Fueling Success Through a Strong Technical Foundation
For companies creating technical solutions and products, establishing a robust technical foundation is crucial. This involves setting up core components and processes before diving into product design and development. A well-defined foundation streamlines development, provides clear operational standards, and equips the technical team with the tools they need to succeed.
The Importance of Assessment and Planning
Before jumping into development of the technical foundation, it's critical to emphasize the importance of a preliminary assessment and planning phase. This phase is crucial for understanding the business strategy and defining the technical requirements necessary to support it. The primary areas covered are as follows:
Understanding Business Requirements: Determining what the business is trying to achieve.
Identifying Stakeholders: Recognizing the key people and departments involved and their respective needs.
Evaluating Existing Systems: Assessing the current technological infrastructure and its capabilities.
Defining Scope: Clearly outlining the boundaries and limitations of the system.
Risk Assessment: Identifying potential challenges and developing mitigation strategies.
Defining System Requirements: Defining the functional and non-functional requirements that the system must meet to satisfy the business requirements.
Having a clear definition of these areas lays the groundwork for a successful technical foundation by ensuring that all subsequent decisions are informed and aligned with the business strategy and system requirements.
Architecting the Foundation
The technical foundation is architected through a structured process that starts with high-level strategic planning of core components and culminates in detailed system planning that specifies the infrastructure needed to satisfy system requirements.
High-Level Strategic Planning
It's essential to first establish the general strategies that will govern the technical landscape. These high-level strategies provide the framework within which more specific technical designs and strategies can be developed.
Business Technology Strategy: This defines the technology that will support business operations and the reasoning behind the selection process.
General Configuration Strategy: This strategy standardizes core configurations for cloud and organizational structures.
Cloud Security Strategy: This outlines the security posture necessary for the system, including security scoping, design, and protocols.
Cloud Operations Strategy: This strategy focuses on the systems and processes needed to standardize and automate the organization's technical solutions.
Compliance Strategy: This determines the organization's compliance requirements and the timeline for meeting them, if applicable.
This approach ensures alignment and consistency across technical initiatives.
System Planning
Once general strategies are in place, the focus can shift to architecting the infrastructure that will support the technical solution.
Network Design: This defines the networking components and topology and how it will be utilized to meet security and compliance standards.
System Design: This serves as a translation of the system requirements into a comprehensive technical solution, detailing the system's fundamental capabilities, structures, and processes, and will be in tight alignment with the network design.
Monitoring and Alerting Strategy: This details the methods for monitoring system components for issues and the communications for informing relevant stakeholders.
Logging Strategy: This strategy defines system logging protocols, which are critical for troubleshooting, security, and compliance.
After an approval process the implementation of the designs and strategies above can begin, ultimately resulting in the establishment of the technical foundation.
What Comes Next
A strong technical foundation creates an optimal environment for teams to thrive, allowing them to dedicate their expertise to designing and building exceptional products. The focus of the technical teams can shift to product design and development because the infrastructure, processes, and workflows are in place to support a streamlined development lifecycle. A lack of organization and structure in the foundation will cause a ripple effect in team efficiency and product quality, highlighting the importance of proper construction.