MuleSoft Catalyst — Determine C4E Operating Model

I have spoken before about creating and requiring a Mindshift within an organisation that is embarking on the Integration journey with MuleSoft or any other Integration technology and the C4E Operating Model has a significant role to play in this. In this article on the MuleSoft Catalyst Centre for Enablement playbook, I will set the context of why this is and how the C4E is at the heart of creating that Mindshift.

In the past a lot of organisations have operated with a dedicated and professional IT function which have taken the strategy, vision and desire of the business and turned these into IT systems which will support the business goals. However, in most major organisations this is no longer sufficient especially with the advent of the Citizen developers who have been given tools to use in order to build their own business function and local IT systems, some of which by the way, may become major, even mission critical, systems within the organisation. Not only is it important to service these business customers with access to consistent and timely data but it is also now necessary to have a whole organisation, IT and Citizen developers, that can be adaptive ,responsive and able to consume data, preferably in a reusable way. In this way the organisation can meet the requirements of not only current demands but future demands and through new innovative ways of working drive the business into the future and provide a competitive edge.

For most organisations this transformation can only be achieved through the Mindset shift I referred to above but every organisation is different and therefore the operating model and structure for the C4E will vary a great deal. Just in the organisations that I am aware of the population of the C4E and the operation models are vastly different ranging from a minimum of two people to a team of eight, nine or even more operating a number of different models. In some organisations the C4E Lead may be at Director level in others the C4E may be much further down in the organisational structure. Determining the most suitable structure for the C4E needs to be based on a number of factors including:

· The size of the organisation

· Support from Executive Managers both in IT and the Business

· The commitment to use the Integration tools being provided

· The willingness of the organisation to embrace change

· The skills available to the C4E or the ability to recruit those skills

· The willingness of the business users to work with the transformation teams primarily the C4E team

· The funding available to the C4E and the business in general

· The appetite for innovation

· How the C4E wants to operate in its own space

Each of these areas are vital to the immediate formation and long-term success of the C4E and its ability to deliver value to the broader organisation as a whole.

It would be impossible to write an article that says you do this and then you do that and out of that you have the size, structure and responsibilities of a C4E. There are just too many factors to take into account and an article would become a book. It will be down to each organisation to conduct its own investigations in to the organisational structure required for the C4E. In some of my previous articles on the Centre 4 Enablement playbook I have covered some of the material that will form the basis of constructing the C4E but in this instance, I would always recommend engaging with your MuleSoft Success Manager and, if you can, to work with MuleSoft Professional Services to provide advice on the high-level overview of C4E operating models for organisations of a similar type and size. But, and there is always a but, there are two key elements that you need to consider in any scenario and these are funding and core skills.

The elephant in the room is always funding and the funding model that will support the C4E. This will be a subject for a later article when we reach that part of the Centre 4 Enablement playbook however as a brief overview we will have to consider the MuleSoft platform costs software licensing costs, vCore purchasing policy and cost and the budget for the C4E Team itself. Of course, this in turn leads us to consider the core skills required by the C4E Team and how these will be provided. My own personal view is that the C4E at least in the senior roles should be populated by permanent employees of the organisation as they will have the greatest investment in ensuring that the C4E, and the capability as a whole, are successful. Of course, this may involve providing training for key staff within the organisation and so we come full circle back to the funding issue.

The MuleSoft Catalyst Centre 4 Enablement playbook provides an example of an Operating Model but I will present another version which will cover a different scenario just to show how different the operating models you will see may be.

Example C4E Operating Model

The C4E Team will be lead by John Doe who will have the following main responsibilities

· Establishment of the Centre for Enablement

· Definition and execution of Design and Code Governance

· Ensuring that the MuleSoft Integration Platform remains operational at all times

· Liaises with the Security team to define and enforce all required security standards

· Creation of standard API fragments and C4E Processes

· Promote reuse of API’s

· Evangelise the Integration capabilities of the capability

The C4E Lead will guided by the Enterprise Architecture team and will take direction on security requirements by the Security Governance and Operational security Managers. The C4E Lead will report to the Head of Enterprise Architecture and will have a team of people to provide technical, platform, development and requirement gathering activities.

The C4E lead will facilitate the development of central IT API requirements whilst also onboarding other teams from within the business in order to provide additional integration capabilities. The funding model will be addressed at a later date