Frameworks and Enterprise Architecture

One of the issues facing IT professionals these days isn’t a scarcity of IT frameworks, but rather many good frameworks that can be in conflict if we do not sort them out.

Usually each framework is focused on a certain lifecycle, which on one hand helps align it to a certain view on things, but on the other hand complicates things further, because each framework attempts to be all things to all people, by covering an entire lifecycle.

Here are some examples of the frameworks and their associated lifecycles:

• Enterprise architecture – the IT investment life cycle (Capital Planning and Investment Control, CPIC)
• SDLC—the Systems Development Life Cycle
• ITIL –the service lifecycle
• PMBOK—the project lifecycle
• CMMi—the process lifecycle
• Configuration Management—the asset lifecycle

Each framework has plans that need to be developed, processes to be followed, reviews that get conducted, and go/no-go decisions issued.

If an organization attempts to introduce and utilize all these frameworks then there can result a major overlap of structures, processes, and reviews that can literally drive a project manager or program sponsor nuts!

The organization could grind to a standstill trying to comply with all these frameworks.

I believe that each framework has useful information and guidance for the organization to follow and that the key to implementing these is to determine which is the PRIMARY framework at various stages of IT. The other frameworks may overlap in the stages, but it is the primary framework that guides that each stage.

Here’s an example using a few of these:

1. Enterprise architecture is the decision making framework for IT systems. It has a core function in influencing IT investment decisions based on the target architecture and transition plan and EA reviews of proposed new IT projects, products, and standards. Therefore, EA is the primary or dominant framework in the planning stage of IT (up to the IT investment decision).
2. SDLC is the development framework for IT systems. SDLC has a core function is guiding the software development process. As such, SDLC is the primary framework for the development phase of the system (which comes after the IT investment decision and before operations and maintenance). Of course, SDLC has planning phases and O&M and disposition phases as well, but SDLC is the primary framework only in the development stage.
3. ITIL is the service framework. It has a core function in determining how service will be delivered and supported. ITIL is the primary framework for the O&M stage of the system (this comes after the development and before the disposition of the system), since that is when the system needs service delivery and support. Again, ITIL has other stages that overlap with other frameworks, for example planning and configuration management, but ITIL is the dominant framework only in the O&M phase.

The other frameworks should conceptually also assume a primary role for specific phases of IT and then pass off that role to the next framework that is dominant in that particular area.

4. For example, maybe PMBOK would have a dominant framework role also in the planning phase, looking at cost, schedule, performance, resources, risks, and so on (this would be after the IT investment decision of EA and before the development or acquisition phases). Again that is not to say that PMBOK doesn’t shed light and provide requirements for other stages of IT—it does—but it just is not the primary framework for those other stages.

I believe it is only by developing a unified lifecycle and assigning primary framework “ownership” to each stage will we be able to develop a truly workable IT structure and process for our organizations. As the saying goes: ”Two kings cannot sit on one throne.” So too, two frameworks cannot be simultaneously guiding our project managers and program sponsors nor taking up valuable IT resources.

The end goal is a single, simple, step-by-step process for our projects to follow with clear actions, milestones, and reviews, rather than a web of confusion and siloed, redundant governance processes in play.

Frameworks and Enterprise Architecture

Culture Drives Function and Enterprise Architecture

Isn’t it every kids’ dream to own a car? And who can’t wait to take their first driving lessons?

The Wall Street Journal, 29 February 2008 reports that “Japan’s Young Won’t Rally Round the Car.”

“Since the peak in1990, Japanese car makers’ domestic sales have dropped 31% to nearly three million vehicles in 2007.”

Why is this happening?

• The Internet—“Unlike their parents’ generation, which viewed cars as the passport to freedom and higher social status, the Internet-connected Japanese youths today look to cars with indifference…having grown up on with the internet, they no longer depend on a car for shopping, entertainment, and socializing and prefer to spend their money in other ways.”
• Preference for electronics—“Young people can borrow their parents’ car and I think they’d rather spend their money on PCs and iPods than cars….trains will do for now.”
• Green movement—“Many youths worldwide felt cars were unnecessary and even uncool because they pollute and cause congestion.”

Kids’ priorities are changing and with that car manufacturers are having to re-architect the way they design and sell cars.

How is the auto industry responding with new architectures?

1. New car designs for the Internet generation—these include smaller, eco-friendly vehicles; cars for hanging out together with convertible interior space designed to feel like a sports bar with large touch-screen displays that can be used by the group like; cars with rotating cabins “capable of driving sideways to easily slips into a parking space;” vehicles with “‘robotic agents’ shaped like a head with two eyes that s mounted on the dashboard abd provides driving directions in a soothing voice.”
2. New marketing for the computer-savvy— Drive date videos: “downloads filmed from a drivers perspective, the video lets a viewer go on a day drive with a young, female Japanese model as they drive together along scenic, congestion-free roads.”

The automobile is changing to meet new consumer demands: The cars’ purpose “isn’t to get from point A to point B, but is to provide a social space for the driver and passengers. It doesn’t convey status except the status of being together.”

A lesson for enterprise architects is that function certainly drives architecture. However, functional requirements change along with culture, and the architect needs to be ever vigilant is searching out and spotting new trends, so that the enterprise can be proactive in meeting user expectations. Further technical requirements change based on innovations, and these must be aligned with functional requirements to optimize EA solutions.

Culture Drives Function and Enterprise Architecture

Ask the User and Enterprise Architecture

The best way to find out what the end-user wants is to ask them.

The Wall Street Journal, 25 January 2008 reports on Ask.com that “Ask Searches for Answer to Luring New Users.”

Since 2006, Ask.com spent $140 million to Google’s $34 million on advertising between Jan. 2006 and September 2007, yet Google’s market share of the internet search business stands at 58.4% to Ask’s 4.3%, and “Ask’s market share hasn’t grown in the past couple of years, while Google’s…has seen its dominance increase.

Google is beating Ask based on “superior technology and word of mouth,” so the advertising is a moot point.

Jim Safka, the new head of Ask says that to understand the discrepancy, “the first step is figuring out who uses Ask today and what they use it for. We are not going to take wild swings.”

Apparently, Ask took some wild swings in the past without asking their users and ended up getting rid of the “Jeeves” from their original name Ask Jeeves.Com and getting rid of the “friendly butler designed to answer any question user posed him.”

Ask also goofed on a number of marketing campaigns which didn’t resonate with end-users, like “one campaign named ‘Use Tools, Feel Human’ [that] featured a primate [who] evolves into a human by using Ask.com.”

While “Ask’s market share continues to weaken,” Mr. Safka says that “Consumes are smart. If you look at the data and listen to them, the answer ends up being obvious.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, it is critical to ask the user what they want and understand their needs. One of the principles of User-centric EA is that we are focused on developing useful and usable products and services for the end-user; we do not build any information products that do not have a clear end-user and use. In contrast, traditional EA is often user blind and as a result develops “artifacts” that are difficult to understand and apply. Like Ask.com is learning, if you don’t understand your user’s needs, you end up with a lot of shelfware—whether it’s EA or search engines.

Ask the User and Enterprise Architecture

Systems Monitoring and Enterprise Architecture

When we log on at work, most if not of us get some sort of message that logging on connotes acknowledgment to monitoring and that there is no implied privacy to what you’re doing when logged onto corporate IT assets.

Monitoring is a way of life at work. It is part of information security, management oversight, and ensuring systems are running effectively (and preventing a severe network outage).

Kenneth Klapproth in DM Review, 22 February 2008 reports that network management tools are able to collect date “across the shared network to present real-time and historical availability, performance, and configuration statistics on individual services and applications.”

Cross platform monitoring and event management and resolution are important to maintaining the availability of today’s complex networks that are vital for corporate communications (voice, data, and video).

• ALERTS: Monitoring not only alerts IT personnel to when networks falter, but can also be set to provide alerts when certain fault tolerances are reached, so that IT personnel can take action before the network is brought down.
• CAPACITY: Network monitoring identifies not only when the network becomes overloaded, but also when there is excess capability that can be more optimally used.
• TRENDING: Performance is not monitored as snapshots in time, but also can provide historical trending that can provide valuable information based on usage patterns.
• VISUAL REPORTING: “Dashboard and web displays deliver visually compelling and graphically concise reports [of key network and capacity utilization trends] that enable organizations to make the right decisions faster and with more confidence.”
• QUALITY OF SERVICE: QoS is improved with monitoring. “Managers can see the current and historical use and performance of network resources, monitor and report on congestion, correlate QoS configuration with network performance, and use the information to improve traffic and service delivery.”

Additionally, many network monitoring tools have the ability for other key management features including self-discovery and healing. These features include: IT asset management, remote control, problem resolution, operating system set-up and configuration, software distribution, license monitoring, back-up and recovery, security, and lights-out management.

While network monitoring and management are more operationally focused, they are critical from an enterprise architecture perspective to ensure the delivery of core IT functionality for the enterprise: namely, a robust, sound, secure, cost-effective, state-of-the-art IT infrastructure upon which information can be delivered to the right people, anytime, anywhere.

Network management tools can also be helpful in building the enterprise architecture because of their asset discovery feature. With the ability to spider out over the network and touch anything with an IP address, these tools can help identify key enterprise architecture assets in order to establish the baseline and plan for future targets.

Systems Monitoring and Enterprise Architecture

ITIL and Enterprise Architecture

Both EA and ITIL are emerging disciplines that are growing in importance and impact.

Here are their basic definitions:

EA synthesizes business and technical information and develops information products and governance services to enable better decision making.

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) “provides a comprehensive, consistent set of best practices focused on the management of IT services processes. It promotes a quality approach to achieving business effectiveness and efficiency in the use of information systems. ITIL is focused on IT Service Management, which is “concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of the organization.” (ITIL IT Service Management Essentials, Pink Elephant)

To me, EA and ITIL are mutually supportive. Here’s how:

• EA is a decision framework that provides for planning and governance. EA answers the question, what IT investment will we make?
• ITIL is a service framework that provides for execution of IT services. IT answers the question, how will we support and deliver on the IT investments?

In short, EA is the discipline that handles the decision processes up to the IT Investment and ITIL handles the service management once the decision to invest in IT is made.

What are the considerations for EA and ITIL:

• EA considers such things as return on investment, risk mitigation, business alignment, and technical compliance. EA focuses on business process improvement and new introduction of new technologies.
• ITIL practices areas include such services as incident management, problem resolution, change management, release management, configuration management, capacity, availability, service continuity, service level management and more.

How are EA and ITIL similar in terms of requirements management and their goals?

Each seeks to understand the business requirements and satisfy their customers: EA for the requirements for proposed new IT investments and ITIL for the service required to support those.

Both disciplines are goal-oriented in terms of wanting to improve effectiveness and efficiency:

• EA prescribes in planning, what are the right things we should we be doing (effectiveness) and in governance, how should we be doing them (efficiency) relative to IT investments.
• ITIL prescribes in service delivery, what are the right service deliverables (effectiveness) and in service support, how we should be providing service support (efficiency).

While EA and ITIL are complementary, ITIL picks up where EA leaves off—after the IT investment decision, but before the service execution.

ITIL and Enterprise Architecture

Competitive Sourcing and Enterprise Architecture

Our economy is heavily based on ensuring a competitive environment to drive innovation, cost-competition, and consumer value.

One of the reasons why mergers and acquisitions are reviewed so carefully is to ensure that they are not anti-competitive, which would result in antitrust action.

Competition law, known in the United States as "antitrust law," has three main elements:

• Prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
• Banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position.…
• Supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to "remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licenses or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing. (Wikipedia)

Competition law has been extended to the federal workforce as follows:

The Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 mandates that “To ensure that the American people receive maximum value for their tax dollars, commercial activities should be subject to the forces of competition.” This includes the following activities:

“a. Identify all activities performed by government personnel as either commercial or inherently governmental.
b. Perform inherently governmental activities with government personnel.
c. Use a streamlined or standard competition to determine if government personnel should perform a commercial activity.”
The concept of A-76 is that without federal workers having to compete for their positions against for example, the private sector, then there is no way to ensure value for the American taxpayer. Where is the incentive for the federal workforce to perform if when they aren’t performing competitively, and they are not threatened with replacement by a better, more effective and efficient provider?
Federal Times, 12 May 2008 reports that “all indications are that as the Bush administration winds down, so too has its most controversial government reform: competitive sourcing.”
“Many in Congress have aggressively challenged the practice as being unfair and demoralizing to federal employees and last year they passed myriad reforms and restrictions that are already being felt.”
While I agree that competitions drive efficiency in the marketplace, I think A-76 has missed the mark in terms of reforming federal human capital.
Why?
Competing federal workforce against private sector contractors on a cost basis does not necessarily ensure best value. From an enterprise architecture perspective, we are missing something crucial in A-76 and that is the human capital perspective.
The human capital perspective on EA is one that was initially proposed by John Zachman, the founder of EA, and I am a strong proponent of it. Essentially, it says that just like the other business and technology perspectives of the EA, human capital is a filter through which you must make organizational decisions.
The human capital perspective of the architecture provides us an opportunity to optimize federal workforce performance in the first place, before getting to an outsourcing decision point. Additionally, if you can’t effectively manage your own workforce, what makes you think you can better manage a contracted-out function? (In the same issue of Federal Times, there was an article about how the federal procurement officials are resigning in droves!)
What can we do to first improve performance results from the federal workforce (and I’m not saying that there is any problem to begin with)? The same as with any organization—provide strong leadership to them. Provide them with a bold vision. Hire the best and the brightest. Accelerate the hiring and clearance processes. Make clear their roles. Inspire them as President Kennedy did when he stated “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Challenge the workforce and empower them. Provide training, career growth, and financial and other incentives. With these, the federal workforce can truly be competitive and best value—if not all the time, then certainly much of the time.
The enterprise architecture way to do this is to first, baseline your current workforce. Then, look at best practices, benchmark, and set the targets for your people. And finally, develop a transition plan to move your workforce from the baseline to the target.
There is much more work to be done in this area, and obviously this is just a cursory overview or sketch of what the human capital perspective of EA would do. On a personal note, this is an area of great interest to me and I look forward to exploring it further.

Competitive Sourcing and Enterprise Architecture

Classification Schema and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric Enterprise architecture captures organizational information, analyzes it, and classifies it, and serves it up to the end user in useful and usable ways to enhance decision-making.

I came across a helpful article in DM Review, May 2008, called “Ontology and Taxonomy” that clarified the classification schemas used in EA.

First of all what the heck is a classification schema?

Simply put, a classification schema is a way of organizing information by putting things into categories. This helps us make sense of the information by being able to relate items to one another. For example, is an item, part of a larger supertype? Does an item has subtypes? Are items part of a common set? Is there a one to one relationship, a one to many, or a many to many? An understanding of these relationships between information helps us to understand the information and better use it for sound decision making.

Here are the two classification schema:

1. Ontology—“includes putting things into categories and relating these categories to each other…an ontology is a model…’ontology concerns itself with the organization of knowledge’…the body of knowledge includes both class and instance.” Ontologies define relationships. In ontologies, we identify the intersection of different items with each other, so for example a man intersects with “person,” “male,” and “adult.”
2. Taxonomy—“A taxonomy is an ontology in the form of a hierarchy.” Typically, taxonomy takes the form of a tree diagram, with parent (class) and child relationships. Taxonomies are decompositions. “For example, a parent may be automobiles and the children may be trucks, SUVS, sedans, compacts, and so on. Then the children for trucks may be pick-ups, vans, refrigerated, etc.

One of the problems with taxonomies is that you cannot easily define everything neatly into categories and subcategories, such as in cataloging a body of knowledge. For example, in the Dewey decimal system, “Where do you put a book about the history of mathematics in the Islamic world? History? Mathematics? Religion? That points out the problem with most taxonomies. Most of our knowledge is not hierarchical.”

The limitation of taxonomies is why we need to use more sophisticated ontologies such as business, data, and system models in enterprise architecture to understand the complexity of the relationship between business processes, information required to perform those, and the systems that serve those up.

Classification Schema and Enterprise Architecture

Information Governance and Enterprise Architecture

We all know that information is vital to making sound and timely decisions. How do we govern information (the term information to include data and information) so that it is truly valuable to the organization and not just another case of GIGI (Garbage In, Garbage Out)?

DM Review, May 2008, reports on some research by Accenture that confirms that “high-performing organizations make far better use of information than their peers.”

Information is a strategic enterprise asset. The key to getting better results from information is the effective use of information governance. Information governance includes decision making and management over the full information life cycle, including: information capture, processing, storage, retrieval, and reporting and disposition.

Without information governance, what can happen to corporate information assets and the end users that rely on it?

1. Information Hoarding (or Silos)—the information exists in the organization, but people hoard it rather than share information. They treat information as power and currency and they do not readily provide information to others in their organization even if it helps the organization they work for.
2. Information Quality NOT (“multiple versions of the truth”)—information quality will suffer if decisions are not made and enforced to ensure authoritative information sources, quality control processing, and adequate security to protect it.
3. Information Overload—not managing the way information is rolled up, presented, and reported can result is too much information that cannot be readily processed or understood by those on the receiving end. It’s like the floodgates have been opened or as one of my bosses used to say, “trying to drink from a fire hose.”
4. Information Gaps—without proper requirements gathering and planning and provision for systems to meet information needs, users may be left holding the bag, and it’s empty; they won’t have the information they need to support their functional processes and day-to-day decision making needs.

Not having effective information governance is costly for the organization. The target enterprise architecture state for information management is to have the right information to the right people at the right time. Anything less will mean sub-optimized processes, excessive management activity, and poor decision making and that will be costly for the organization—lost sales, dissatisfied customers, compliance lapses, safety and legal issues, publicity snafus, and other mistakes that can even put the enterprise out of business!

According to Accenture’s survey of more than 1000 large companies in the U.S. and UK, information is not being governed very well today:

• “Managers spend more than one quarter of their work week searching for information.
• More than half of what they obtain is of no value.
• Managers accidently use the wrong data more than once a week.
• It is challenging to get different parts of the company to share needed information.”

The good news is that “the majority of CIOs seem ready to act” by employing information governance.

Information, as one of the perspectives of the enterprise architecture, is already governed through the Enterprise Architecture Board (EAB). However, to give more focus to information governance, perhaps we need to establish a separate Information Governance Board (IGB). I see the IGB as a sub-committee of the EAB that provides findings and recommendation to the EAB; the EAB would be the decision authority for governing all the perspectives of the architecture, including: performance, business, information, services, technology, security, and human capital. To better focus and decompose on the various EA perspective areas, perhaps they will all have their own sub-committees (like a Performance Governance Board, Business Governance Board, and so forth) similar to the IGB in the future.

Information Governance and Enterprise Architecture

Happiness, Human Capital and Enterprise Architecture

As those of you who are regular readers of this blog know, I am a proponent for a human capital perspective for the Federal Enterprise Architecture.

The human capital perspective would provide the people focus, while the business perspective provides the process focus, and the services, technology, and security provide the technology focus.

This would round out the established view of people—process—technology that fields like organizational development and enterprise architecture look to address.

From a human capital perspective, one critical item that organizations would of course look to baseline, target, and transition plan for is money—essentially, how we financially compensate our employees and motivate them with dollars and cents.

However, employees are not only motivated by money. People want to get up in the morning and not dread going to the office. So the human capital perspective can also look at other factors that make people happy, such as employee recognition, professional growth, challenging work, ongoing training, and so on. Making for a happy workforce, improves productivity, attendance, retention, and more.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), 2 April 2008, reports that there are three primary factors for making people happy:

1. Disposition—“whether you are, by nature, a happy person or not—there isn’t a whole lot you can do about this.”
2. Circumstance—“your age, health, marital status, and income.” Here the organization can impact income, but “this stuff isn’t nearly as important as folks often imagine. If your income doubled, you would initially be delighted. But research suggests, you would quickly get used to all that extra money.”
3. Activity—“how you spend your time.” Of course, there are “’engaging leisure and spiritual activities,’ things like visiting friends, exercising, attending church [or synagogue], listening to music, fishing, reading a book, sitting in a café, or going to a party.” I would add that the organization can also help here by providing employees with challenging but achievable, meaningful, growth-oriented activities. Both the spiritual/leisure activities and the appropriate work activities can all help people to be “happy, engrossed, and not especially stressed.”

The WSJ calls watching something like television “neutral downtime” It’s “low-stress and moderately enjoyable. But people aren’t mentally engaged.” So the benefits are not great. In this case, I would argue that a productive day in the office is more enjoyable than sitting home and vegging in front of the tube (although that occasionally can be therapeutic as well).

The key here is people need to feel engaged, productive, challenged, that they’re going somewhere and that it all has some meaning. Yes, we all need money to pay our bills, but there are other factors in work and at leisure that make for happiness. This is one area where the human capital perspective can play a role.

Happiness, Human Capital and Enterprise Architecture

A Natural Education and Enterprise Architecture

Anyone who has seen the amount of homework and stress our children are under these days would have to admit that our children are losing their childhood earlier and earlier.

The pressure is on for children to get the best early education so they can get the best SAT grades so they can get into the best colleges and universities so they can get the best and highest paying job so they can live a wonderful carefree life. WHAT THE HECK!

Someone please architect a better way to educate our children so that they flourish educationally, but still enjoy those treasured years.

The Wall Street Journal, 14 April 2008, reports that “While schools and parents push young children to read, write, and surf the internet earlier in order to prepare for an increasingly cutthroat global economy, some little Germans are taking a less traveled path—deep into the woods.”

“Germany has about 700 Waldkindergarten or “forest kindergartens,” in which children spend their days outdoor year-round. Blackboards surrender to the Black Forest.” The children, ages 3 to 6, spend the day in the forest singing songs, playing in the mud, climbing trees, examining worms, lizards and frogs, and building campfires. This is a natural way for children to spend their time and it aligns well with “environmentally-conscious and consumption-wary” attitudes.

Similar programs have opened in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, and in the U.S. (in Portland, Oregon last fall).

A mixed bag of results:

“Waldkindergarten kids exercise their imaginations more than their brick-and-mortar peers do and are better at concentrating and communication…the children appear to get sick less often in these fresh-air settings. Studies also suggest their writing skills are less developed, though, and that they are less adept than other children at distinguishing colors, forms, and sizes.”

Is the tradeoff worth it?

In the U.S., the notion is generally, we have “to push academics earlier and earlier.” However, the back-to-basics approach of Waldkindergarten is challenging this thinking. One teacher summarized the benefits by simply stating, “It’s peaceful here, not like inside a room.” Another said that this natural education is a way to combat “early academic fatigue syndrome…we have 5 year-olds that are tired of going to school.”

I believe that if we teach children a love of learning and life, then they will thrive more than force-feeding them reading, writing, and arithmetic at age 3, 4, or 5.

We can architect a better education for our children. It starts with letting them be children.

From an EA perspective, we need to acknowledge that there is a baseline, target and transition plan for our children's education, and we do NOT need to get to the target state of advanced learning by putting undue pressure on children so early in their lives. In fact, if we understand that transition plans are just that—a transition from one state to another, in a phased approach of evolution—then we can indeed let children explore the world more freely and creatively at a young age, and evolve that incrementally with the skills they need as time goes on.

A Natural Education and Enterprise Architecture

IT Portfolio Management and Enterprise Architecture

“IT portfolio management is the application of systematic management to large classes of items managed by enterprise information technology (IT) capabilities. Examples of IT portfolios would be planned initiatives, projects, and ongoing IT services (such as application support). The promise of IT portfolio management is the quantification of previously mysterious IT efforts, enabling measurement and objective evaluation of investment scenarios.” (Wikipedial)

IT portfolio management is a way of categorizing IT investments and analyzing them to ensure sound IT investment decisions. IT portfolios are frequently evaluated in terms of their return, risk, alignment to strategy, technical merit, and diversification.

Why do we need IT portfolio management—why not just assess each project/investment on its own merit?

The added value of developing and evaluating IT portfolios is that you can ensure the diversification of your investments across applications and infrastructure; new systems/major enhancement to existing systems and operations and maintenance; new R&D, proof of concepts, prototypes, and pilots; between strategic, tactical, and operational needs, and across business functions.

ComputerWorld Magazine, 7 April 2008, reports that Hess Corp., a leading global independent energy company, developed creative IT portfolios based on three types of initiatives:

1. Bs—“business applications or business process improvement effort that’s aimed at increasing revenue or generating cost savings.”
2. Es—“enablers” or projects to support business applications such as business intelligence, analytical systems, master data management, systems integration.
3. Ps—“process improvement within the IT organization itself” such as standardizing the approach to applications development (systems development life cycle), project management, performance management, IT governance, and so on.

From an enterprise architecture perspective, we develop the target architecture and transition plan and assess IT investments against that. Again, rather than develop targets and plans and conduct assessments based solely on individual investment alone, EA should look at the aggregate investments by IT portfolios to ensure that the EA plan and subsequent investments are properly diversified. An EA plan that is overweighted or underweighted in particular IT investment categories can have a negative to disastrous effect on the organization.

IT investments represent significant expenditures to organizations and IT is a strategic enabler to mission, so messing up the IT plan with poor investment targets and decisions is costly to the enterprise.

IT Portfolio Management and Enterprise Architecture

Midlife Crisis and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is about managing change in the organization; however, there comes a time in our lives when there is an unprecedented opportunity for personal growth and change and that is when we reach midlife.

The reason that midlife is the prime time for self-realization is that we have enough life experience to know ourselves well, a little money to facilitate change, and enough time left to make a difference.

Harvard Business Review, February 2008, states that “midlife is your best and last chance to become the real you.”

Midlife crisis is a term coined by Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst and organizational consultant. It refers to a period when “we come face-to-face with our limitations, our restricted possibilities, and our mortality.”

Midlife crisis occurs approximately from age 43-62. It is a time when we are faced with dual “myths”. One is the fear that midlife is the “onset of decline” and the other is the fantasy that with “enough vision and willpower,” we can be “anything or anybody”. If we can overcome both fear and fantasy and anchor our choices in intelligent transitions, then we can make some phenomenal life changes and achieve amazing personal growth and satisfaction.

“Life expectancy today in the West is around 80 and continues to rise”, so there is no reason that health in midlife should be a show-stopper for most people’s aspirations. Further, with approximately 20 years or more of professional experience by this time in our lives, our plans for next-stage life growth, and what Carl Yung called individuation, should be more easily tempered by our understanding of what is and is not possible. “Magical transformations do not happen,” but meaningful growth and challenge can.

Isn’t it risky to make changes in midcareer/midlife?

Yes and no. Risk has to be managed. Staying the course has its advantages, but it also has its limitations, and when a person is bored, unchallenged, or just in a plain old midlife rut, worse mistakes can happen if negative feelings are just left to fester. That’s why it’s important to take control of one’s life, “by thinking not in terms of safety nets, but of active risk management,” that weight risk and rewards.

Should we reach for the stars?

Interestingly enough, we see the stars at night, which is also the time for dreaming. “The British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott characterized dreaming as the use of the imagination to create possible scenarios in which our potential can come to fruition. But to be productive, dreams must be connected to our potential.” That’s the difference between a dream and a fantasy.

In terms of reaching for our dreams, we need to dream to envision what could be. With the vision in hand, I would say go for it if the vision leads to what I would call intelligent life transitions—where change is thoughtful, achievable, growth-oriented, and personally satisfying.

As adults, we need to separate the TV and Hollywood fantasies from realities and our true capabilities. If we focus on self-actualization (the highest human need according to Abraham Maslow)—the realization of our individual potentials, the discovery of who we are and can be—then we have an opportunity to live again and an even fuller life then the first half.

Just as enterprise architecture plans, manages, and measures change and transformation for the organization, so too every individual must become their own enterprise architect and plan and direct change in their lives. Most positive change doesn’t occur by chance, although Divine providence is the guiding hand in all. If we take the principles of enterprise architecture and apply them to our own lives, then we will seek to understand and come to terms with our current state, envision our target that will help us self-actualize, and plan a realistic life transition.

Midlife Crisis and Enterprise Architecture

Gamers and Enterprise Architecture

More and more people are turning to gaming for entertainment, social interaction, some thrills and fun and even some challenge.

Many in society think that gamers, because they like to “play”, are childish, slovenly or irresponsible. However, there are many characteristics that gamers demonstrate that demonstrate that they are perhaps some of the best employment “catches” around.

Harvard Business Review, February 2008, states that “the gamer disposition has five key attributes. More than attitudes or beliefs, these attributes are character traits that players bring into game worlds and that those worlds reinforce. We believe that gamers who embody this disposition are better able than their non-gamer counterparts to thrive in the twenty-first century workplace.”

What are the gamer characteristics that can enable them to succeed in the modern workplace?

1. Performance-oriented—“gamers like to be evaluated, even compared with one another, through systems of points, rankings, titles, and external measures. Their goal is not to be rewarded, but to improve.”
2. Value diversity—“diversity is essential in the world of the online game. One person can’t do it all; each player is by definition incomplete. The key to achievement is teamwork, and the strongest teams are a rich mix of diverse talents and abilities.”
3. Desire change—Nothing is constant in a game; it changes in myriad ways, mainly through the actions of the participants themselves…gamers do not simply manage change,; they create it, thrive on it, seek it out.”
4. Learning is fun—“for most players, the fun of the game lies in learning how to overcome obstacles.”
5. Innovative—“gamers often explore radical alternatives and innovative strategies for completing tasks, quests, and challenges. Even when common solutions are known, the gamer disposition demands a better way, a more original response to the problem.”

How do gamers, or for that matter people in general, relate to enterprise architecture?

Gamers are a growing segment of the population and their characteristics and skill sets need to be integrated in support of our business processes and technologies. The way to do this is through an enterprise architecture that speaks to a human capital perspective.

Many times, I have written about the need for a human capital perspective (reference model) to be added to the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). This would address the “people/who” perspective of the Zachman Framework and address the critical issues of the most important asset of the organization, its people.

Unfortunately, the FEA is still anchored in the industrial revolution, with factories served by “indentured” workers on the assembly line; people no more important than the mind-numbing, repetitive tasks that they performed 12 or more hours a day for little pay and certainly little respect.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture needs to enter the information age, where knowledge workers are the catalyst of innovation, engineering, modernization and transformation. The addition and focus on a human capital perspective to the architecture would be a good start to recognizing the centrality of people and brain-power to the competitiveness and future of our industries and nation.

One of the issues that the human capital perspective should address are the types of skills and attributes (such as those that gamers demonstrate) that are best aligned to support the requirements of the enterprise and its mission.

Gamers and Enterprise Architecture

IPv6 and Enterprise Architecture

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer for packet-switched internetworks. It is designated as the successor of IPv4, the current version of the Internet Protocol, for general use on the Internet. The main change brought by IPv6 is a much larger address space that allows greater flexibility in assigning addresses. The extended address length eliminates the need to use network address translation to avoid address exhaustion, and also simplifies aspects of address assignment and renumbering when changing providers. (Wikipedia)

IPv6 is an important architecture change.

Government Executive Magazine, May 2008, reports that “Ipv6 upgrades are critical as space available for Internet addresses dwindles.”

Why are we running out of IP addresses on version 4?

“IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices with individual addresses on the Internet. With the world’s population estimated to be 6.5 billion—and with many people possessing multiple electronic devices such as PCs, cell phones, and iPods—there simply wil not be enough IPv4 addresses to meet the demand, let alone support the anticipated influx of new Internet users from developing countries. Also on the horizon are newfangled IP-enabled devices and appliances that will drive up the number of IP addresses per person.”

How does IPv6 solve this problem?

“IPv6 used 128-bit addresses and can support a virtually limitless number of globally addressable devices (The actual number is 2 to the 128^th power).”

How is the conversion going?

The office of Management and Budget (OMB) has mandated that “By June 30, all federal agencies must prove that they have upgraded their networks’ connections, or backbones, to be capable of carrying IPv6 data traffic.”

Note: “All leading routers can support IPv6.”

A senior vice president for Quest said that “Every North American business and government needs to make the conversion.”

What other benefits does IPv6 offer?

Other benefits include:“built in security, network management enhancements such as auto-configuration and improved support for mobile networks. But in the decade since IPv6 was created, many of the extra features have been added to IPv4. So, the real motivator…is that it offers unlimited IP address space.”

“The most savings, however, will come from the new applications and services that IPv6 will provide.”

The Department of Defense “needs IPv6 to make its vision of netcentric warfare (the ability to tie together networks and sensors to deliver a stream of integrated real-time data to the battlefield and commanders) a reality…with IPv6, ‘everything can be addressable from a soldier to a sensor to an aircraft to a tank…we could have a sensor network with hundreds of thousands of nodes.”

IPv6 is important, but what other network initiatives underway is it competing with?

• The Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative—aims to “reduce the number of external connectivity points that workers use to gain access to the internet.”
• Networx—“a telecommunications contract that agencies are supposed to use to select a new carrier by September.”

On the Federal side, what needs to be architected next for IPv6?

“Federal IT managers should begin reserving IPv6 address space, developing an addressing plan, and creating a migration strategy that includes extensive product testing and evaluation. So far 37 agencies have requested IPv6 adress space from the American Registry for Internet Numbers.”

IPv6 and Enterprise Architecture

Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture

Business process management is part of enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture is often equated with IT architecture. This is incorrect; they are not the same. IT architecture is focused on IT solutions. Enterprise architecture is broader and encompasses engineering both business and IT sides of the organization.

There are two primary ways that enterprise architecture modernizes and transforms the organization. From the technology side, you can introduce new technologies to enable mission. From the business side, you can reengineer or improve existing business processes.

“Business process management (BPM) is a method of efficiently aligning an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility and integration with technology.” (Wikipedia)

Where does BPM fit in with enterprise architecture?

To answer this we can look at guidance from The Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Particularly Circular A-11 provides guidance on the submission of federal budgets; Part 7 (Planning, Budgeting, Acquisition, and Management of Capital Assets) spells out the requirement that an Exhibit 300 be completed for all major investments.

Aside from extensive questions for justifying your budget in the Exhibit 300, there are what’s commonly called the “Three Pesky Questions.” The 3^rd of the three pesky questions is as follows:

• “Does the investment support work processes that have been simplified or otherwise redesigned to reduce costs, improve effectiveness, and make maximum use of commercial, off-the-shelf technology? If not, management should reengineer business processes first, then search for alternatives, or the agency may issue a very broad statement of the requirements in a solicitation to the private sector and allow the private sector to do the reengineering in proposed solutions. Management should also improve internal process through cutting red tape, empowering employees, revising or pooling existing assets within the agency or with other agencies, redeploying resources, or offering training opportunities.”

What’s key here is the requirements that before planning to acquire capital assets, such as new IT, we first look to reengineer the underlying business processes. Only once we have addressed the BPM, do we look to enable these processes with IT.

How do we reengineer our business processes?

DM Review, 18 April 2008, reports that “BPM includes the modeling, implementation, measurement and monitoring of business processes.”

Here is the way I see it:

• Three types of models: Business process (or activity) models are the first step, supported by data models and systems models.
• Decomposition and relationships: In these models, we decompose the business functions, processes, activities, and tasks; identify the relationships to the information required to perform the business processes, and the systems (manual or automated) that serve up the information.
• Areas for Improvement/Reengineering: Through this decomposition and identification of relationship between business/data/systems, we are able to identify gaps, redundancies, roadblocks, and opportunities in doing our business efficiently and effectively. Once identified, we can then tweak or wholly reengineer the business processes, fill in gaps, eliminate unnecessary redundancies, and so on.

Similar to the OMB Exhibit 300 “Three Pesky Questions,” DM Review reminds us that we cannot just focus on systems to fix what’s wrong in our organizations.

• “Keep in mind that for almost every process evolution exercise, there will be more than just systems change (IT change) required. Organizational needs and personnel skills must be accounted for. It the organizational dimension is ignored, there will be another story about failure in process management and business change.”

Business Process Management is essential to organizational change management.

• If a business is to be responsive to change and remain competitive, its ammunition will come from its ability to inspect, analyze and forward-engineer its processes and its business…before its competition!

So whenever you think of enterprise architecture remember business + IT, and the business comes first!

Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture

Integrated Marketing Communications and Enterprise Architecture

There is a better way to showing customer love than inundating them with marketing and communications that are not coordinated, not focused, redundant, inconsistent, and not cost-effective.

This is the case of many organizations that have multiple, decentralized, lines of business (LOB) that have their own revenue and profitability targets. Typically LOBs, branches, and call centers solicit customers and their business independently, with distinct marketing campaigns, promotional offers, and customer surveys.

What’s the way to improve our customer interactions?

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is “a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.” (American Marketing Association)

In DM Review, May 2008, Lisa Loftis provides us a vision of IMC utopia, where customer contact are coordinated, targeted, is helpful to the customer, and profitable to the firm:

“Imagine being able to coordinate and prioritize your entire program of promotions and communications across all customer touchpoints. You could eliminate conflicting offers across channels. You could stop inundating you bet customers with multiple marketing campaigns, You could deliver a seamless dialog with customers where every interaction is relevant to the customer, delivered at exactly the right time and satisfies a significant customer needs. In this universe, the very act of communicating with your customer fosters a positive experience, facilitates trust and expands the relationship.”

Why is IMC important?

“Timely, relevant communications go a long way toward increasing satisfaction, and there is no question that satisfied customers add to the bottom line.”

How is IMC related to User-centric Enterprise Architecture?

User-centric EA relies on IMC to make the architecture end-users experience more satisfying and beneficial to them and thus more valuable to the organization’s decision making. As opposed to traditional EA that often is user/customer blind and develops esoteric and convoluted “artifacts”, User-centric EA seeks to provide end-users with IMC-style information products based on relevant information that is easy to understand and readily available.

What are the enterprise technical solutions that need to be architected in order to build the overall organizational IMC capability?

1. Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) systems—utilizing CRM system to manage customer contacts. This includes an organization “building a database about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth.” (www.techtarget.com)
2. Business Intelligence capabilities—“understanding customer behavior and preference through sophisticated predictive analytics, wading through myriad potential contacts to determine the highest-priority opportunities and tuning your data warehouse to work in conjunction with specific contact optimization applications.” (DM Review)
3. Organizational Culture—adopting a customer contact optimization strategy in an organization that is decentralized is a tough sell.

In the end, developing true IMC capabilities involves moving the organization towards a more centralized model of asset management. That does not mean losing your agility and nimbleness in the marketplace in terms of strategy and decision making, but rather using your consolidated organizational assets (such as data warehouses and business intelligence, CRM systems, and the breadth of depth of your product offerings) to your advantage. You want a unified brand and voice when talking with the customer.

Integrated Marketing Communications and Enterprise Architecture

Information Management and Enterprise Architecture

Information management is the key to any enterprise architecture.

Information is the nexus between the business and technical components of the EA:

• On one hand, we have the performance requirements and the business processes to achieve those.
  
• On the other hand, we have systems and technologies.
• In between is the information.

Information is required by the business to perform its functions and activities and it is served up by the systems and technologies that capture, process, transmit, store, and retrieve it for use by the business. (The information perspective is sandwiched in between the business and the services/technology perspectives.)

Recently, I synthesized a best practice for information management. This involves key values, goals for these, and underlying objectives. The values and objectives include the following:

1. Sharing –making information visible, understandable, and accessible.
2. Quality—information needs to be valid, consistent, and comprehensive.
3. Efficiency—information should be requirement-based (mission-driven), non-duplicative, timely, and delivered in a financially sound way.
4. Security—information must be assured in terms of confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
5. Compliance—information has to comply with requirements for privacy, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and records management.

The importance of information management to enterprise architecture was recently addressed in DM Review Magazine, May 2008. The magazine reports that in developing an architecture, you need to focus on the information requirements and managing these first and foremost!

“You need to first understand and agree on the information architecture that your business needs. Then determine the data you need, the condition of that data and what you need to do to cleanse, conform, and transform that data into business transformation.”

Only after you fully understand your information requirements, do you move on to develop technology solutions.

“Next, determine what technologies (not products) are required by the information and data architectures. Finally, almost as an afterthought, evaluate and select products.” [I don’t agree with the distinction between technologies and products, but I do agree that you first need your information requirements.]

Remember, business drives technology—and this is done through information requirements—rather than doing technology for technology’s sake.

“Let me also suggest …Do not chase the latest and greatest if your incumbent products can get the job done.”

In enterprise architecture, the customer/end-user is king and the information requirements are their edicts.

Information Management and Enterprise Architecture

Personalization and Enterprise Architecture

Everyone likes to have things personalized for them. Personalization appeals to our desire to be unique and distinct—special in our own ways.

Online, we have the ability to personalize our portals, like Yahoo, so that we get the information (content) that we are interested in and the look and feel for the layout (format) and navigation that we are comfortable with.

We also like to get personalized recommendations (advice and offers) for things we might be interested in, assuming that the suggestions are pretty darn solid and hit the mark.

MIT Technology Review, May/June 2008, reports that “people do buy more when you help them find what they need”

Generally, while advertising often gets bothersome and we tune it out, people do like “that internet companies have dedicated such ingenuity, memory, and processing power to offering me good suggestions.”

Hence, the ever growing amount of:

• “Customers who bought this item also bought…” (Amazon)
• “Just for you” (Apple iTunes)
• Pop-ups
• Context-sensitive advertisements

On Amazon, for example, “reviews, recommendations, and rankings become an essential part of browsing and shopping.”

And the larger the number of users that the recommendation engines can infer from (the “network effect”), the better the personalized suggestions become.

Where’s all this personalization going?

“Perhaps Google’s Gmail will tell you—to whom you should forward that urgent email to, or remind you to keep in touch with a friend you’ve inadvertently ignored…[or] imagine Facebook suggesting what information should be shared with whom—or who should be sharing more with you.”

Those companies and organizations that can architect personalization and recommendations right for their consumers and end users stand to profit hugely. For example, “Netflix is offering a million dollars to anyone who can improve the efficacy of its (exceptionally successful) recommendation engine. That’s a small price to pay for a company who future depends on its ability to compete with Blockbuster and the digital video companies of the future.”

Time is money, and both are scarce and valuable. Enterprises that are able to develop personalized recommendations that speed up the shopping experience and help us get better value for our dollars—and at the same time aren’t “in your face” and annoying--will have an architecture that will pay off in terms of strategic competitive advantage.

The target enterprise architecture here is increased sales and profitability (performance); focused sales and marketing (business); greater personalization and useful recommendations (information); systems processing automated suggestion algorithms (services and technology), all done securely and with privacy assured (security).

Personalization and Enterprise Architecture

Obstacles to Information Sharing and Enterprise Architecture

Here is the target architecture for information sharing:

An interesting document I read presented these five steps to architecting data and making it into useful and usable information for the organizations and its end users:

1. “Request the dots”—identifying and requesting data from the producers of data
2. “Get the dots”—capturing data through manual and automated systems
3. “Find the dots”—discovering needed data and having access to it
4. “Connect the dots”—processing the data into information by aggregating, processing, and integrating it
5. “Use the dots”—utilize information for enhanced decision making

And here are the major obstacles to finding, connecting, and using the dots, a.k.a. information sharing in our organizations:

According to the Association for Enterprise Integration (AFEI), Information Sharing Working Group, 15 January 2008, “There is a human predilection to guard what is ours. The information we hold and the resources we use to create it are no exception…[moreover], individual agencies/organizations are not motivated to treat information as a shared asset.”

Here are some other disincentives to information-sharing from a program manager’s perspective:

1. “Charity work”—“First, to a program manager, information sharing looks like ‘charity work.’ Sharing information beyond the scope of the program costs money, but is not directly accretive to the mission of the program.”
2. Elevated risk—“Information sharing poses a risk in the sense that it creates the prospect of uninvited critique, review, evidence for litigation, and so on.”
3. Standards cost time and money—Building to common standards for information sharing can be costly to a program; the standards may be more complex to implement, may require additional level of testing, and certification of compliance.

Perhaps, this statement sums up best the information sharing problem at the project level: “Remember, a program manager is incentivized to deliver on time and on budget per customer requirements. His/her tenure may be two to five years [for a project]. The fact that the systems they manage may last 20 years and may be difficult to integrate in the last 15 of those years is not a compelling argument for a program manager to change his/her behavior.”

The way to overcome information hoarding is to develop rock solid Information Governance, so that the decision making and management of information is taken out of the hands of the program and project manager and is put into the hands of Information governance boards, communities of interest, and information stewards.

“The governance framework must articulate the accountability and authority promote standards and guidelines; ensure a consistent well-defined approach, processes and procedures; adjudicate disconnects; establish legal and policy enforcement; and use performance measures to ensure progress towards achieving information sharing goals.” (DoD Information Sharing Strategy, May 2007)

Information is an enterprise and national asset. Shared information is valuable because it is captured once, but is “used any number of times, by any number of users.” (AFEI)

To maintain its value, information must be kept current, accurate, complete, be easy to understand, and readily accessible; this is quality information and it is valuable to our decision makers and enhances our ability to deliver on mission.

Only through active information governance will we be able to achieve this end state. It will start with changing the culture and mindset that currently dictates that information is power and information is currency, and questions why share it. And information sharing will be realized when everyone in the organization, from the top executives to the hourly workers on the front lines, understand, advocate, promote and demand that information sharing be the new norm; that it is the only acceptable and rational behavior for achieving mission success!

Obstacles to Information Sharing and Enterprise Architecture

Virtualization and Enterprise Architecture

"[Virtualization is] a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource." (Mann, Andi, Virtualization 101, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), Retrieved on 29 October 2007 according to Wikipedia)

Virtualization places an intermediary between consumers and providers; it is an interface between the two. The interface allows a multiplicity of consumers to interact with one provider, or one consumer to interact with a multiplicity of providers, or both, with only the intermediary being aware of multiplicities. (adapted from Wikipedia)

ComputerWorld, 24 September 2007, reports in “Virtual Machines deployed on the Sly” that according to an InfoPro survey “28% of the respondents said they expect that half of all new servers installed at their companies this year will host virtual applications. And about 50% said that, by 2010, at least half of their new servers will likely host virtual software.”

What are the major concerns in going virtual?

• Service levels—users are concerned that performance will suffer without having dedicated hardware to run their applications.
• Security—there is concern that application and information security will be compromised in a virtual environment.
• Vendor support—“some vendors won’t support their software at all if it’s run on virtual machines.”
• Pricing—pricing for software licensing utilized in a virtual environment can be higher due to added complexity of support.

From a User-centric Enterprise Architecture perspective, plan on moving to virtual machines. There is potential for significant cost savings from consolidating IT infrastructure that includes reducing the number of servers, reducing related facility costs, as well as increasing overall utilization rates of machines and balancing loads to achieve greater efficiency. Soon there is no need for a dedicated server to host applications anymore.

Virtualization and Enterprise Architecture

Executive Dashboards and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture makes information visible to enable better decision making in the organization. One tool to help do this is the executive dashboard.

In management information systems, a dashboard is a executive information system user interface that (similar to an automobile's dashboard) is designed to be easy to read. For example, a product might obtain information from the local operating system in a computer, from one or more applications that may be running, and from one or more remote sites on the Web and present it as though it all came from the same source. (Wikipedia)

Dashboards help manage information overload:

• “After three decades of aggressive computerization, companies are drowning in data and information. People produced about five exabytes of new information in 2002, twice the amount created just two years earlier” (Trend: The New Rules of Information Management by Jeffrey Rothfeder)
• Dashboard are a way to take the fire hose flood of information that we get every day and make it more actionable by structuring it, focusing it, and making it more understandable often through visual displays. Note, this is similar to User-centric Enterprise Architecture’s use of principles of communications and design, such as information visualization to effectively communicate the baseline, target, and transition plan in the organization.

Dashboards provide business intelligence:

• Dashboards, like enterprise architecture itself, contribute to translating data into business intelligence. EA does this by capturing, analyzing, cataloging, and serving up information in useful and usable ways to enhance decision making by the end-users. Dashboards do this by capturing and aggregating performance metrics, and displaying them in easy-to-read and often, customizable formats.

Dashboards generally focus on performance:

• Dashboards generally are used for displaying, monitoring, and managing an organization’s performance metrics. Note, “performance” is one of the perspectives of the enterprise architecture, so dashboards are a nifty way to make that EA perspective really come alive!
• According to DM Review, 15 April 2008, “Dashboards Help Drive and Improve Performance Metrics…Presented in highly visual charts and graphs, this data can provide each level of the organization with the information it needs to best perform…Dashboards also can be a key driver of performance improvement initiatives, offering a simple and graphical way to make key performance indicators (KPIs) visible throughout the enterprise.”
  

Dashboards typically provide activity monitoring and drilldown capability:

• “The most effective dashboards allow users to drill down into the KPIs to find root cause or areas likely to cause problems. Some can even be configured to alert maintenance or support personnel when performance drops” or dangerous thresholds are crossed. Dashboard also help “make comparisons of multiple data sources” over time. These functions are called business activity monitoring, and when applied to the organization’s network, for example, is referred to a network monitoring.
• The ability to monitor and manage performance using the dashboard is similar to ability to monitor and manage the organization’s track along it roadmap using EA!
• The most effective dashboards, like the most effective enterprise architectures, are those that provide information in multiple layers of detail, so that the executives can get the high-level summary, the mid-level managers can understand the relationships between the information, and the analysts can drill down and get the detail.

Dashboards—an effective human-machine interface:

• Dashboards done right, are an effective EA tool, and serve as a window into the organization’s performance; they provides real-time, summary and granular information for making quick and specific decisions to positively affect performance.

Executive Dashboards and Enterprise Architecture

Cyber Warfare and Enterprise Architecture

Security is a cross-cutting perspective in Enterprise Architecture, but I treat it as its own EA perspective because of its importance. And this is especially true in a law enforcement and defense readiness organization.

While security in EA is generally of a defensive nature, we must remember that as a nation, we must be ready to not only defend ourselves, but also to launch offensive operations and take out the enemy.

According to Military Information Technology Magazine, 9 April 2008, in an interview with Major General William T. Lord, the Department of Defense is standing up a new Cyberspace Command in the U.S. Air Force.

Why do we need this new Cyberspace Command?

There are many threats to us that emanate from cyberspace that include:

• Cyber-criminals—looking to steal your identity or your money
• Cyber-terrorists—“wants to disrupt, dissuade, or deter us from doing something
• Nation States—“some of which are out to interrupt U.S. interests anywhere in the world.”

Cyberspace is a dangerous place, especially if you’re DoD; they “get about 3 million attempted penetrations” a day!

This is why defense in depth is so important, so that if an enemy manages to get through the perimeter of our network security, we can still stop them at the second or third tiers of our defensive capabilities.

In terms of offensive capabilities, sometimes you have to take the battle to the enemy. At times, it is necessary to “disrupt an enemy prior to the conduct of kinetic combat operations, [so] that the enemy could not figure out what its command and control system was, had false data, could not see an attacking force, and was making decisions based on information systems that been manipulated in advance of combat operations.”

To architect the defensive and offensive cyberspace capabilities necessary to combat our enemies, it is imperative to continuously build information sharing and partnership between the parties involved, such as the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and the Director of National Intelligence. This is a core tenet of user-centric EA.

Just as we invest in the latest and greatest kinetic weapons to defeat our enemies, we must also invest in non-kinetic weapons including “our electronic warfare, space systems, and cyber-systems. As Major General Lord, stated: “it’s not always about destroying things, but about changing behavior, so that an enemy concludes that the costs of whatever they had in mind is too great and will stop. [Then again,] sometimes you have to be able to whack somebody in the nose.”

Cyber Warfare and Enterprise Architecture

“Glocalization” and Enterprise Architecture

Glocal is a combination of the words global and local. It is a best practice in business where organizations conducts business operations globally, but tailor their offerings to meet local tastes and needs.

Essentially doing business glocally means that you are architecting your business to perform operations both effectively and efficiently—i.e. your business is doing the right thing by growing without geopolitical constraints and you’re doing it the right way, by being sensitive to the customers’ specific needs wherever they are located.

The Wall Street Journal, 1 May 2008, reports that “Kraft became the No. 1 biscuit maker in China by tailoring the Oreo to local tastes.”

“The Oreo has long been the top-selling cookie in the U.S. Market. But Kraft Foods, Inc. had to reinvent the Oreo to make it sell well in the world’s most populous nation.”

“Unlike its iconic American counterpart, the Oreo sold in China is frequently long, thin, four-layered and coated in chocolate. But both kinds of cookies have one thing in common: They are now best sellers.”

40% of Kraft’s revenue is internationally-based, so their strategy to go glocal is critical to improving their market share and profitability.

To increase growth at Kraft, the CEO “has been putting more power in the hands of Kraft’s various business units around the globe, telling employees that decisions about Kraft products shouldn’t all be made by the people at the Northfield, Ill. headquarters.”

Similarly, to market the Chinese Oreo’s, one of innovative things Kraft did was to have Chinese university students ride around on bicycles outfitted with wheel covers resembling Oreos and handing out cookies.

The CEO stated this was “a stroke of genius that only could have come from local managers. The more opportunity our local managers have to deal with local conditions will be a source of competitive advantage for us.”

Glocalization, the customization to local markets, is far removed from the original Ford Model T (the most influential car of the twentieth century according to Wikipedia) set in 1908 that was based on standardization and assembly-line production, rather than individually hand-crafted.

From an enterprise architecture perspective, going glocal and customizing (or tailoring) business products and services to local tastes is also quite the opposite of what most enterprise architects try to do, which is to standardize their products and services to increase interoperability, simplify the infrastructure and operations, and achieve cost-efficiencies.

So what is more important, standardization or customization?

I suppose it depends on your perspective. If you’re in operations, then standardization is the dominant factor in order to streamline business processes and achieve cost-efficiencies. However, if you’re in sales and marketing, then customization is key to market penetration and customer satisfaction.

This leads me to the role of the enterprise architect, which is to balance the conflicting needs of the organization and simultaneously drive standardization in business processes and technologies, but customization to local requirements for sales and marketing. So EA serves Oreos to everyone!

“Glocalization” and Enterprise Architecture