Completing the Platform: An Interview with Jeff Richard

Article Summary Jeff Richard, Senior Director of Enabling Platform Integration, sat down with Marc-Philip Brenninkmeijer, a member of the A&P Integrations team, to talk about what it means to be done with the platform and what will come next. Jeff was very excited to discuss the implications of this key milestone and how it will shape future stages in the development process. He hopes the interview will help the whole Philips IT community appreciate the significance of this accomplishment. Marc-Philip Brenninkmeijer: What do you take done to mean when we say the platform is done? Does done mean we dont have more work to do? What criteria are used to determine when the process should be called done? Jeff Richard: When I think about what it means to be done, I think of three things: the people, the processes, and the technology. In this situation, done means completely done. Its about the? delivery of all three aspects of the platform. The technology itself isnt what matters, although it can sometimes seem that way to those of us who work on the technology side of things. In actuality, its more about the processes these technological tools enable and the people they serviceabout how they add value to the business overall. By the way, its probably useful to note that done means different things for different development methodologies. Traditionally, organizations used to think about application development using the waterfall methodology. According to this model, you first define everything youre going to do upfront, and then you start working. Its hierarchical, linear, sequential: you dont move on to do more work until youve completed the previous stage. For that reason it can be rigidit can be hard to get from point A to point Z because there are so many places where you can get stuck in quicksand in between. Companies that stuck to this methodology in the past could take years to bring a transition to completion, losing their competitive edge in the process.

Figure 1: A representation of the classical waterfall development methodology So Philips, for many good reasons, has adopted an alternative methodology, the so-called agile mindset. The agile model is all about flexibility, about changing direction quickly and efficiently to outmaneuver our competitors (like GE and Siemens). So the classical notion of done is different now then it was in the past,

and we have to think more fluidly about what done means. All the key capabilities of the platform have been realized, but because we operate on an agile model, theres still work ahead of us.

Figure 2: A representation of the more dynamic agile development methodology Marc-Philip Brenninkmeijer: I find that distinction, between the waterfall and agile methodologies, very interesting. Could you say more about why agility is so important to a company like Philips? Jeff Richard: The basic idea is that agility allows us to be more flexible. But flexibility itself isnt the goal, isnt the point. The point is that, for a company like Philips operating in a highly volatile technological market, you have to be able to adapt quickly, to move innovations from the planning stage through the implementation stage to market as smoothly and efficiently as possiblebecause if you dont, someone else is going to beat you to it. We all know how rapidly technology changes these days. So weve got to be able to execute development more fluidly, more quickly. Hence the agile way of thinking. Frans Van Houten, who took charge of Philips in 2011, started this transformation with the goal of keeping Philips competitive in the market. Marc-Philip Brenninkmeijer: Speaking of done, what exactly have we done? What has this process of bringing the platform to completion involved? Jeff Richard: Thats a great questionI was hoping youd ask! What we really focused on was delivering our enterprise integration platform, which includes the enterprise service bus and the business process management (BPM) components. In October those two key components of PILtwo foundational components on which everything in PIL ultimately dependswill go on to full production, meaning that infrastructure and operations will take them over and a full service description will become available. That represents a significant milestone in terms of realizing the capabilities for enterprise usage across building our PIL target and transition architectures. These capabilities integrate our very best PIL components, helping to manage and harmonize our business processes and enable a number of future capabilities that will be realized across multiple PIL business streams. So, to sum up: we purchased the platform in June of last year and kicked off the formal PIL program to realize the integration capabilities we acquired in January. Over the last nine months we have also been working with our MDTs (Multi-Disciplinary Teams) that span Philips as well as our partners to deploy the capabilities and

make them fully operational through infrastructure and operations. We also opened a fully functional delivery center, alongside the platform, to help transition coding goals into coding realities. Marc-Philip Brenninkmeijer: What is your vision for the future of A&P Integrations? Whats next? What can we expect to roll out in the next couple of weeks? Jeff Richard: We are closing in on a leading deployment for the Philips Integrated Landscape (PIL) program, which is to deliver a significant PIL pilot in 2014. In addition, we are looking across the PIL streams to identify additional whitespots. Whitespots are unanticipated problems that are discovered during the process of developing the pilot. Were aiming for early 2014 to resolve those whitespots, including Management File Transfer (MFT) and application governments, to name just a few. Just a reminder: you can find our MFT guidelines on our wikipages. For the rest of 2014 our focus will be on the engineering aspect of the platform. The idea is to further fine tune and optimize the platform as a whole, with the goal of making things reusable and self-sufficient, driving down costs and risks, allowing for the standardization of business processes within Philips. Marc-Philip Brenninkmeijer: Thanks Jeff, that is great! I am sure everyone reading this will be satisfied with Philips achievements and goals for the future.