Digital consultancy and the art of problem solving

I first read Grady's work in his software engineering book Object Orientated Analysis and Design with Applications; I read this book for a greater understanding of Booch notation, however what I got out of the first few chapters was far more valuable.

In the opening chapters of the book Grady looks at the essentials of defining and solving problems in software engineering. The cross over between software engineering and digital consultancy is not immediately apparent, but for the techniques that Grady discusses are general enough to cross over into most areas of analysis and strategy. Basic problem decomposition revolves around the "divide et impera" school, split the problem down and down into more manageable chunks and solve each little piece at a time; Grady does this as well, but extends further into four core areas of division:

• Abstraction
• Encapsulation
• Modularity
• Hierarchy

Each of these has their own particular role to play in digital consultancy and digital strategy.

Abstraction

"An abstraction denotes the essential characteristics of an object that distinguish it from all other kinds of objects and thus provide crisply defined conceptual boundaries, relative to the perspective of the viewer."

When approaching digital consultancy for a company Red Ant focus on the brand and what it is about a brand that distinguishes it from all other brands. The focus and theme of any digital strategy is based around the abstraction of the brand online and into digital strategy channels.

Encapsulation

"Encapsulation is the process of encapsulating the elements of an abstraction that constitutes its structure and behaviour; encapsulation serves to separate the contractual interface of an abstraction and its implementation."

Within digital consultancy, elements of a digital strategy rarely work in isolation. As part of an ongoing digital strategy each particular channel is encapsulated within a group combined across common goals and aims. These may be end goals of awareness over conversion, or they might be encapsulated into audience groups.

Modularity

"Modularity is the property of a system that have been decomposed into a set of cohesive and loosely coupled modules"

The different constituent parts of a digital strategy can be defined as a series of modules. The modularity of a digital strategy is defined by how well each of the digital campaign channels are split, how well they work together to deliver the common goals and how they work to deliver on secondary goals (and potentially primary goals), as standalone elements of the digital campaign.

Hierarchy

"Hierarchy is the ranking or ordering of abstractions"

Focus, digital consultancy must have focus around the primary goals, the effectiveness across KPIs and the generated ROI. Each part of a digital strategy must be rated and weighted against the primary goals and the strongest abstractions, the success and focus of each channel can be rated using the ROI framework.

This blog post was written by Richard Conyard

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