures. So it is not surprising to see Accenture leading the way with a ‘Green IT’ message that goes far beyond the basics of saving a bit of electricity. Their ‘holistic’ perspective is laid out very effectively in their crisp whitepaper ‘Green IT – Beyond the Data Centre’.

“Think how pervasive IT's influence across the organization has become. Today, IT can shape and ultimately determine where and how people work, how much they travel, and how they behave when they get there. All of which translates not only into how much energy they consume, but also how much other costly resources they use ranging from paper to petroleum fuels. IT's impact can extend still further. The workplace environment, the procurement methodology and the sourcing supply chain are all within its sphere of influence. As are the automation and efficiency of the organization's compliance with environmental regulations such as WEEE and emissions.”

A great roadmap to Getting Greener with IT.

Virtual Parallel

brucelynn — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:41:36 GMT

Curiously, and perhaps not coincidentally, the same dynamics moving towards distributed working in the flesh-and-blood, bricks-and-mortar workplaces is also taking place in the bits-and-bytes of digital world.

One of the hottest concepts or trends in computing right now is ‘Service Oriented Architecture’ (SOA). At its heart, SOA is a collection of principles, guidelines and concepts (ie. the ‘architecture’ bit) that one needs to consider or adopt in order to exploit the flexibility that ‘service’ delivered software introduces. Traditional or conventional software implies a more centralised command-and-control structure where the computing is installed on the device where it is going to be consumed (sort of like a worker who is going to do work in the workplace where they are based) A ‘service’ orientation implies a results-delivery structure where the results of the computing are delivered to the user but the computing itself might be done on some computer where the use as not installed anything, the user just consumes the output of the computation.

What to call it...

brucelynn — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:32:00 GMT

Welcome to the 'Dynamic Work' blog set up to explore the issues and opportunities around increasingly flexible workplaces driven by the confluence of business needs and technological empowerment.

But beings as a I work in marketing, the first thing we need to do is the 't-shirt'. It ain't a campaign without a t-shirt and it an a crusade without a buzzword.

In all seriousness, the label here 'Dynamic Work' is woolly enough. And the thinking in this area is meant to cover a number issues and even disciplines. Terms like 'mobile working' really just describe one part or dimension.

To illustrate the challenge the descriptive challenge, I offer some leading contenders...

Flexible Working - Probably comes the closest to the spirit, but seems to focus primarily on work issues, while think both work and home areas are affected.
Distributed Work - Possibly the most semantically elegant term, especially with the parallel between distribution of work content and lifestyle paralleling a similar ‘n-tier’ distribution of increasingly componentised compute processing (Service Oriented Architecture applied to human affairs). But it’s a bit long winded and dry. Which brings us to...
Service Oriented Workforce - A more direct play on ‘Service Oriented Architecture’ buzzword which is all the rage in IT circles these days for the same sort of flexibility within systems that the new ways of work offer to the workforce.
Mobile Working - A term prevalent in Microsoft given our mobile device offerings, but really just confined one dimension.
Moofing - A buzzword the Windows Mobile guys coined to ‘verb-alise’ the mobile workstyle. Its etymology comes from the acronym for ‘Mobile Out Of Facility.’ Funky term, but limited focus.
New World of Work – Microsoft's term more generically term referring to a range of workplace impacts on ‘digital nervous systems’ emerging in business.
Digaspora: My own neologism combining ‘digital’ with ‘diaspora’ (‘any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland’). Cute, but incomplete and a bit overly clever.
WorkLife 2.0 - Smacks of hip and trendy techno buzzword to parallel ‘Web 2.0’ which is the bold technology term of imminent shifts into new ways of distributing computing power across the Internet.