Your organization as an ecosystem
/Your organization is an ecosystem it's a living breathing entity. Pieces live and breathe, they die and are renewed. This exists as the true Agility and health of your organization. Where you spend your time refactoring code to make it run smoother, where you can test automation and where you might even throw something away. This is similar to the life of an ecosystem and a forest. Some might even dare to call it the circle of life.
In this first chapter, walk this path with me to visualize a forest any forest, it's big broad, vast and stretches for miles now look closer at the trees, the plants, the flowers, the weeds and roots, what is lying underneath the soil cultivating your forest.
The trees, plants and flowers of your forest are what you can see in your organization...what's above the ground, they are your products that are visible to your customer. The ecosystem requires that you support them with healthy soil and by sustaining them with water and the golden rays of the sun. They live and breathe, parts of them die, fall off and are renewed again. The circle of life and the coding world are not so different.
Your code and infrastructure are the roots, what they don't see, but exist to nurture your product. The code is the roots of the trees, plants, flowers, leaves, pine cones that sustain your forest. Teams works to sustain the forest, rebuild the code by refactoring it, pay less attention to older areas of the code when necessary. Similarly like you would forget about the old oak tree in your front yard, it's just there, sustaining. In your forest, you would nurture the newer areas to make sure they grow and get sun. Developers are the gardeners of our age, they tend the code. Your QA team is there to pull out the weeds, make sure nothing is trying to interrupt your code. Rock formations may also exist as what’s permanent in your product like legacy code or infrastructure that's old and just works.
The design of the forest will impact the sun in areas, the plants are product that will thrive. The design of your forest is somewhat impacted by the bird that migrate through it...planting seeds for new trees along the way and creating a newer version of the forest. Is this your release cycle? That could happen daily or weekly. Much like the design of your product will affect users if users like deer, robins, skunks, and squirrels will live and thrive in your forest.
Your customers are the animals, birds and insects that can thrive in this environment. The animals that visit the forest will decide if they can live there, can your product support them in the food and plants that they need? What animals would like a forest in the Pacific Northwest varies from an animal that thrives in the Sahara desert. The animals that can live there will stay and support your forrest.
A deer strolls through your forest, perhaps they eat a few wild berries and keep wandering. Will they stay in the forest doesn't suit them. If you relate this to your customers for your product. Each animal and customer has different needs, will your forest suit them?
From this perspective, think about who is your customer in your ecosystem? The next chapter will look at this perspective.