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Product Line Blueprint

Here it is, the blueprint (patent pending) you’ve been waiting for:

Need a little less abstraction? Well, how about this refinement:

Piece of cake, no? It’s easy to “figure out“:

  • the number of layers needed in the platform,
  • the functionality and connectivity within and between each of the layers in the stack
  • the granularity of the peer entities that go into each layer and which separates the layers
  • the peer-to-peer communication protocols and dependencies within each layer
  • the interfaces provided by, and required by, each layer in the stack
  • what your horizontally, integrate-able App component set should be for specific product instantiations
  • how much time, how much money, and how many people it will take to stand up the stack
  • how many different revenue-generating product variants will initially be needed for economic viability
  • how to secure all the approvals needed
  • how to manage the inevitable decrease in conceptual integrity and increase in entropy of the product factory stack over time – the maintenance problem

Perhaps easiest of all is the last bullet; the continuous, real-time management of the core asset base IF the product factory stack is actually built and placed into operation. After all, it’s not like trying to herd cats, right?

Please feel free to use this open source (LOL!) product line template to instantiate, build, and exploit your own industry and domain specific product line(s). Enough intellectualizing and “strategizing” about doing it in useless committees, task forces, special councils, tiger teams, and blue ribbon panels. There’s money to be made, joy to be distributed, and toes to be stepped on; so just freakin’ do it.

Is this post still too abstract to be of any use? Let’s release some more helium from our balloon and descend from the sky just a wee bit more so that we can get a glimpse of what is below us. Try out “revision 0” of this blueprint instantiation for a hypothetical producer of radar systems:

Did you notice the increase in tyranny of detail and complexity as we transcended the 3 levels of abstraction in this post? Well, it gets worse if we continue on cuz we don’t yet have enough information, knowledge, or understanding to start cutting code, building, testing, and standing up the stack – not nearly enough. Thus, let’s just stop right here so we can retain a modicum of sanity. D’oh! Too late!

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  1. September 7, 2012 at 4:50 am
  2. July 24, 2014 at 5:49 am

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