【譯】（數字化）平臺思維的藝術
The Art of Platform Thinking | 平臺思維的藝術
作者: Amit Kaul ( ofollow,noindex" target="_blank">Vice President, Emerging Technology ) & Ryan Murray ( Director, Digital Platform Strategy )
標籤: #Technology Strategy , #Innovation , #Strategy
The digitally-savvy customer has highly sophisticated - and ever-evolving - expectations for engagement and brand experience at every touchpoint. Delivering on and keeping up with these expectations requires an innovation-driven culture with customer value at its center. We’ve seen a common theme across our most successful client engagements: innovation and speed to market at scale requires more than just intense customer-centricity, adoption of agile practices and technology acumen. For almost any organization with significant brand value and historical technology investments, there will be friction from years of built-up technical and architectural debt. Unlocking core assets and business capabilities to enable customer-facing innovation requires effort and investment.
精通數字化的客戶對每一種觸點技術的品牌體驗與互動都有著高度複雜的、不斷變化的期望。而實現和保持這些期望需要以客戶價值為中心的創新驅動文化。我們在最成功的客戶合作案例當中看到了一個共同的主題：即大規模的創新和快速推向市場需要的不僅僅是以客戶為中心、採取敏捷實踐和保持技術敏銳度。對於幾乎任何最具品牌價值和對技術做過投資的組織來說，多年積累的技術和架構債務都會帶來摩擦（friction）。解鎖核心資產與業務價值，任重而道遠，只有持續不斷付出努力和投資，才能夠實現面向客戶的創新。
All organizations have an innate innovation capability 
所有組織的創新能力與生俱來。
But yours may be so knotted up with organizational complexity and technology delivery friction that it’s less painful to stick to business as usual. How do you know? If progress becomes mired in departmental finger pointing, or your best people are busy just keeping things up and running, innovation is suffering. This wasted energy costs time and competitive advantage, it creates frustrating experiences for your customers, and ultimately drives tech talent out the door.
但是，企業可能會由於組織複雜度和技術交付相沖突而陷入困境，從而無法像往常一樣專心於本職工作。有趣的問題？當事態陷入部門間相互指責的泥潭，或者企業的中流砥柱卻只是忙於維持事情運轉的時候，創新就會因此受挫。所浪費的資源將會消耗時間和競爭優勢，並給你的使用者造成糟糕的體驗，並最終將技術人才掃地出門。
Platform thinking can help untangle those knots and free your organization up to be more innovative without adding additional debt such as inventory, real estate, divisions, and staff.
平臺思維能夠幫助企業走出困境，並釋放企業組織的創新能力，而不用增添額外債務，比如庫存積壓、財產損失、部門分歧和人員流失等。
Here’s how it works:
For your organization to make the most out of technology investments, you need a comprehensive strategy that puts your essential business priorities at the heart of your approach to foundational technologies. Platform thinking then becomes the touchstone for making key technology decisions that will simplify your ecosystem, stimulate innovation, and accelerate delivery.
以下是平臺思維的工作原理：
要讓企業合理充分地運用技術投資，企業就需要一個全面的戰略，將至關重要的業務核心放在打造基礎技術的方法上，平臺思維就會變成制定核心技術決策的試金石，從而簡化企業生態系統，刺激創新，並且加速交付。
At Thought Works, we’ve spent the past few years building and enhancing platforms that enable our enterprise clients to utilize the assets they already possess to support their forward-looking business objectives. We’ve collaborated with our clients to address key questions, such as:
- How do I reduce friction in our existing software development processes, reduce architectural debt, and achieve the accelerated delivery I need to be competitive?
- Is an off-the-shelf solution the right approach, or should we develop a custom solution in-house? Or is the answer somewhere in between?
- How do I unlock the assets and infrastructure we already possess to stay ahead of potential competitors and market disruption?
- How does our technology platform support a culture of innovation across the entire business?
在 Thought Works，我們花費數年經驗打造與鞏固企業平臺，幫助我們的客戶利用現有資產實現其極具遠見的商業抱負。我們協同客戶定位核心問題，比如：
- 如何減少已有軟體開發流程的摩擦、減少技術架構債務、提升市場競爭的交付速度？
- 是否存在現成有效的方法實踐，或是提供企業定製化的內部解決方案？或是答案位於兩者之間？
- 如何充分利用企業已經具備的資產與基礎設施，以保持相較於潛在對手或市場攪局者的競爭優勢？
- 企業技術平臺該如何支撐貫穿業務始終的全面創新文化？
By working in the trenches with partners facing real-world challenges, we have defined a holistic approach to technology that helps organizations meet and often exceed the expectations of today’s digitally savvy customer. Our platform-focused approach distills a client’s business objectives, current state architecture, and technology capability to provide a set of actions to maximize innovation and increase speed to market. We call it a Digital Platform Strategy.
通過與合作伙伴並肩作戰面對現實挑戰， Thought Works 打造了一整套解決方案，能夠幫助企業組織達到甚至常常超越當今數字化知識豐富的客戶所期望的效果。 Thought Works 以平臺為重心的解決方案可以用於提煉企業業務目標、現有架構形態與技術能力，以提供一系列具體行動，充分發揮創新能力與加快推向市場速度。我們稱之為數字平臺戰略。
The Digital Platform Strategy is a ThoughtWorks offering that distils our global experience and learnings across domains and clients in order to unlock enterprise assets to facilitate innovation. Our knowledge framework and accelerators direct our clients to define and maximize the value of their core business capabilities and data assets through lean, iterative development of their foundational technology platform. Our wealth of experience gathered across a range of clients and industries, enables us to significantly accelerate and de-risk customer’s efforts. We’ve fallen into the traps and potholes and found the escape hatches so you don’t have to.
數字平臺戰略是 Thought Works 所打造的一款產品，濃縮無數專業領域和企業客戶的全球性經驗與成果，幫助企業解鎖核心資產以加速創新變革。我們所提供的理論框架與高效執行力，引導我們的客戶定義並實現核心業務能力和資料資產的價值最大化，通過精益、迭代開發企業基礎技術平臺。我們所積累的豐富經驗在無數企業客戶與專業領域都卓有成效，使得我們能夠顯著促進企業創新程序並化解客戶風險。我們曾經掉過坑、踩過無數陷阱併成功找到了逃生艙口（出路），而您不必再重蹈覆轍。
Platform Thinking at the Core | 平臺思維的核心
Platform thinking works by:
- Removing friction from delivery teams by focusing on high quality, self-service access to foundational technology.
- Creating an ecosystem of technology and business capabilities. Using domain-driven principles, carefully-factored business capability interfaces (APIs) are critical components of an effective, modern Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategy.
- Explicitly investing in a foundation for experimentation which ensures every delivery team has access to tools to make testing new ideas and validating learnings easy.
平臺思維得益於以下幾點：
- 通過專注高質量、面向基礎技術的自服務來消除交付團隊的摩擦（衝突）
- 打造技術與業務能力的生態系統。能夠利用領域驅動原則、精準業務分析的能力介面（APIs），會是一個卓有成效、現代化的面向服務架構（SOA）重要元件。
- 明確投資於試驗性（創新實驗）基礎設施，確保每個交付團隊都能使用相關工具，輕鬆測試新想法、驗證經驗收穫。
This isn’t a “build it and they will come” approach to platform building. The Digital Platform Strategy engages your business and technology stakeholders to prioritize building the most valuable capabilities in a lean, incremental manner.
這不是一個「一蹴而就」的平臺建設方法。數字平臺戰略使得企業的業務和技術利益相關者以精益、漸進的方式優先打造最具價值的能力。
The Pillars of the Digital Platform Strategy | 數字平臺戰略的（五大）支柱
Our Digital Platform Strategy framework is a blueprint for platform building that is comprised of five essential pillars (focus areas). Breaking down the complexity of an enterprise platform provides targeted focus on delivering business value through classes of foundational technology. To remove friction and build ecosystems, we focus on the key areas of delivery:
- Delivery Infrastructure
- Architecture and API Remediation
- Self Service Data
- Experiment Infrastructure and Telemetry
- Customer Touchpoint Technology
我們的數字平臺戰略框架是由五個主要支柱（重點領域）所組成的平臺建設藍圖。打破企業平臺複雜度，通過基礎技術能力建設提供有針對性的商業價值交付。為了消除技術摩擦與打造生態系統，我們專注於交付的關鍵領域（核心部分）：
- 交付基礎設施
- API 和架構治理
- 資料自服務
- 創新實驗基礎設施和監控體系
- 客戶觸點技術
Delivery Infrastructure:We take a holistic approach to infrastructure, build and release support, and observability. Elastic infrastructure and related tooling, coupled with simplified build, deployment, and monitoring enables engineers to deliver rapidly and safely, with appropriate controls and audit support. This pillar directly addresses delivery friction, reducing your time to market for new products and services.
交付基礎設施：我們採取全方位的方式來打造基礎設施、構建與釋出支援、以及監控系統。彈性基礎設施和相關工具再加上精簡化的構建、部署和監控，使工程師能夠在快速、安全地進行交付的同時，得以適當控制與審計支援。這個支柱將直接解決交付摩擦的問題，減少新產品和服務推向市場的時間。
Architecture and API Remediation:Engaging customer experiences that evolve to meet the constantly changing market require maximizing the value of existing organizational assets and business capabilities. Our approach to API and architecture includes methods for building net-new capabilities using modern service-oriented (SOA) and event-driven (EDA) approaches, as well as practices for remediating legacy systems so they effectively expose key existing assets to developers. A platform of well-factored, self-service APIs that hide the process, technical, and operational complexity of the underlying capability allows teams to move quickly to experiment with and production-alize new customer-facing solutions. We typically start by focusing internally to optimizing your own delivery capability, and can extend the approach to public API strategies to expand the ecosystem to your customers and partners.
API 和架構治理：打造響應市場不斷變化的使用者體驗，需要最大化現有組織資產與業務能力的價值。我們對 API 和架構治理的途徑包括使用現代化面向服務（SOA）和事件驅動（EDA）的方式打造網路新功能的方法，也包括治理遺留系統的具體實踐，從而有效地將關鍵的現有資產提供給開發者使用。 一個完美的自助 APIs 平臺，隱藏了底層功能的流程、技術和操作複雜度，使團隊能夠快速試驗併為生產實現提供新的面向客戶方案。通常我們會從內部開始著手優化企業的交付能力，並且能夠擴充套件公共 API 戰略的解決方案，將生態系統擴充套件到客戶與合作伙伴。
Self-Service Data:Today’s businesses rely on real-time analytics to power decisions. Data and application architecture are increasingly merging as we create more real-time, data-enabled business capabilities, while supporting advanced data science-driven analytics. Application developers need to focus on contributing to the organizational data stream and selectively tapping into it. Your data platform is therefore becoming ubiquitous. It needs to reduce friction by streamlining the use, management, and operations of complex data technologies like Kafka, Hadoop, and Spark. It should also expose a self-service ecosystem of curated data assets, addressing data strategy issues such as data lake design, data ownership, and authorization issues.
資料自服務：現今的商業依賴於實時分析來做出強有力的決策（在當今的商業世界裡，企業依賴於實時分析來做出強有力的決策）。資料和應用程式架構正由於越來越多實時的、資料支援的業務能力而融合在一起，與此同時也在支撐著進一步的資料科學驅動的分析。應用程式開發者需要專注致力於企業資料流和有選擇性地挖掘資料。因此，企業資料平臺將變得無處不在。這需要通過簡化 Kafka、Hadoop 或 Spark 等複雜資料技術的使用、管理和操作來減少摩擦（friction）。與此同時還應該暴露出一個用於管理資料資產的自服務生態系統，解決諸如資料湖設計、資料所有權和授權問題等資料戰略問題。
Experiment Infrastructure and Telemetry:Innovation lives and dies by the ability to learn quickly through purposeful, measured experimentation. Using canary release processes, toggle architecture, and meaningful instrumentation, your experiment infrastructure helps you to make the right decisions about your experiments and investments.
創新實驗基礎設施和監控體系：創新的存亡與否取決於通過有針對性、有分寸的試驗而快速學習的能力。使用金絲雀釋出流程、功能切換開關（toggle）架構和有意義的監控系統，創新實驗基礎設施能夠幫助企業對實驗與投資制定正確決策。
Customer Touchpoint Technology:Knowledge of your customer is the foundation of delivering value. Together, a consistent content strategy, a single view of the customer, and transparent telemetry provide unprecedented customer insight that enables personalized product offerings. The benefit? New, targeted value streams that can be delivered quickly across multiple channels.
使用者觸點技術：瞭解客戶是交付價值的基礎。一致的內容戰略、單一使用者視野和透明的監控體系可以共同提供前所未有的客戶洞察力，實現個性化的產品交付。好處就是能夠在多重渠道快速投放新的有針對性的價值流。
The Digital Platform Strategy Process at a Glance | 數字平臺戰略流程一覽
A Digital Platform Strategy engagement begins with a discovery to understand your customer’s business priorities, organizational complexity, and technical maturity. We then merge that with our patterns, practices, and principles of enterprise platform building. This culminates in a prioritized, lean technology strategy and platform roadmap tailored to your business needs.
數字平臺戰略始於探索，以理解客戶的業務優先順序、組織複雜性或是技術成熟度。然後，我們再將其與我們的企業平臺構建的模式、實踐和原則相結合。這將會是為企業業務需求而量身定製優先順序的精益技術戰略和平臺路線圖。
Moving into the execution phase, the partnership of strategy and delivery moves into high gear. We begin with the highest priority platform capabilities to vet strategy against reality. At this stage, we test our assumptions about organizational delivery capabilities, degree of technical debt, and remediation complexity. This allows us to deliver early platform value that underpins your key business priorities. As the engagement continues, insights from execution are fed back into continuous strategy development and review to inform the path of execution. This feedback loop fine-tunes the short- and medium-term tactical moves, while platform thinking maintains the strategic vision of meeting your business objectives.
進入到執行階段，我們的戰略與交付合作關係將會全力以赴，馬力全開。我們從最高優先順序的平臺能力建設開始著手，根據具體事實重新審視具體策略。在此階段，我們根據企業交付能力、技術債務程度和治理複雜度的具體情況，逐個測試驗證我們的假設。這使我們能夠較早地交付平臺價值，以鞏固企業關鍵業務優先順序的基礎。隨著合作的持續進行，來自於具體實施的洞見將會被反饋到持續的戰略制定與回顧中去，以制定改善新的執行路徑。這種反饋環可以對中短期的戰術實施進行微調，與此同時平臺思維則繼續維持企業商業目標所需的戰略視野。
So Where Do You Begin? | 所以，從何開始著手？
Digitally-savvy customers want to feel delighted and inspired; they expect your brand to add value to their lives. They want to feel the passion that you feel for your brand and to be part of your next great solution. Building out a scalable technology strategy that manages complexity will enable rapid development, stimulate innovation, and create new opportunity for growth. An optimized foundational technology platform is essential to being able to meet your customer’s expectations and increase their engagement with your brand.
數字化知識豐富的客戶都期望著愉悅的使用者體驗、或是從中備受鼓舞；他們期待企業品牌能夠為其生活添資增彩。他們期望感受到企業對於品牌的熱忱，並且想成為企業下一代卓越解決方案中的一員。建立可管理複雜度的、可伸縮的技術戰略，將會使得快速開發、激勵創新和創造增長新機遇成為可能。優化的基礎技術平臺對於滿足客戶期望並增強使用者品牌粘性（忠誠度/參與度）至關重要。
For more information on how to harness the creative horsepower that your enterprise already possesses, check out ThoughtWorks’ Digital Platform Strategy .
有關如何運用（駕馭）企業具備創新能力（馬力）的更多資訊，請檢視 Thought Works 的數字平臺戰略（ Digital Platform Strategy ）。