I recently came across this Platforms Rant blog by Steve Yegge - quite provocative write-up, and if you are just beginning to look into this perhaps eye-opening, I have to admit.
So how do you introduce a culture of platform development and consumption to established software development organization that has not in the past been able to accomplish this?
Here are some of the important in my mind questions that need to be answered in order to move ahead with this.
1. Customers don't buy the platform, they buy solutions to their problems. How long will corporate investors be willing to pay for this non-direct-revenue producing function in future? Will the platform funding evaporate once the grey clouds show up on the horizon? Will the next organizational leader be as enthusiastic about growing and leveraging the platform?
2. How well can the users of this platform expect to be supported within their stringent project constraints? In other words, as a Product Owner or Scrum Master, will I get better treatment by an outside vendor in terms of defect resolution and enhancement requests handling?
3. Will the platform ultimately stifle innovation benefiting our customers? How competitive can this shared platform end up in the long run? As a Product Manager planning my next release, will I be left with inferior options if confined to the use of my company's platform, particularly when more attractive options exist in the open market?
4. How will the potential future acquisition of new solutions and technologies by my company be handled with respect to platform conformance? Will the newly acquired products be exempted from platform conformance for example? Perhaps with adoption of platform my company can rely more on organic development, less on exciting, but disjoint with the rest of my product portfolio, technologies brought in from outside.
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