Technology Strategy Patterns

Chapter 4. Industry Context

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

Steve Jobs

In this chapter, we review three patterns useful in understanding the industry that your company operates in:

• SWOT

• Porter’s Five Forces

• Ansoff Growth Matrix

Even if you have not been explicitly asked to perform an industry analysis and are only making a local architecture, I encourage you to quickly consider your project through these lenses, as they will improve your design’s extensibility and fitness to purpose.

SWOT

You may have used a SWOT analysis. Because they’re simpler and quicker to create than other patterns in this book, they are more popularly known. We can cover this quickly.

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It gives you a view of these in a single slide.

You can conduct a SWOT analysis in three easy steps:

1. Conduct interviews with people at different levels in the organization and in different departments and roles. Ask them what they think your strengths are as an organization; what gives you competitive advantage; what people, process, and technology you have that makes a difference and helps you win in the market. Then ask them what your weaknesses are in people, process, and technology within the organization. Ask them what they see as new, different, innovative things the organization could be doing and where there is an underserved market, ...