Showing posts with label Sun Tsu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sun Tsu. Show all posts

December 10, 2007

An Ant Colony and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric enterprise architecture supplies critical business and technical information to the end users in the organization to enhance IT planning, governance, and overall decision-making. When developed and communicated effectively, EA is a tremendous information asset to the organization that aids the enterprise in making sound IT investment decisions, aligning technology to mission, and enhancing results of operation.

In the book The Art of War for Executives by Donald G. Krause, the author shows that Sun Tzu’s model for effective, or what he calls “Natural Organizations,” is based on their existence to serve a specific purpose, their information-centered capability, and their adaptability. All of which are highly supportive of the need for a strong EA!

  1. Defined purpose—enterprises need to have a clear mission and this is supported by an enterprise architecture that captures performance outcomes, mission functions, process, activities, and tasks, and seeks to provide the information required to perform those.
  2. Information-centered—“organizations seek and use data as a basis for action. They avoid unwarranted opinion and conjecture, choosing to deal with uncertainty by estimating reasonable probabilities.” Enterprise with a strong EA, with useful and useable information products, have the requisite information to base meaningful decisions on.
  3. Adaptability—“organizations respond quickly and effectively to changes in their environment.” Setting realistic EA targets and transition plans help an organization first of all assess their environment and then to make requisite plans to address change.

Ant colonies are an example of effective organizations that rely on EA-like capabilities:

“Ant colonies have survived for hundreds of millions of years. They exist solely for the purpose of providing food and shelter to its members…are totally information-centered (seeking information about food and shelter and transmitting that to others in the organization), and adapt by changing location and methods to take advantage of opportunities discovered by members.” (adapted from The Art of War For Executives)

While human organizations are obviously more complex than ant colonies and survive by more than simply the search for food and shelter, the simile is apropos:

  • When applied to Sun Tzu’s army, their philosophy for success hinged, like the ant colony, on their ability to come together for a defined purpose, in their case to handle whatever threat or opportunity arose.
  • Sun Tzu’s superior commanders were information-centered, succeeding “in situations where ordinary people fail because they obtain more timely information and use it more quickly,”—they gather, process, use, and give out information.
  • The adaptability of Sun Tzu’s army, enabled them to “respond quickly and adapt readily to changing circumstances…like water, they flow around obstacles and challenges, always seeking to follow the most effective path.”

Like the tried and true success factors for Sun Tzu’s army or the regimented, age-old ant colonies found around the world, organizations succeed through defined purpose, information-centricity, and flexibility. And EA, as a discipline, assists in all of these: focusing and magnifying an organization’s purpose through a well documented and communicated architecture; ensuring information discovery and exchange—often through technology—to support business processes; helping an organization to readily adapt and change through the establishment of targets and transition plans to remain competitive and successful in the marketplace.

From an information perspective, efficient organizations mimic organizations with strong EA’s:

  • Organizations “much like new computer chips…create a greater number of channels to move information faster. They also reduce system overhead by reducing unnecessary intramural data requirements (e.g. interoffice memos, unused reports). They increase system response by obtaining more and higher quality information; by training organization members to use information properly; by ensuring that organization members have quick access to data and allowing them to make and execute informed decision based on information; and by efficiently transmitting information to organization members and outsiders.

In large measure, information is at the center of an EA program. EA information is used for helping organization end-users make better IT decisions, and technology investments helps provide information better, faster, and cheaper to support the mission. Like an ant colony survives on information, an organization’s very survival can depend on timely and actionable information.


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October 17, 2007

The Art of War and Enterprise Architecture

Sun Tsu (544 BC – 496 BC) is the author of The Art of War (an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy).

The following are three lessons from The Art of War for Enterprise Architecture:

1) Strategy is Critical

“Tzu-lu [a disciple of Confucius] said, supposing you had command of the Three Hosts, whom would you take to help you? The master [Sun Tsu] said, the man who was ready to beard a tiger or rush a river without caring whether he lived or died—that sort of man, I should not take. I should certainly take someone who approached difficulties with due caution and who preferred to succeed by strategy.” (The Art of War)

Sun Tsu recognizes the importance of strategy and the danger of rash actions. Similarly, User-centric EA identifies the needs of the organization and its users and develops an appropriate plan for the enterprise to execute. The well thought out EA plan guides the organization in lieu of rash and flailing actions of individuals.

2) Agility is Tactic #1

“Just a water adapts itself to the conformation of the ground, so in war one must be flexible…this is not in any sense a passive concept, for if the enemy is given enough rope he will frequently hang himself. Under certain conditions, one yields a city, sacrifices a portion of his force, or give up ground in order to gain a more valuable objective.”

User-centric EA must always be flexible and adapt to the needs of its users and the enterprise. It’s easy to get caught up in ivory-tower architecture efforts, rigid EA plans, and governance structures that hinder rather than help progress. But if we remember that the “more valuable objective” is the mission execution of the organization, then we put these needs first and foremost and adjust the architecture to it.

For example, in Hurricane Katrina, when action on the ground was needed to be taken immediately to save lives, governance was loosened to allow the enterprise to adapt quickly.

3) Unification is strength

“He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious…the appropriate season is not as important as the advantages of the ground; these are not as important as harmonious human relations.”

In User-centric EA, the enterprise is unified (and focused) in meeting user requirements, executing on mission, and moving the organization forward in a structured, orderly way. By everyone following the same script (the target and transition plan), organizational progress is faster, deeper (the change is up and down the organizational ranks), and more meaningful (since everyone is on board).


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