Cloud Native Transformation

Chapter 11. Applying the Patterns: A Transformation Design Story, Part 1

This is a detailed design for a cloud native transformation. Here we will lay out patterns from start to finish, explaining the order and reason for the choices as we go along. It’s a lengthy and involved process, so we have divided it into two chapters. This one covers the period from pre-initiative prep through the point where we have researched, experimented, and prototyped until successfully uncovering the likely best transformation path. Part 2 picks up with verifying the path and beginning to build a production-ready cloud native platform, carries through onboarding everyone onto the new system with a new way of working, and then moves to shutting down the old one.

For several chapters now we have watched WealthGrid struggle with multiple attempts at a cloud native transformation, only to fail each time. The story we are going to tell now is how to do it right—in other words, what WealthGrid would have done, had they known better. We will be using patterns to show the way, so that now you will know better.

First, let’s take a quick review of the story thus far.

WealthGrid’s first erroneous attempt to move to cloud native is an extremely common strategy: treating the transformation as only a minor technology shift. Many companies try exactly this, and equally many fail at it. The technology is new and rests upon a complex distributed architecture, so right away you have two things nobody at WealthGrid ...