Updated strategy pages.

docs/index.md

@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 These are all my own opinions and only offer a perspective from my experience working in and along many different organizations. I will try and cover many topics related to network automation and I hope to be able to convey the why, what, how and who of network automation.
 
+I think the first question we need to ask is **why**?
+
 ## Reasons WHY
 
 If we take a look at some of the reasons **why** an organization may want to adopt network automation:
@@ -10,7 +12,7 @@ If we take a look at some of the reasons **why** an organization may want to ado
 - **Cost Reduction and Resource Optimization** to reduce the operating and capital costs associated with managing the network.
 - **Enhancing Security and Compliance** is critical in today's security landscape and in some industries it is a mandate to retain configuration drift for auditing purposes.
 
-There a lot more reasons **why** an organization may want to adopt network automation, but I think we need to ask ourselves **why** we may want to adopt network automation.
+There are a lot more reasons **why** an organization may want to adopt network automation, but I think we need to ask ourselves **why** we may want to adopt network automation.
 
 - **Provide self-service for the network** to provide simple interfaces for users to consume the network that helps **enhance operational efficiency** AND allows you to get away from constantly logging into devices and provisioning a new VLAN.
 - **Manage the network as code** to be able to write tests for network changes, configuration rendering and remediation, etc. to **enhance security and compliance** AND reduces the amount of times you will have to diff two different snapshots to get an answer to your boss ASAP.
@@ -26,4 +28,4 @@ There are many strategies when it comes to network automation adoption, but at t
 
 ## Network Automation Platform
 
-The platform is a critical component in the decision making process. The requirements need to be clear as to why the platform should exist and what the business problems the platform will be solving, and how users (who) will be able to utilize the platform.
+The platform is a critical component in the decision making process. The requirements need to be clear as to why the platform should exist and what the business problems the platform will be solving, and how users (who) will be able to utilize the platform. In the majority of context, we want to make the platform consumable and easy to use by network engineers.

docs/strategies/platform_centralized.md

@@ -1,17 +1,20 @@
-# Network Automation Strategies
+# Strategy: Centralized
 
-A strategy is how your organization is structured which will dictate your strategy or may require an organizational update to adhere to the selected strategy.
+This strategy is typically geared towards larger organizations that may already have a tool or platform team. It is important to work with their leadership with what your high level objectives are and see if they can accommodate new use-cases and potentially new tooling.
 
-- **Centralized Platform**: This will typically have a larger team or organization that will maintain the tools and components within the Network Automation Platform. Your customers in turn are engineers who utilize the platform to accomplish business objects by building automation and self service automation. This allows the platform organization to understand the needs of customers and the lifecycle of the platform such as bug fixes or new feature requests of the platform.
-- **Decentralized Platform**: Each team will have their own automation platform and these may or may not look similar, but each team is responsible for managing their automation platform, but have full control.
-- **Hybrid Platform**: This will be a mixture of **both** of the above strategies, but the mixture will look different in each organization.
+The centralized strategy will allow your network engineers to focus on consuming the platform rather than building and managing your own platform. Increasing the efficiency with current network engineers with minimal upskilling is most ideal and allows the network engineers to continue to primarily focus on networking while changing their method of how they interact with the network.
 
-![Automation Strategies](strategies.png)
+It may be worth it to create your own platform team to manage the organizations' network automation platform and may require organizational changes to accommodate this new strategy.
 
-## Strategy Comparison
+![Automation Strategies](strategies-centralized.png)
 
-| Objective | Centralized Platform | Decentralized Platform | Hybrid Platform |
-| --------- | -------------------- | ---------------------- | --------------- |
-| Allow users of the platform to focus on business value | :white_check_mark: | :warning: | :x: |
-| Allows individual teams to have more control over the platform | :x: | :white_check_mark: | :warning: |
-| Minimizes scope of managed platform components but not completely | :x: | :x: | :white_check_mark: |
+## Pros and Cons
+
+| Pro/Con | Description |
+| ----------------------- | ----------- |
+| :white_check_mark: | Allows minimal upskilling for network engineers |
+| :x: | External dependencies can impede delivery of automation |
+| :white_check_mark: | Utilize existing platform capabilities and not reinvent the wheel |
+| :white_check_mark: | Remain focused on organizations' core strengths |
+| :x: | Increased complexity due to accounting for a large number of use-cases |
+| :x: | Blast radius increases as the more organizations and users are on-boarded into the platform |

docs/strategies/platform_decentralized.md

@@ -1,17 +1,16 @@
-# Network Automation Strategies
+# Strategy: Decentralized
 
-A strategy is how your organization is structured which will dictate your strategy or may require an organizational update to adhere to the selected strategy.
+This strategy can be common in small to medium sized enterprises, but could also thrive in large corporations that operate heavily in silos.
 
-- **Centralized Platform**: This will typically have a larger team or organization that will maintain the tools and components within the Network Automation Platform. Your customers in turn are engineers who utilize the platform to accomplish business objects by building automation and self service automation. This allows the platform organization to understand the needs of customers and the lifecycle of the platform such as bug fixes or new feature requests of the platform.
-- **Decentralized Platform**: Each team will have their own automation platform and these may or may not look similar, but each team is responsible for managing their automation platform, but have full control.
-- **Hybrid Platform**: This will be a mixture of **both** of the above strategies, but the mixture will look different in each organization.
+A common reason why this strategy is chosen is to be able to increase agility in each team and allow them to manage their own platform rather than getting stuck in bureaucracy that the **centralized** strategy typically manifests. This strategy can foster innovation and if the information is dispersed, can benefit many other organizations organically.
 
-![Automation Strategies](strategies.png)
+![Automation Strategies](strategies-decentralized.png)
 
-## Strategy Comparison
+## Pros and Cons
 
-| Objective | Centralized Platform | Decentralized Platform | Hybrid Platform |
-| --------- | -------------------- | ---------------------- | --------------- |
-| Allow users of the platform to focus on business value | :white_check_mark: | :warning: | :x: |
-| Allows individual teams to have more control over the platform | :x: | :white_check_mark: | :warning: |
-| Minimizes scope of managed platform components but not completely | :x: | :x: | :white_check_mark: |
+| Pro/Con | Description |
+| ----------------------- | ----------- |
+| :white_check_mark: | Allows each team full control of the tools in their platform |
+| :x: | Typically requires teams to split into an infrastructure vs engineer and has less engineers delivering business value |
+| :white_check_mark: | Avoids bureaucracy at the cost of maintenance of the platform |
+| :x: | Potentially displaces priority and evolves into "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" situation |

docs/strategies/platform_hybrid.md

@@ -1,17 +1,12 @@
-# Network Automation Strategies
+# Strategy: Hybrid
 
-A strategy is how your organization is structured which will dictate your strategy or may require an organizational update to adhere to the selected strategy.
+This will most likely be where most organizations will fall under as most organizations will offer some components that are valuable across normal domains such as Ansible that excels at configuration management for servers and network devices and one team may be responsible for managing Ansible for all organizations. This still requires teams to manage some components only they care about or provides a layer above their domain to provide it as a service.
 
-- **Centralized Platform**: This will typically have a larger team or organization that will maintain the tools and components within the Network Automation Platform. Your customers in turn are engineers who utilize the platform to accomplish business objects by building automation and self service automation. This allows the platform organization to understand the needs of customers and the lifecycle of the platform such as bug fixes or new feature requests of the platform.
-- **Decentralized Platform**: Each team will have their own automation platform and these may or may not look similar, but each team is responsible for managing their automation platform, but have full control.
-- **Hybrid Platform**: This will be a mixture of **both** of the above strategies, but the mixture will look different in each organization.
+![Automation Strategies](strategies-hybrid.png)
 
-![Automation Strategies](strategies.png)
+## Pros and Cons
 
-## Strategy Comparison
-
-| Objective | Centralized Platform | Decentralized Platform | Hybrid Platform |
-| --------- | -------------------- | ---------------------- | --------------- |
-| Allow users of the platform to focus on business value | :white_check_mark: | :warning: | :x: |
-| Allows individual teams to have more control over the platform | :x: | :white_check_mark: | :warning: |
-| Minimizes scope of managed platform components but not completely | :x: | :x: | :white_check_mark: |
+| Pro/Con | Description |
+| ----------------------- | ----------- |
+| :white_check_mark: | Utilize existing platform capabilities and not reinvent the wheel |
+| :x: | Typically requires teams to split engineers vs infrastructure reducing efficiency |