08 | middle stage landing step 3: middle stage planning and design

In the first two lectures, we passed Discovery combination Define, It's done D4 The first round of divergence and convergence at the enterprise level in the model . We stand at the height of the enterprise , Based on the enterprise vision and internal and external environment , Through top-down strategic decomposition and bottom-up status quo research , Then apply the analysis of enterprise architecture method , To determine the final platform enterprise architecture , And answer whether to build a Zhongtai or not 、 What kind of middle platform construction is needed 、 Who built it first 、 Who will build these problems .

Let's start with this , We are about to enter D4 The second round of divergence and convergence of the model . From the perspective of a mid-range product , Let's see how to design and implement it , That is to say D4 Medium Design and Delivery Two stages of . Again , This lecture begins with Design Start , We take the design and implementation of a business platform as a sample , Tell us about the ideas and key points of this stage .

Okay , At this time, we need to borrow the example of geek real estate .

We assume that , After the first round of enterprise level research and architecture design , Xiao Wang and his team found that it was really urgent to build a business center of geek real estate , To realize the enterprise 2022 The strategic goal of , That is to say, the transformation from focusing on asset business to focusing on asset light service business , Better serve the user group of geek real estate , namely IT Practitioners provide multi scenario services .

Then the next question comes , How should this business be built ？ Where should we start to build the business platform ？

In this lesson, we will discuss the specific design and start-up of the lower middle stage . In the current example , That is, for the business of geek real estate （ The following abbreviation is geek Zhongtai ） Design process .

In the design stage , The question we need to answer is what is the vision of geek Zhongtai ？ What to include ？ Where to start landing ？ Complete the design phase , Should be able to clearly know how to start the construction of the middle office , Let the team start the middle stage MVP The development work of . If for what is MVP Don't know much about it , Never mind , It will be introduced later .

Determine the product vision of Zhongtai

Now , You must know , The first step is to figure out the vision and objectives of the business , Because this is the basis of our entire process of building a middle office , It is also the original intention of the construction of Zhongtai .

Remember what we mentioned before , The construction of Zhongtai is a road full of thorns , Full of twists and turns . In the process, we will encounter various problems and choices . And a good middle ground vision can keep us from beginning to end , Don't get lost easily .

So how to make a good vision for Zhongtai ？ I usually go to an enterprise to do consulting about the middle office , The first question I asked the person in charge of China Taiwan construction was ： You said you wanted to be a middle platform , What is the vision of Zhongtai construction ？

Most of the answers I got were yes , After all, no one will admit that their project doesn't even have a goal and vision . But once you ask what the vision is , It usually starts a long story , From the company's history to the current situation 、 From the industry chat to the recent speeches of the enterprise management , In a word, I can conclude that ： The leader said that we should be a middle office , Let's just do it .

I think it's dangerous . After all, we mentioned earlier , The vision of Zhongtai is the starting point of all issues , Need to be simple and clear enough , To be like a compass , It has become a tool to guide the direction in the process of building the middle platform , In order to achieve the above mentioned “ Never make up your mind when you are in trouble ”.

Here is a simple and easy-to-use tool , We often use this tool to help us spread and converge our product vision , Of course, it is also applicable to the middle stage , Namely The elevator speech （Elevator Pitch）.

seeing the name of a thing one thinks of its function , Hypothetical scenario of elevator speech , It was when we ran into the management of the company on the elevator , Can you tell each other what we are doing in a limited time , For example, middle stage . This requires us to achieve sufficient convergence . So the form of elevator speech , It mainly defines several key factors of the product , For example, who is the user , What problem to solve , What are the characteristics of differentiation . Each of these elements is very important , If you can't answer , Or the team's answer is different , To a certain extent, it shows that we have not reached an agreement on the vision of the construction of the middle platform , It has also laid a curse for the subsequent emergence of various problems .

Don't underestimate such a small elevator speech , I feel like I just need to answer a few questions . From my practical experience , Each discussion on the product vision in the planning will be timed out , At first, I thought it might be such a simple thing , It will be done in an hour , Later, because the discussion was too intense , The time is extended to half a day , Up to now, we usually reserve half a day or even a whole day , To fully divergent and converge the vision of mid-range products .

But even if we spend so much time , I still think it is very necessary . It is worthwhile to spend more time on the discussion of the vision , Because this will affect the follow-up trend of the design and construction of our Zhongtai , Once formed , It will also become the foundation of our middle office building , The importance of this step cannot be overstated .

Here's a question , I still want to mention , The value and difficulty of vision lies in full convergence . But I have seen many enterprises' Visions, although they also use the elevator speech , But it turned out to be a wall full , Although it looks shocking , But in fact, the effect is greatly reduced , After all, we can't repeat the contents of a whole wall in one elevator time . Or that sentence , Adding is easy , It's hard to subtract .

Determine the business scope

After the vision of Zhongtai products is determined , The next step is to sort out the fine-grained business architecture , Extract commonalities , Identify the specific needs of mid-range products .

however , It is also the enterprise level reason , At this point, the problem we face is often that we don't know where to start . After all, Zhongtai has an enterprise level attribute , Even business combing will involve the whole business line of the enterprise , It is also an end-to-end whole process combing work , The workload is often daunting .

Should all business lines be sorted out ？ Should all stages of the end-to-end process be sorted out ？ What kind of granularity should the business be sorted out ？ These are the problems we often face .

Usually here , Different enterprises have different situations . If the overall size of the company is not particularly large , In fact, it is also possible to do end-to-end business combing of the whole business , And such benefits are relatively comprehensive and not easy to miss , We can have an overall picture of the business status of the enterprise , The identified common requirements of the middle office will also be more accurate .

But many enterprises , In particular, some large group enterprises with multiple business lines tend to have the highest demands from the Middle East and Taiwan . For an enterprise of this size , It is basically impossible to do end-to-end sorting of the whole business , Otherwise, just the coordinator is a troublesome problem . At this time, we need to determine a range first , Then sort out and expand the business within this scope .

How should this area be delimited ？ Or that sentence , Never make up your mind when you are in trouble , At this time, the vision of China and Taiwan that we discussed earlier will be useful .

Take geek real estate as an example , The vision of Zhongtai construction is to precipitate the capability of mature business , And reused in other new asset light business lines, such as long-term apartment business , Quickly realize the lightweight transformation of business through the reuse of capabilities （ The specific elevator speech will not start here ）.

And the current situation is , Geek Real Estate focuses on services IT Groups , The real estate and property business is mature , With a very sound IT infrastructure . Now there is a strong demand for long-term apartments for this group , But long-term apartment as a new business line , Whether it is from investment expansion 、 Design 、 Bidding procurement 、 Engineering construction 、 Renovation 、 From customer management to property operation , These aspects all start from scratch .

Back to the issue of business scope , With a clear vision , It can make our business combing more focused .

First, from the business line , Not all business lines need to be sorted out . Let's look at the example of geek real estate , It has a wide range of activities , And the business line focuses on investment 、 Culture and education , Because these business lines are long-term independent development , It is not directly related to the vision and objectives of geek real estate's mid-range products mentioned above , So you can skip .

Then there is the end-to-end business value chain . Through analysis , Because the strategy of the enterprise is to light assets and serve them , So for engineering construction in the real estate industry , That is, the building part , It is not applicable to new businesses based on asset light strategy , Therefore, there is no need to comb .

thus , Construction vision based on Zhongtai , We can converge to a focused area in the horizontal end-to-end value chain and vertical business lines .

Then, we will sort out and expand the business in this focused area , It will be more efficient and focused .

Fine grained business sorting

After determining the carding scope , The next step is to sort out the specific business .

Generally, everyone's practice is based on the existing process or system , Sort out the existing business processes , For example, in the field of e-commerce, we often mention the four streams , Specifically, it refers to information flow 、 commodity circulation 、 Capital flow 、 Sorting out logistics , Most of the tools used are flow chart This very sophisticated tool .

However, this sort of sorting based on existing processes sometimes has some limitations , To put it simply, it is possible to derive the pseudo middle platform demand based on the business debt left over from the past . What does that mean ？ For some long-term and mature businesses , The existing way of doing business may not be the best way , But because of the long-term development and various peripheral restrictions and IT Limit the product of compromise .

for instance , Business lines that take a long time often have very complex approval processes . However, the audit and approval process is only a solution , The problem to be solved may be process fraud or other internal risks and problems . Complex approval processes are often the product of process control in the information age or even the earlier paper age , Because informatization is more about online offline processes , So it continues to this day , And in order to highly reproduce the process of the paper age , There are also various strange approval logics with Chinese characteristics , For example, countersignature, etc .

But if we go back to the problem area , Rethink the problem itself , We found that in this digital age , In big data and AI Has been widely used today , There may even be no need for such a process as process approval . Through new technologies , We can use real-time audit analysis or risk identification to find some anomalies in the business process , Even through complete automation , Eliminate the involvement of intermediaries , Fundamentally solve these problems , So as to give full play to the power of digitalization .

This return to the problem domain itself , So let's go back to where we started , Based on user needs, under the current business and technical conditions , Redesign the way you think about solutions , You can avoid the business debt trap mentioned above , It is also used in the design process of innovative business , And this way of thinking is also a lot of reference Design thinking （Design Thinking） Methods .

Therefore, it is different from the traditional business process based on the status quo , In the process of business combing, we have adopted a large number of methods based on Design thinking , combination User experience map （User Journey Map） and Service Blueprint （Service Map） The way . Back to the business itself , Start from the problem domain , user-centric , Sort out the user experience design and business service blueprint , In terms of effect, it is also very good .

Of course, it doesn't mean which method is better , Different tools and methods have different application scenarios and advantages and disadvantages , If you can master it flexibly , It can even be used in combination with , Give full play to their respective advantages .

Sort through the business architecture within the scope , Combined with the final analysis of cross scenario generic capabilities , We can have a certain in-depth understanding of the overall picture of the business in the field of concern , And it can identify some reusable business data in different business lines 、 Business functions and business processes . And these common business data 、 Business function 、 After processing and analyzing the business process, the specific needs of the middle office are formed . For these requirements , We are A user story （User Story） Described in a way .

determine MVP

Sort through the business , We have identified and sorted out a large number of business needs . It is worth noting that , The so-called mid platform product demand at this time , More from qualitative abstraction , Considering that the requirements of the middle office are not as clear as those of the front office business system , therefore , Strictly speaking , The demand at this time still belongs to a series of high-risk assumptions .

From my actual participation in the Zhongtai construction project , Often these middle office demands that were initially conceived , After the real development is completed , There is a big deviation from the original assumption . That means , The longer the construction cycle of Zhongtai , The greater the risk of the demand assumption and the greater the cost to be paid for it .

therefore , We are in the process of building Zhongtai , It introduces... In lean entrepreneurship MVP principle （Minimum Viable Product, Minimum supplies ）, It also implements the Start Small.

In order to achieve MVP, Make sure you make it MVP You can use , We adopt an end-to-end vertical segmentation approach to business requirements , Multi dimensional scoring and sorting combined with demand priority , To finalize MVP The scope of demand , The final form may be the list of user stories in the first iteration .

There is already a specific list of user stories , Is it possible for us to start development . Don't worry , There are two things , We suggest that we should consider before starting the construction of Zhongtai , That is the operational plan and metrics .

Operation front ： Develop iteration plan and access plan

First, let's look at the operation plan . For the middle stage, it may be the middle stage product promotion 、 The front desk （ user ） Access plan and operation support after access .

What I have seen in the past is , These problems were not considered until the middle and late stage of the construction of Zhongtai , It is often a little late . And in many cases , The front desk will not stop until the middle desk is completed , Start your own business evolution after access , Therefore, the front and middle platforms are often in parallel .

This process is much like the branch development in our development , The same piece of content was modified , So when you merge, it's very painful .

Therefore, the operation plan, especially the access plan, shall be considered in advance , Try to use a reasonable access plan （ I see that many enterprises call this access plan "boarding plan" , Very image ） To avoid some risks , It is also very critical for the construction of medium and Taiwan products . Specific operation strategy , In the next article, I will introduce you .

Measurement front ： Define validation metrics

Another thing that needs to be clear before the construction of medium-sized products begins is the measurement index . This point , I don't know if you remember , When we talked about the four issues that need to be clearly thought out before the construction of the middle platform , We have already talked about . Why do you need to design metrics before development , It has been explained before , Here I will share with you some design ideas of measurement indicators .

First , Let's take a look at the commonly used indicators . I put the most common product metrics on the market , Divided into four categories , That is, strategy 、 User class 、 Market development and cost reduction and efficiency improvement . Expand based on each dimension , You can find many common metrics .

For the middle stage , The difficulty lies in that there is a front desk between the market and users , Therefore, the measurement is not as clear as the foreground system that directly contacts users . But we say that the middle office empowers the front office business , You can't get away from your business , Just do some measurement on technology , For example, interface stability and interface quantity , This is not in line with the positioning and value of Zhongtai for enabling business support .

So we usually consider the measurement indicators of the middle office , Or take the strategic value and business value as the starting point , Start disassembly and derivation , And according to the different concerns of the stakeholders , Use multi dimension 、 Multi level index design to examine the effect of China Taiwan construction . I want to emphasize here , Although the dimensions and perspectives are different , We must ensure that all indicators reflect the goal of building a middle office .

And specific to the implementation method , Because every mid-range product is different , So it's hard to give a standard answer . In practice , It is suggested that you think in another position , Ask more questions. “ Yes? （How）”. I believe you are familiar with 5Why analysis , Here we can change it a little , use 5How To drive the design of validation metrics .

for instance , If I stand in the perspective of the company's management ：

• How can I judge the achievements of China Taiwan construction ？ If the answer is to look at the empowerment of new businesses ,

• How can I verify the enabling effect of new business ？ If the answer is to see the online speed of the new business ,

• How can I verify the online speed of new business ？ If the answer is to look at the time when the new business is approved and launched ,

• Then how can I verify ……

You see , People often say that measurement is difficult , In fact, everyone has a steelyard in his heart , But we didn't express the scale clearly . adopt 5How, We can keep asking , Dig out the steelyard in everyone's heart , To better guide the construction and promotion of our medium and Taiwan products .

To sum up

This lesson takes the construction process of a business platform as an example , Take the vision of the business center as the starting point , This paper introduces the tools of elevator speech , Based on the vision of Zhongtai construction , Define the scope and priority of business carding .

After clarifying the entry point and scope of business carding , We can sort out the user centric business processes and design services based on design thinking , Then combing the business model with domain driven design , Finally, through comprehensive analysis across business lines , Identify common business data 、 The business process 、 Midrange requirements of business model .

After that, by introducing MVP principle , For mid tier requirements, end-to-end vertical segmentation is adopted based on business priority , Finally determine the starting point of Zhongtai construction , That is, the specific construction content of the first stage .

Finally, after the analysis and design of the operation mechanism and measurement indicators of medium and Taiwan products , We can formally establish the project and enter the delivery stage for specific implementation .

Next, let's move on to D4 The last stage , That is to say Delivery The delivery phase of , Look at the ideas and methods we use in the delivery phase , And the problems that should be paid attention to .

Finally, I'll leave you a few thinking questions ：

• What is your business process ？ How to analyze the needs of the middle office ？

• You used MVP Principle? ？ How to avoid the risk of demand assumption of China Taiwan construction ？