outcome oriented

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!

Theodore Levitt

I do believe the above quote from HBS legendary professor did not only resonate well with the sales/marketing people but also to technical people, us: engineer, architect, consultant. Even I think the idea is universally applicable, that at the end of the day, results are what appreciated the most.

Take a transformation initiative as an example. Transformation is huge undertaking for any organization, it is hard to make the decision, it feels heavy to make the first step. In my professional world, Digitalization is the theme of the transformation initiative of any organization in the recent times. There are so many jargons, methodologies, underlying mechanics and parts to keep-up with the rise of Digitalization, but in my opinion all leads to a common idea, a Software Defined paradigm i.e: Overlays. Yes, Cloud is an overlay. This topic itself would require a dedicated rants haha…

Back to Prof. Levitt’s quote.

With those so many jargons, methodologies and approaches, it is easy for organization to get confused, lost and even become a victim of their Digital Transformation: stuck in transformation limbo. An unfinished transformation is not only a waste of investment, but also a cost burden. Maintaining transitional state is additional cost and might add-up to higher overall cost compare to the initial state where the transformation started. Those are some of the reason why the hardest part of starting transformation initiative is to decide what method to be used for each of the transformation theme.

Public, private or hybrid cloud ? heck, even going cloud or not

Single Cloud vs Multi cloud?

VxLAN, MPLS, SRMPLS or SRv6 ?

Perimeter vs Zero-trust ?

VM or Containers ?

and many more…

Above quote is reminder for us that all must come back to the result, the use-cases. It has to be use-case driven and not a method(technology)-driven. Yes, Cloud is cool and all but does it fit your agenda ? SRv6 is very powerful but do you have your use-case for it ? Zero Trust is so hype but is it even applicable for you ?

As an architect developing design or solution we have to be more into what are our customer actual objective and use-cases, not design principle or best-practises. As sales people we should stop focusing on how powerful and superior our product are and start to see how our product aligns with our customer needs. As a service provider we should stop blindly adopting new and fancy technology but to ask ourselves again what are our use-cases, how those technologies would fit and at the end benefit our customer.

It is okay to worry how to execute it well, but it is more important to re-examine why we need to execute it…