Modularity for (Not So Dumb) Dummies

Don’t worry. We get it. Whether you’re from IT or you work with someone from IT, we’ve all met that IT guy. You know the one… 

While we come from the nerd tribe, we know we’re not going anywhere until we can understand and relate to concepts and metrics that business teams (and anyone else who didn’t come from computer science or hard-core engineering) could understand and relate to. This intentionally brief overview of modularity is custom-made for anyone who isn’t a nerd’s nerd but wants to engage in creating awesome tools and experiences for consumers of value everywhere.

Why Modularity Matters

Regardless of the size or type of organization you lead or work within, you use some form of modularity every day to benefit your organization. Whether it’s the latest advances in GenAI, email and chat services, online calendaring and collaboration, using a modern smartphone, or even just driving a car, you’re benefiting from modularity.

Whether you’re with one of the digital pirates, like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, often referred to as the FAANGs, or with a classic enterprise that was built before the debut of the world wide web and is now trying to make its way as a digital settler in a new economy, your enterprise has created, leveraged, and benefitted from some form of modularity.

The term modularity is used in multiple fields, including biology, construction, media, software, and others. Across all of these contexts, modularity means the same thing:

Modularity: The design practice of partitioning a system into smaller chunks (software professionals call these chunks modules, which is a fancy word for “building blocks”) and applying 2 simple rules;

1. Each module in the system has varying degrees of interdependence and independence from the others.
2. Each module hides its complexity behind an abstraction and interface.

When a larger system is made up of multiple independent modules, software professionals characterize it as a “loosely coupled” system, which is a fancy way of saying, “easy to make changes.” APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) have become a pillar of software products everywhere because APIs are one of the easiest ways to create modularity (which makes it easier to make changes as the business needs change). Conversely, many software solutions have integrations that are “tightly coupled,” making them more difficult to change when the needs of your business change.

When a developer or technology architect talks about “using modularity” or taking an “API-based” approach to building a system, they’re really saying, “Let’s make it easy and cheap for us to make whatever changes you want without a lot of drama.”

Modularity Is All Around You

An automobile is a basic example of a modularized thing you come across in everyday life. In simplistic terms, a gas-powered automobile is made of six modules, including the engine, the brakes, the cooling system, the electrical system, the fuel system, and the exhaust. Each of these modules can be broken down into smaller modules as well. One specific thing to note about these modules in the context of an automobile is that the channels of interaction and communication between these systems are highly customized and unique depending on the make and model of the car. This uniqueness in the context of an automobile is what makes auto maintenance and repair processes unique to each vehicle all the way down to the tools used to perform basic activities like changing the oil, the battery, or even the tires.

While taking your car in for maintenance might not be your favorite way to spend a Saturday, it’s a very simple example to demonstrate how loose coupling and tight coupling work in reality:

• Your windshield wipers are loosely coupled to your car. Anyone can produce them for almost any car because the specifications for the mountings where they attach to a car are well known and standardized across the make, model, and year of almost every automobile on the road.
• The battery in your EV or hybrid car is tightly coupled to your car. When your battery needs to be replaced (yes, that’s a thing for EVs and hybrids), you can’t just go anywhere to have that done because the size, weight, interdependent componentry, and mounting specifications are not standardized.
• Your car’s tires are midway along the coupling continuum. While you have many options for replacing them, the sizes and types of tires you can put on your car are limited due to the spacing in the wheel well and the weight of your vehicle.

When comparing the systems of physical automobiles with the context of a digital system a big difference is that it has become a lot simpler to standardize the interface and communication technologies between software modules and physical ones. When an enterprise has sufficiently embraced standardized interface technology across the systems, modules, and composite parts that make up its digital capabilities and tools a new world of “plug and play” possibility emerges: A scaled form of modularity that IT professionals call “composability” (another fancy word for “easy to mix, match and remix your capabilities into new contexts of use”).

Composability has been identified as a critical attribute of digital agility among industry analysts, application developers, and technical architecture professionals. But rather than taking the tech path to describe what this term means and the value that comes from it, we’ll go the other way and use a physical world concept that most people around the world, regardless of profession or title, are familiar with: LEGO blocks.

LEGO: The Most Enduring (and Entertaining) Platform On Earth

Many technology professionals use the LEGO block metaphor to describe and communicate the value of APIs and composability in general. The LEGO metaphor is apt in many ways, none so much as how LEGO blocks leverage a specific set of conventions to allow for easy interoperability between the blocks. If you examine the submission of the patent for LEGOs you’ll notice that there are only a few parts of the specification that actually matter for the sake of interoperability: the specification of the stud (the protruding circle on the top of the brick), the gaps (the voids on the bottom of the brick where the studs can be inserted), and the border wall that encases the bricks. These three specifications allow the bricks to be connected and stacked in a variety of ways.

Another aspect of the LEGO specification that is perhaps more critical to the lasting success of LEGOs is what is not specified. There is no specification on color, brick size or shape, or really much of anything else. While many bricks follow the basic rectangle shape in the above diagram, many more do not (as shown below ). There are square bricks. There are long, flat bricks. There are tall, narrow bricks. There are bricks of all colors. Some bricks are shaped like people, animals, or even well-known fictional characters.

It is this balance between “standard conventions for interoperability” paired with “complete freedom beyond the conventions” that have made LEGOs a favorite for kids and adults for more than 60 years, no matter where they live, what language they speak, or what culture they identify with. The human instinct to create and build with tools that allow them to express an idea in their head is unlocked via the conventions of the LEGO bricks and crazy things happen.

Modularity + Standards + Variability = Innovation

The conventions of LEGO studs and gaps make it possible to create flat panels that the bricks can be attached to, allowing LEGO aficionados to create more than just individual objects but entire towns, cities, or any other type of wider microcosm that can support the individual creations to “play together.” The LEGO system acts as a shared platform for creators to turn their complex visions into reality. When the artistry is taken far enough, devotees can make things that defy expectations of what’s possible. The love for the LEGO platform is enduring for its mix of tactile fun and creative freedom. You only have to watch a child at play to see the power of the LEGO platform….But…maybe it’s more fun to look at the wildness of the devotee LEGO community:

• The amazing builds created on the reality show LEGO Masters.

• The LEGO ideas portal where thousands of creators around the globe submit their product ideas, including those that pay homage to heroes and icons who’ve made the world a better place like Bob Ross.

Modularity Makes Scaled Innovation Cheap, Easy, and Fun!

Within the LEGO ecosystem, the self-revealing nature of how LEGO blocks can be arranged in an endless variety of ways allows anyone who picks up a set of blocks (regardless of their understanding of how the blocks were made) to manifest a vision inside their head. This ease of assembly and no need to understand the makings of the blocks is what makes these compelling building blocks “composable.” In a digital ecosystem, APIs are modules within that ecosystem that are said to be composable because they act as beacons for curious consumers to arrange them as they see fit.

The most successful companies born in the digital age have a modular structure to both their software systems, and to their organizations. The modular capabilities are decontextualized, standardized, and in many cases publicized, making them composable across a plethora of processes and user experiences. This “composability” of their capabilities puts the owners of these capabilities into an enviable position. Like a kid let loose in LEGOLand, you’ll be able to leverage a new financial asset: “optionality” (one last fancy word that means “the right but not the obligation to do something”). Having optionality allows an organization to opportunistically pounce on new market opportunities through serendipitous innovation.

Using API-based modularity is a fundamental part of the digital pirate toolkit. It’s a foundational concept in almost every successful and enduring technology tool and scaled digital enterprise. Being able to create, identify, and conserve optionality is the specific method that has brought unexpected treasures to digital explorers. These treasures, in the form of revenue, market share, new category creation, have materialized at such immense scale that it’s hard to imagine these 10X wins as anything but the product of a small group of intentional geniuses who span the technical and business domains. But, after reviewing and unpacking the successes of both the digital pirates and the digital settles, we can unequivocally say that the biggest wins from these organizations are closer to an “accidental discovery of opportunity” made more possible because they had designed their systems with modularity in mind.

This discovery of accidental treasure is not limited to the new world of digital economies. Many of the most important and valuable scientific and product breakthroughs across history were the result of happy accidents that were not fully intentional and could not have been predicted. Whether we’re talking about the formulation of Coca-Cola, the discovery of penicillin, or the classic children’s toy “Silly Putty,” the list of accidental discoveries is so vast and contains so many iconic items and aspects of everyday life, that it demands a rethinking of how to apply the scientific method to accelerate innovation.

The Next Step on Your Path to a Modular Future

Within our book, Unbundling the Enterprise: APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents, you’ll not only find a deeper explanation of how all this stuff works in terms business professionals, product leaders, and finance owners can understand, but you’ll also get to see for yourself how API-based modularity has created these awesome financial wins, over and over again, in enterprises around the globe.

When we began the process of writing our book, we had two primary goals:

1. Help the not-so-technical leaders around the world understand that the massive treasures to be had from API ecosystems were not limited to the digital giants but were, in fact, available to any enterprise that had the conviction to see the program through to fruition.
2. Help leaders from business, design, and technology see the full picture of how APIs and modularity deliver compelling financial and market advantage

We know that IT terms and concepts can be intimidating to the point that some people think the concepts are beyond them. This is why we put the effort in to make each and every concept accessible to all types of professionals, especially those professionals who didn’t spend years in computer science classes.

Your next step on this journey is to have a little faith in yourself. Faith that your accumulated acumen and expertise from working in business, design, or people leadership are actually the core skills required to pull back the mysterious curtain that shrouds the world of tech strategy. You, too, have the power to leverage the forces harnessed by the tech moguls. Modularity and the benefits that come from it are not only available to you, they’re not wildly expensive and they’re also not rocket science or brain surgery.

Once you’ve seen exactly how modularity allows the process of innovation to be systematized and repeated at scale, you won’t be able to stop yourself from applying the lessons that have now been made clear.

- About The Authors

Matt McLarty

Matt McLarty is the Chief Technology Officer for Boomi. He works with organizations around the world to help them digitally transform using a composable approach. He is an active member of the global API community, has led global technical teams at Salesforce, IBM, and CA Technologies, and started his career in financial technology. Matt is an internationally known expert on APIs, microservices, and integration. He is co-author of the O'Reilly books Microservice Architecture and Securing Microservice APIs, and co-host of the API Experience podcast. He lives with his wife and two sons in Vancouver, BC.

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Stephen Fishman

Stephen Fishman (Fish) is the NA Field CTO for Boomi. He is a practicing technologist who brings creativity, rigor, and a human-centric lens to problem-solving. Known as an expert in aligning technology and business strategy, Stephen places a premium on pushing business and technology leaders to embrace iteration and the critical need to collaborate across disciplines. Throughout his career, Stephen has consulted with organizations desiring to transform their technology-based offerings to better meet the needs of organizations and the people they serve. In addition to consulting with large organizations, Stephen is an in-demand speaker and advisor. Stephen has led multidisciplinary teams to deliver amazing results at Salesforce, MuleSoft, Cox Automotive, Sapient, Macy's, and multiple public sector institutions including the US Federal Reserve and the CDC. He lives in Atlanta with his family and when he's not working can be found biking on the many trails in Georgia.

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