Suggested Approach

Owned by Selvyn Wright
Last updated: May 08, 2024
3 min read

One of the most important things to do when trying to do architectural work is to not waste time. To achieve this, you need to have a very clear view of the goal of the client/customer.

Here, they are trying to build a platform that brokers businesses (companies with a brand) and distributors (individuals or businesses at conferences who will get those branded products into the hands of brand fans). They are not interested in being a platform like Amazon Seller's Market, or Shopify (study these platforms to be sure you understand the difference). They want a product that brokers the merchandise of large corporations like Microsoft, Google etc to companies or individuals at conference shows who are brand fans.

Market research will show that very few individuals will actually go out of their way to purchase these types of products. But corporations and other organisations want to give them away because it’s all about the brand and marketing. So we want to get the merchandise from the supplier (the one who actually makes the product) to whoever is going to get them into the hands of the end customer (we’ll call these the distributor)

So who’s going to pay for this? It needs to be the company that’s pushing its brand. These companies want to get their branded products in the hands of someone like WiP Ltd who can do the heavy lifting for them. So the platform needs to allow the company who’s pushing its brand to purchase a branded product from a product maker, and then have those branded products distributed to conferences. This means there are two suppliers that your system needs to deal with

  1. the product maker

  2. the organisation that wants the product branded

Currently, the platform is just an e-commerce platform selling goods with no thought about how those goods are sourced or distributed.

Some terms to help us

Product Supplier - the company that makes the product

Product Owner - the company that owns the brand

Product Distributor - the company that will get the product from Product Supplier

Target Customer - the company that will take possession of the branded product

Target Stakeholder Interaction Map

image-20240507-192532.png

An approach

  1. You can’t change what you don’t know, so you need a map of the current world

    1. You need a view of the current system context

    2. What’s the current operating model? It would seem to be an application platform that allows organisations like Shopify or Amazon to display and sell goods, but there is very little information on where the goods come from (the source of products being sold) and how they are sent to those who buy them

    3. You need a view of the current application capability (what can it actually do for you? Run it and see)

    4. You will need to look at the current data model

    5. You will need a view of the application services (docker-compose.yml file)

    6. You will need to ask how is it currently deployed. Is it just one instance, 2, 3 etc, how does it scale? Does it have user security? What’s it’s deployment security, zones, firewalls etc (talk to Selvyn)?

  2. Be careful when you are mapping out the current world, you don’t conflate your thinking by introducing the target view

  3. Talk to JJ. If you can’t hold of JJ, talk to his secretary Selvyn