Many IT professionals seem obsessed about the distinction between configuration and customization, and tend to view the latter as an evil to run a mile from. We need configuration, for sure — but we need a reality check and consider the entire cost of providing the configurability before we discard customization. Configurability beyond a certain point has diminishing return and you may be better o looking for a golden middle way that allows you to strike a better balance between the two.
Let me run you through a quick thought experiment by comparing to another product to illustrate what I mean.
Let’s pretend I am a team member in the Vik Global Corporation and I have a real business need — I need new pants. The old ones are worn out with holes and I have gotten to a point where it is hurting my business to use them further, as not many customers would buy services from a guy with holes in his pants.
So I approached the Clothing Technology Department with my need, who assigned a Business Analyst to the case. She quickly assembled a team to have a requirements gathering session. She also pointed out that there were many viable providers of pants locally in Houston, and decided to bring on an objective external consultant to help with the whole requirements gathering and vendor selection process.
The external consultant had worked with many pant-wearing business people in the past and came highly recommended as an objective and unbiased consultant. Working with the Business Analyst he quickly discovered other people in the organization who appeared to have similar needs: Johnny from the Norway division also needed new pants, as well as Ivar, Anne, Julie, Sofia, and Carla.
Over the next few months we had several teleconferences to detail out our requirements. We quickly determined our needs were quite di erent — I wanted black pants, Johnny and Ivar blue, Sofia pink, Julie red and Anne white. The consultant patiently listened to our needs and carefully wrote down the requirements.
After a while the consultant had come up with a complete business requirements list. Some of the key Pants requirements were:
Must be configurable to allow selection of color, at a minimum black, blue, pink, red and white
Inseam must be configurable between 16′′ and 30′′.
Waist must be configurable between 15′′ and 36′′.
Must be able to configure how many pockets are needed, as well as their depth.
User must be able to change the style of zippers themselves.
He assembled a detailed Request for Information (RFI) consisting of 67 pages of requirements and questions to highlight the di erent vendors’ experience in supplying global Pants solutions.
Several vendors where dismissed due to lack of global capability, while others were dismissed because of lacking features — some couldn’t provide pockets, others lacked zippers, and yet others were dismissed due to lacking configurability.
It came down to two options:
- Global Pant Masters, with their Pants 3000 Solution: They submitted a completely configurable solution using the latest smart materials to allow color configurability, 4D Sewing Materials to allow for configurable inseam and waist, 3D Pocket Printing capabilities, and ZipIt technology to allow for the zipper configurations. They suggested using Pant Consulting Inc as their partner to implement the system, who would supply a team of three to each geographic location that would provide the necessary training and configuration services. They would also handle all the dry cleaning and upgrades of the pants in the future.
Total price: $1,000,000 for the configurable pants, and $3,000,000 in system implementation services. - Pant Tailors Inc: Using pants supplied by one of the biggest brands, they o ered to provide one customized Pant for each Division that would be cut to length, and with the desired color, waist, pockets and zipper.
Total price: $100 x 7, plus $20 x 7 for tailor services. In addition, they suggested to provide a one-person team, a Pant Consultant, that would provide necessary support and customizations on- demand in the future, as additional needs would surface.
The Clothing Technology Department laughed their pants o when they saw Pant Tailors Inc’s proposal. How were they going to maintain such a disparate solution? What about color governance and adherence to the best practices in Waist sizes?
They naturally awarded the contract to Global Pant Masters.
Three years later, here is the picture of one of their users in the Norway Division:
Clearly a successful implementation.
Building excessive configuration options into a system complicates the system and adds cost. This cost needs to be recovered through higher license and maintenance fees. If you only need a fraction of the configurable options a customized solution can serve you better.
In short, let’s simplify IT and systems deployment and refocus on what the individual business groups needs are. They will typically not be exactly the same elsewhere in your organization…To borrow a phrase from B. Joseph Pine II, ”Fundamentally customers don’t want choice; they just want exactly what they want.”
Why can’t we just give them that?
Vik Bulletin 