If you only focus on the functions, it is easy to fall into the dilemma of “the more you do, the worse you make mistakes”. This article uses the metaphor of “urban planning vs. interior decoration” to break down the grand enterprise architecture into four main lines: business, data, application, and technology, and then fall into the modules, data flows, and technology stacks of the product architecture, allowing you to see the business source behind each requirement.
In the previous article, I have shared with you how we analyze the business. So today, let’s talk about how to use the analyzed business to design our product architecture, if we use more professional words, how to use enterprise architecture to design our product architecture.
01 Introduction to cognition: first understand the basic concepts
1.1 Four-dimensional deconstruction of enterprise architecture
Let’s first answer a question, what is enterprise architecture? A standard definition is given here
【Standard Definition】Enterprise architecture is the top-level design framework that connects enterprise strategy and implementation plan, and systematically describes the enterprise operation model and technical support system through the organic collaboration of the four pillars of business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, and technical architecture.
If you translate it from the perspective of the product.
Enterprise architecture definition from the product manager’s perspective
Business architecture: the “business engine” of the enterprise, defining core value creation processes (e.g., order fulfillment chain for manufacturing enterprises, product lifecycle management for retail enterprises)
Data architecture: the “digital blood” of the enterprise, planning the collection, storage, governance, and circulation of data assets (such as the unified management plan of customer master data).
Application architecture: the “business nervous system” of the enterprise, designing the system combination and interaction relationship that supports the business (such as ERP and CRM system integration solutions)
Technology architecture: the “digital chassis” of the enterprise, determining technology selection and infrastructure architecture (such as cloud-native architecture selection strategy)
The evolution process of products in an enterprise is the following stages
Enterprise Strategy → Business Architecture (What to Do with the Enterprise) → Data Architecture (What Data Support is Needed) → Application Architecture (What System to Implement) → Technical Architecture (How to Build Server/Network) → Product Architecture (How to Design Specific Functions)
1.2 The engineering nature of product architecture
The second term is product architecture.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
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Professional definition: Product architecture is the middle-layer design of the transformation of business requirements into technology, and builds a system blueprint that meets business feasibility, technical scalability, and user experience through functional module division, data flow definition, and interface specification formulation.
The most common B-end product architecture logic can be called the Lego assembly rule:
- Base layer: The basic data center (common modules such as users, organizations, and permissions)
- Functional layer: business core modules (e.g., procurement management, production planning)
- Interaction layer: Multi-terminal adaptation components (PC workbench, mobile APP, API interface layer)
The core goals of any product architecture design are the following three:
- Business perspective: solve “where does the money come from” (such as supply chain optimization, customer conversion improvement)
- Technical perspective: solve “how to support the system” (such as data interface design, microservice splitting)
- User perspective: Solve the problem of “whether it is easy to use” (such as whether the operation path is concise)
2. Advanced understanding: What is the relationship between product architecture and enterprise architecture?
First of all, explain it in the vernacular:
-Corporate architecture is urban planning: determining the location of commercial and residential areas (business zoning)
-The product architecture is interior decoration: the purpose of each room (module division), water and electricity wiring (data flow)
Urban Planning vs Product Design Comparison Table:
When we usually derive a specific product architecture or a new product architecture design, we are essentially deriving from the enterprise architecture.
For example, in the enterprise, when the management wants to strengthen the capacity building of so-and-so this year, it is all about promoting business capabilities, and then for informatization, it is translating the core part of business capabilities into product opportunities.
Let me give you an example:
【25 years of core business capabilities】Supply chain collaborative capacity building
We can clearly see here that the core of each product capability is derived from business capabilities.
Therefore, mastering the enterprise architecture is the underlying logic of B-end product design, this sentence is not too much at all, only if you have a deeper understanding of the business development of the enterprise, your product architecture design can be correct and highly in line with the needs of the enterprise.
