152  Blockchain

FRAMEWORK TO ASSESS BLOCKCHAIN USE CASE

To have a successful business use case, it is essential to select the right tech-

nology to support it. Although blockchain is an innovative and disrupting

technology, it is not always beneficial to use it. If blockchain is used for

wrong use cases, then an organisation not only will waste resources and

money but also can have a negative impact on its brand.

In this section, we will go through a framework and decision tree to assist

organisations to determine if blockchain is a good fit for the concerned use

case. We will also review and discuss a decision tree to select right type of

blockchain and assist in selecting the correct consensus type.

Blockchain technology usage – decision tree

The following framework will assist organisations to ask the right questions

and firm up a decision to use blockchain technology for the right purpose.

It will provide a clear direction and a decision tree to make a decision on

if blockchain is the correct technology to solve complex business problems

and fund the use cases effectively.

List of questions

The following are a list of questions to ask business and technology includ-

ing business and technology product owners, senior management within

business and technology, strategists, architects and engineering teams. It is

also advisable to establish a partnership with experienced consulting firms,

third parties with similar and mutual interests and blockchain product ven-

dors to help in answering the questions accurately.

• Do we interact with multiple entitles (internal and/or external)?

Blockchain budget can be justified, and business can create value

addition if there are multiple entities involved. Blockchain can have

a lot of positive impacts if there are multiple third parties involved.

Organisations with several internal departments or subsidiaries can

also benefit from blockchain use by avoiding manual work and dupli-

cation across the workflow.

Blockchain does not deliver any value if there is only a single entity

involved.

• Do we deal with globally distributed parties? Blockchain can be use-

ful if our business interacts with globally dispersed parties. It can even

be a good use case to implement blockchain if those parties have a

lack of trust amongst them.

• Do we need a consistent data store shared across multiple parties?

One of the functionalities of the blockchain technology is a consistent