I’m always pleasantly surprised when I find an aspect of software delivery which I hadn’t previously considered, or seen as fully as I might have.
Today I was chatting with a colleague who it turns out has a long history in the business of superannuation (pensions, for those in the UK). I was expressing my very heart felt belief that building a business’ core domain using an off the peg system is a risky undertaking. I talked about how I could understand a company purchasing a CRM system, as customer management is a well understood space, and why spend money developing an in-house CRM system when you really only want it to do what every other CRM system does? I talked about how leveraging an off the peg system leaves the core domain at the mercy of the business which owns the system. I expressed dissatisfaction at the architecture of off the peg solutions; that they are generally monolithic and impossible to marry with today’s continuous delivery practices.
It was about at this point when she explained that the business of superannuation is predominantly legislated by the Australian government, and the main difference between funds is in choice of investment opportunity. The services made available are mandated by legislation. The way the fund is managed is by and large mandated by legislation. So much is legislated that there are off the shelf systems available which cover pretty much every aspect of managing a superannuation fund, from managing fund investments to giving members access to manage their accounts online. These systems are also kept up to date with legislative changes as and when they happen. So funds stay within the bounds of the law simply by using that software.
Ok, so the off the shelf story always sounds rosier than it is in real life, but there’s an interesting point to see here. Because the core domain of the business is not proprietary business logic, because the core domain is in fact not just well known but it’s enforced by an external third party, then an off the peg solution could perhaps model it perfectly well. Updates to the system from the vendor are driven by the same legislation as drives the business. The main differentiators between systems becomes UX and architecture.
The conversation has left me wondering whether there are any other businesses which are so highly legislated that the same logic would apply. It has also left me wondering how a business which embraces an off the shelf solution for their core domain might also find it difficult to embrace modern software delivery techniques. In fact, I wonder if they would ever reach the tipping point where it becomes necessary to raise the dev teams above simply hacking solutions together.
Coding Daddy Dobbs 