Embracing Instability and Enterprise Architecture

Traditional management espouses that executives are supposed to develop a vision, chart a course for the organization, and guide it to that future destination. Moreover, everyone in the enterprise is supposed to pull together and sing off the same sheet of music, to make the vision succeed and become reality. However, new approaches to organizational management acknowledge that in today’s environment of rapid change and the many unknowns that abound, executives need to be far more flexible and adaptable, open to learning and feedback, and allow for greater individualism and creativity to succeed.

In the book Managing the Unknowable by Ralph Stacey, the author states that “by definition, innovative strategic directions take an organization into uncharted waters. It follows that no one can know the future destination of an innovative organization. Rather, that organization’s managers must create, invent, and discover their destination as they go.”

In an environment of rapid change, the leader’s role is not to rigidly control where the organization is going, but rather to create conditions that foster creativity and learning. In other words, leaders do not firmly set the direction and demand a “cohesive team” to support it, but rather they create conditions that encourage and promote people to “question everything and generate new perspectives through contention and conflict.” The organization is moved from "building on their strengths and merely adapting to existing market conditions, [to insted] they develop new strengths and at least partly create their own environments.”

An organization just sticking to what they do best and incrementally improving on that was long considered a strategy for organizational success; however, it is now understood as a recipe for disaster. “It is becoming clearer why so many organizations die young…they ‘stick to their knitting’ and do better and better what they already do well. When some more imaginative competitors come along and change the rules of the game, such over-adapted companies…cannot respond fast enough. The former source of competitive success becomes the reason for failure and the companies, like animals, become extinct.”

Organizations must be innovative and creative to succeed. “The ‘new science’ for business people is this: Organizations are feedback systems generating such complex behavior that cause-and-effect links are broken. Therefore, no individual can intend the future of that system or control its journey to that future. Instead what happens to an organization is created by and emerges from the self-organizing interactions between its people. Top managers cannot control this, but through their interventions, they powerfully influence this.

With the rapidly changing economic, political, social, and technological conditions in the world, “the future is inherently unpredictable.” To manage effectively then is not to set rigid plans and targets, but rather to more flexibly read, analyze, and adapt to the changes as they occur or as they can be forecast with reasonable certainly. “A ‘shared vision’ of a future state must be impossible to formulate, unless we believe in mystic insight.” “No person, no book, can prescribe systems, rules, policies, or methods that dependably will lead to success in innovative organizations. All managers can do it establish the conditions that enable groups of people to learn in each new situation what approaches are effective in handling it.”

For enterprise architecture, there are interesting implications from this management approach. Enterprise architects are responsible for developing the current and target architecture and transition plan. However, with the rapid pace of change and innovation and the unpredictability of things, we learn that “hard and fast” plans will not succeed, but rather EA plans and targets must remain guidelines only that are modified by learning and feedback and is response to the end-user (i.e User-centric). Secondly, EA should not become a hindrance to organizational innovation, creativity, and new paradigms for organizational success. EA needs to set standards and targets and develop plans and administer governance, but this must be done simultaneously with maintaining flexibility and harnessing innovation into a realtime EA as we go along. It’s not a rigid EA we need, but as one of my EA colleagues calls it, it’s an “agile EA”.

Embracing Instability and Enterprise Architecture

A Call to IT Arms

Recently, I heard a colleague say that we should view IT not as a cost center, but as a resource center—and I really liked that.

In fact, IT is a cost center and a resource center, but these days there is an overemphasis on it being a cost center.

On the negative side, people seem to like to criticize IT and point out the spectacular failures there have been, and in fact, according to Public CIO “a recent study by the Standish Group showed that 82% of all IT project were either failures or were considered challenged.”

This is the dark side of IT that many would like to dwell on.

However, I would argue that while we must constantly improve on IT project delivery, IT failures can be just a point in time on the way to tremendous success and there are many of these IT successes that we benefit from in big and small ways every day.

Moreover, it may take 1000 failures to achieve that one great breakthrough success. That is the nature of innovation and experimentation.

Of course, that does not mean we should do stupid or negligent things that results in failed IT projects—we must do our best to be responsible and professional stewards. But, we should not be afraid to experiment and fail as a healthy part of the creative process.

Thomas Edison said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

So why are we obsessed with IT failures these days?

Before the dot com bust, when technology was all the rave, and we enjoyed the bounty of new technologies like the computer, cell phones, handhelds, electronics galore, the Internet and all the email, productivity software and e-commerce and business applications you could ask for, the mindset was “technology is the engine that drives business.” And in fact, many companies were even changing their names to have “.com” in them to reflect this. The thinking was that if you didn’t realize the power and game-changing nature of technology, you could just as well plan to be out of business in the near future. The technologies that came out of those years were amazing and you and I rely on these every day.

Then after the dot-com burst, the pendulum swung the other way—big time! IT became an over zealous function, that was viewed as unstructured and rampant, with runaway costs that had to be contained. People were disappointed with the perceived broken promises and failed projects that IT caused, and IT people were pejoratively labeled geeks or techies and viewed as being outside the norm—sort of the societal flunkies who started businesses out of home garages. People found IT projects failures were everywhere. The corporate mindset changed to “business drives technology.”

Now, I agree that business drives technology in terms of requirements coming from the business and technology providing solutions to it and enabling it. But technology is also an engine for growth, a value creator, and a competitive advantage!

Further, while some would argue these days that IT is “just a tool”, I would counter that IT is a true strategic asset to those who understand its role in the enterprise. I love IT and I believe we all do and this is supported by the fact that we have become basically insatiable for IT. Forrester predicts U.S. IT budgets in 2009 will be in the vicinity of $750 billion. (http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/59200-it-market-us-decline-51-percent-2009-researchers.htm) Think about what you want for the holidays—does it have IT in it?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was about how the homeless are so tied to technology that many have a computer with Internet access, even when they don’t have three square meals a day or a proper home to live in.

Another sign of how critical IT has become is that we recently stood up a new Cyber Command to protect our defense IT establishment. We are reliant indeed on our information technology and we had better be prepared to protect and defend it.

The recent White House 2009 Cyberspace Policy Review states: “The globally-interconnected digital information and communications infrastructure known as “cyberspace” underpins almost every facet of modern society and provides critical support for the U.S. economy, civil infrastructure, public safety, and national security.”

It's time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction and to view IT as the true strategic asset that it is.

A Call to IT Arms

Adaptive Leaders Rule The Day

One of the key leadership traits is of course, agility. No single course of action—no matter how intelligent or elegant—will be successful in every situation. That’s why effective leaders need to be able to quickly adapt and to apply situation-appropriate behaviors (situational leadership) to the circumstances as they arise.

Leaders need a proverbial "toolkit" of successful behaviors to succeed and even more so be able to adapt and create innovative new tools to meet new unchartered situations.

Harvard Business Review, July/August 2009, has a interesting article called “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis” that offers up some useful insights on adaptive leadership.

But first, what is clear is that uncertainty abounds and leadership must adapt and meet the challenges head on:

“Uncertainty will continue as the norm even after the recession ends. Economics cannot erect a firewall against intensifying global competition, energy constraints, climate change, and political instability.”

But some things that effective leaders can do in challenging and uncertain times are as follows:

“Foster adaptation”—leaders need to be able to function in two realities—today and tomorrow. They “must execute in order to meet today’s challenges and they must adapt what and how things get done in order to thrive in tomorrow’s world.” Or to put it another way: leaders “must develop ‘next practices’ while excelling at today’s best practices.”

Stabilize, then solve—in uncertain times, when an emergency situation arises, first stabilize the situation and then adapt by tackling the underlying causes and building capacity to thrive in a new reality.

Experiment—don’t be afraid to experiment and try out new ways of doing things, innovate products and services, or field new technologies. “The way forward will be characterized by constant midcourse corrections.” But that is how learning occurs and that’s how success is bred—one experience and experiment at a time.

“Embrace disequilibrium”—Often people and organizations won’t or can’t change until the pain of not adapting is greater than the pain of staying the course. Too little pain and people stay in their comfort zone. Too much change, and people “fight, flee, or freeze.” So we have to be ready to change at the tipping point when the discomfort opens the way for change to drive forward.

Make people safe to question—unfortunately, too often [poor] leadership is afraid or threatened by those who question or seek alternative solutions. But effective leaders are open to new ideas, constructive criticism and innovation. Leaders need be confident and “create a culture of courageous conversations”—where those who can provide critical insights “are protected from the organizational pressure to remain silent.”

Leverage diversity—the broader the counsel you have, the better the decision you are likely to make. “If you do not engage in the widest possible range of life experiences and views—including those of younger employees—you risk operating without a nuanced picture of the shifting realities facing the business internally and externally.

To me, while leaders may intuitively fall back on tried and true techniques that have worked for them in the past, adaptive leaders need to overcome that tendency and think creatively and in situation-appropriate ways to be most effective. The adaptive leader doesn’t just do what is comfortable or known, but rather he/she synthesizes speed, agility, and courage in confronting new and evolving challenges. No two days or situations are the same and leadership must stand ready to meet the future by charting and creative new ways ahead.

Adaptive Leaders Rule The Day

Building and Rebuilding the World

(Tikkun Olam)

We are placed here on this earth, figuratively in G-d's "hand," and our job is to build (and rebuild) until it's perfect.

This image struck me as a wonderful metaphor for what the essence of enterprise architecture is really all about.

What are your thoughts?

Building and Rebuilding the World

Kudos to the Bean Counters

Innovation is powerful, and with power comes responsibility.

When we think creatively and “out of the box”, we break the mental bounds that constrain our ability to go beyond what we know today and build capabilities that were unimaginable just the day before.

Yet, innovation is not like creation. G-d creates something from nothing. Man builds on the ideas of those who came before us—this is incrementalism.

And doing so, we are able to go beyond our own individual human limitations.

Incrementalism is a force multiplier. It is like layering one new thought, one change, one innovation on top on another and another. With each incremental development, we as a society are able to go beyond those who came before us.

Of course, some innovations are more evolutionary and some more incredibly revolutionary, but for all there are influences that underpin their development and they are there even if we cannot readily see them.

In short though, we are constantly changing as a society and as individuals—for better or possibly, for worse.

In the introduction to the novel, The Prey, by Michael Crichton, the author talks about the how everything—“every living plant, insect, and animal species”--is constantly evolving and warns of the complexity, uncertainty, and possible dire consequences if we do not manage change responsibly.

““The notion that the world around us is continuously evolving is a platitude; we rarely grasp its full implications…The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do.”

I think the point is that even if we can envision or test the consequences of innovation one, two, three or however many steps forward, we cannot know the limitless possible downstream effects of a change that we initiate.

Crichton states: Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future.”

We don’t have to look too far to see how we have irresponsibly used many innovations in our times, whether they be complex and risky investment instruments that have led to the current financial crisis, medical products that have had serious unintended side effects resulting in serious injury and fatalities, and of course our endless thirst for and usage of fossil fuels and the general disregard for our planet and the negative effects on our environment such as global warming and pollution to name just a couple.

Crichton warns that “sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power.”

The warning is particularly apropos in light of the ever increasing rate of change enabled by and manifested in various technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, nuclear technology and information technology.

With each new advance in our technological prowess come risks of these new tools getting away from us and causing harm. For example, nuclear technologies have provided weapons of mass destruction that we struggle to contain; biotechnology has stirred concerns in terms of cloning, mutations, and deadly pathogens; nanotechnology stirs fears of toxic microscopic organisms that can easily get into our bodies, and IT viruses and cyber warfare that threaten our world of bits and bytes as we have come to know and rely for just about every daily activity we are involved in.

The point is not for us to be scared into mental stasis and inaction, but to be cognizant of the potential for serious side effects of changes and to take appropriate safeguards to mitigate those.

Innovation is exciting but it can also be seriously scary. Therefore, we need to be brave and bold in our thinking and actions, but at the same time we need to be cautious and act responsibly.

What this means in real life is that when new ideas are introduced, we need to evaluate them carefully so that we understand the range of benefits and risks they pose.

While it is not very sexy to be the voice of caution, great leaders know how to encourage new thinking while reining in potentially dangerous consequences.

Kudos to the Bean Counters

“Design Thinking” and Enterprise Architecture

Ranked as one of the most innovative companies in the world, IDEO is an innovation and design firm, founded in 1991. Its client list include heavy hitters such as Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, Nestle, and Proctor and Gamble.

According to their website, they specialize in helping organizations to “Visualize new directions for companies and brands and design the offerings - products, services, spaces, media, and software - that bring innovation strategy to life.”

Harvard Business Review, June 2008, has an article by their CEO and President, Tim Brown.

First, how IDEO defines innovation:

“Innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported. “

“Leaders now look to innovation as a principle source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases and processes.”

“Rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires.”

The three phases of design:

• Inspiration—the problem or opportunity that is driving the creative design process.
• Ideation (brainstorming)—“the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas that may lead to solutions.”
• Implementation—“executing the vision or how we bring the design concept to market.”

How you can be a design thinker?

A people first approach—based on keen observation and noticing things that others do not, you can use insights to inspire innovative ideas that meet explicit and implicit needs. This is similar to a user-centric enterprise architecture approach, where we drive business process improvement and the introduction of new technologies based on genuine user/business requirements and a strategic understanding of the performance, business, information, systems, technologies, security, and human capital aspects of the organization.

Integration—To develop innovative solutions, you need to integrate “sometimes contradictory-aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.” Integration is an important aspect of EA, not only in terms of enterprise architecture synthesizing business and technology to enable creative architecture plans that drive the organization into the future, but also in terms of breaking down structural and process silos and building a more holistic, synergistic, interoperable, and capable organization.

Experimentation—there are “endless rounds of trial and error—the ‘99% perspiration’ in [Thomas] Edison’s famous definition of genius.” Most great ideas don’t “pop up fully formed out of brilliant minds”—“they are not a sudden breakthrough nor the lightening strike of genius,” but rather, they are “the result of hard work segmented by creative human-centered discovery process and followed by iterative cycles of prototyping, testing, and refinement.” While enterprise architecture is not generally-speaking a disciple based in experimentation, part of the EA planning should focus on market and competitive research, including best practices identification and sponsorship that will be used to drive modernization and transformation of the enterprise. Additionally, the EA should include research and development efforts in the plans to acknowledge the ongoing innovation required for the organization to grow, mature, and compete.

Collaboration—“the increasing complexity of products, services, and experiences has replaced the myth of the lone creative genius with the reality of enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborator.” As an enterprise architect, I am an ardent proponent of this principle. In the large and complex modern-day organization of the 21^st century, we need both breadth and depth of subject matter experts to build the EA, govern it, mange change, and drive modernization in our enterprises. As any half-decent architect knows, ivory tower planning effort are bound for failure. We must work collaboratively with the business and technology experts and give all our stakeholders a voice at the table—this give change and innovation the best chance of real success.

Tim Brown says that “design thinking can lead to innovation that goes beyond aesthetics…time and again we see successful products that were not necessarily the first to market, but were the first to appeal to us emotionally and functionally…as more of our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful.”

I believe this is a lesson for EA as well:

For enterprise architecture to be successful, it is not enough to be functional (i.e. to set a good plan), but rather it has to have design thinking and be useful and usable to our end-users (i.e. User-centric). By incorporating innovative thinking into not only the EA plans, but also into how we reach out and collaborate with our stakeholders to build the plans (i.e by sparking the innovative process and creative juices with constructive challenging of the status quo to a broad array of subject matter experts), and the way we employ design to portray and communicate these plans (i.e with profiles, models, and inventories for example), we will have a architecture that truly represents the organization, is understood by it, and serves its needs and aspirations.

“Design Thinking” and Enterprise Architecture

The Business Analyst and Enterprise Architecture

A business analyst or "BA" is responsible for analyzing the business needs of their clients and stakeholders to help identify business problems and propose solutions. Within the systems development life cycle domain, the business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of [IT] services to the enterprise. (Wikipedia)

Business analysis is critical to enterprise architecture, because it derives the business functions, processes, activities, and tasks. Coupled with some basic data and systems analysis, BA determines the information requirements of the business and the systems (manual or automated) that serve those up. Through business analysis, we identify gaps, redundancies, roadblocks, and opportunities which are used by enterprise architecture to drive business process improvement, reengineering, and the introduction of new technologies.

Where does the business analyst reside in the organization—in the business or in IT?

The answer is yes to both. The business analyst resides in the business and works on segment architecture for their lines of business and on defining functional requirements. Some business analysts also reside in IT as a relationship manager to translate business-speak to the techies and vice versa. Also, the LOBs may not have business analysts on staff and may request this service be performed by the IT shop. For example, this may be done from the enterprise architecture function to support segment architecture development or alignment to the enterprise architecture. Or it may be done by the IT centers of excellence that develop the systems solutions. If they can’t get the functional requirements from the LOBs, they may send in their own BAs to work with the programs to help capture this information.

ComputerWorld Magazine, 12 May 2008, asks “Is there a place for business analysts in IT today?” And answers, “Not if their primary function is just to analyze business needs…business people want more than analysis; they want workable solutions.”

So aside from business analysis what do you need to come up with a technical solution?

• Resources—$$$$, smart people, the right infrastructure! (this one’s mine, the other two below are from ComputerWorld)
• Creativity—“come up with ideas…to create systems that can meet performance requirements.”
• Synthesis—“best ideas are evaluated and modified until good solutions are found.”

According to the ComputerWorld article, a single person who does the analysis, the creativity, and the synthesis is called a systems designer, but I disagree with this. The analysis and development of the requirements is “owned” by the business (even if IT is called upon to help with this function). While the creativity and synthesis, which is the technical solution, is “owned” by IT. Further, it is typically not a “single person” that develops the requirements and comes up with the solution. The solutions provider (IT) is generally distinct from the business that has the needs, even if sometimes it is difficult for them to articulate these into functional requirements.

ComputerWorld specifies four techniques for identifying requirements and developing a solution:

1. Group facilitation—“getting input from everyone who might have relevant information and insights on a business process.”
2. Process mapping—“create diagrams that capture task sequences for existing and new workflows.” (I believe we in EA all know this as Business Modeling).
3. Data modeling—“diagram the structure of the data those workflows operate in.”
4. User interface prototyping—“use prototypes of user interface screens to illustrate how people can interact with the system to do their jobs.” (Frankly, I don’t believe this one fits with the other three, since prototyping comes somewhat down the road in the SDLC after conceptual planning, analysis, and design. I would replace prototyping with some core system modeling to fill out the business, data, and system model set, so that we can see what systems are currently in use and where the gaps and redundancies are, and where there is potential for component or system re-use and building interoperability.)

I would suggest that 1 and 2 (the facilitation and business modeling) are the functions are the business analyst, but that 3 and 4 (data and systems modeling) are the responsibility of the IT function. Again, it is the business that “brings” the requirements and the IT department that comes up with the technical solution to meet those requirements.

Another thought: Perhaps the organization is struggling with defining the business analyst and those that develop the technical solution because it is really the synthesis of the two that is needed. It is similar to enterprise architecture itself, which is the synthesis of business and technology to enable better decision making. I can envision the further development of segment and solutions architecture to become just such a function that merges the requirements (business) and solutions (IT).

The Business Analyst and Enterprise Architecture

Creative Destruction and Enterprise Architecture

“The notion of creative destruction is found in the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, Friedrich Nietzsche and in Werner Sombart's Krieg und Kapitalismus (War and Capitalism) (1913, p. 207), where he wrote: "again out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises". The economist Joseph Schumpeter popularized and used the term to describe the process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation. In Schumpeter's vision of capitalism, innovative entry by entrepreneurs was the force that sustained long-term economic growth, even as it destroyed the value of established companies that enjoyed some degree of monopoly power.” (Wikipedia)

From an enterprise architecture perspective, I find the concept of creative destruction an enlightening concept, in a number of ways:

1. Two steps backwards—enterprise architecture is not just a forward planning endeavor. Sometimes, to move forward on the roadmap, you actually may have to take a couple of step back. To build new processes or introduce new technologies, you may first have to scrap the old ones or at least stop investing in them. Just like with a physical blueprint, sometimes you can build unto an existing house or modify it, and other times, you need to bring in the wrecking ball (take a few steps back) and build fresh from the ground up. (Of course, at other times you may have to change the wings on the airplane while it’s still flying.) It is on a fresh palette that a painter can create a new masterpiece.
2. Creativity is the future—enterprise architects should not fear bringing in new ideas, innovation, and creative approaches. Just because something has been done a certain way in the past, does not mean that it always has to be done that way in the future. In fact, stagnation by definition means that the existing processes are doomed to be obsolete and surpassed by others who are adapting to an ever changing environment. Indeed, those enamored with the past can and often are a roadblock to doing things a new way. The old guard will stand up and say, we’ve been doing it this way or that way for so many years; who are you to come in here and try and change it; we know better; you don’t understand our environment. And sometimes, they may be right. But more often than not, the naysayers are fearful of and resistant to change. With ample research, planning, and testing we can develop better, faster, and cheaper ways of doing things.
3. Change can be radical—Much of EA change will be evolutionary, a planned sequence of steps in process improvement and technology enablement. However, some change will be more radical and revolutionary. Some organizational change requires selling off, closing down, merging, acquiring, or otherwise “destroying the value of established companies” in order to innovate and create something new and better. Like the process of evolution and the survival of the fittest, those companies and processes that are not “making the grade” need to be shut down, discontinued, or otherwise morphed into value-add forces of long-term economic growth.
   

One final thought. Destruction is a darn scary thing. No one wants to see their handiwork taken apart, brought down, and be forced to start again. In fact, it is hard enough in life to have to build something, but to see it destroyed and have to start again can be maddening. The mere fact of seeing something destroyed is destabilizing and demoralizing. The organization and person asks themselves: who’s to say the next build will be more stable, more everlasting, more productive? Who wants to feel that their time has been wasted on something that is now gone? Who can be so confident that their efforts will ever come again to a substantive and meaningful accomplishment, and one that compares or surpasses to what was? However, this is the clincher of creative destruction—while destruction is enormously painful and undermining to self-confidence, “out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises.” With a fresh start, an organization or person can build anew and perhaps from the lessons of the past, from the pain of building and destruction, from the processes of working something through and evolving it, a better future can be created. And there is hope for a new enterprise or personal life architecture.

Creative Destruction and Enterprise Architecture

Wind Power and Enterprise Architecture

One great thing about enterprise architecture is that it’s forward looking and seeks to solve today’s problems with tomorrow’s solutions—that’s our target architecture!

Today, we have a problem with developing renewable energy resources, tomorrow we have one target solution that involves floating wind power.

MIT Technology Review, 2 April 2008 reports that “floating platforms could take wind farms far from coasts, reducing costs and skirting controversy.”

“Offshore wind-farm developers would love to build in deep water more than 32 kilometers from shore, where stronger and steadier winds prevail and complaints about scenery are less likely. But building foundations to support wind turbines in water deeper than 20 meters is prohibitively expensive. Now, technology developers are stepping up work in floating turbines to make such farms feasible.”

Is this technology viable today?

“Several companies are on their way to demonstrating systems by borrowing heavily from oil and gas offshore platform technology.”

How big a deal is the potential of wind power? Huge!

“If these efforts succeed, they could open up a resource of immense scale…offshore wind resources on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts exceed the current electricity generation of the entire U.S. power industry.”

“The global market for offshore energy could reach 40,000 megawatts by 2020—enough to power more than 30 million U.S. homes, and more than twice the scale of last year’s wind installations worldwide.”

Creative solutions—innovations (like floatable wind farms) are what keep our organizations, our nation, and the human race continuously on a forward track. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t ever any backsliding. Of course, there is. But then we pull out our creative energy and passion and build the next target architecture.

Similarly, as architects, our job is to solve problems and meet end-user requirements. When inevitably, we face what seems like insurmountable odds, we just keep climbing to the next rung on the ladder.

Is there ever an end to that ladder?

Frankly, I am a huge believer that at some point, we do exhaust the capability of this wonderful world, Earth, to sustain ever more billions of people. Whether with wind farms or a myriad other technological innovations, there will come a time, when to space and other worlds we must go. Of that, as an enterprise architect, I am certain.

Will we have the creativity to keep up?

Wind Power and Enterprise Architecture

Breakthrough Thinking and Enterprise Architecture

Breakthrough thinking is at the heart of great enterprise architecture. Incremental improvements in the organization are one thing, but dramatic breakthroughs that take an organization to a whole new level is what EA dreams are made of.

Harvard Business Review (HBR), December 2007, reports on how to achieve this breakthrough in thinking.

Firstly, HBR contends that brainstorming does not work for a few reasons:

1. No structure—“most people are not very good at unstructured, abstract brainstorming.” Outside the box thinking is too vague for people to really get their arms around the problem and provide concrete solutions.
2. Data analysis is constrained—“slicing the data in new ways—almost always produces only small to middling insights…the contents of every database are structured to correspond to insights that are already recognized, not the ones that aren’t.”
3. Customer requirements can’t tell the whole story—customers “can rarely tell you whether they need or want a product that they have never seen or imagined."

So what do you do to get breakthrough thinking?

The approach “takes a middle path between the two extremes of boundless speculation and quantitative data analysis.

For example, “one question that can generate insights in any business is, “what is the biggest hassle about using or buying our product or service that people unnecessarily tolerate without knowing it?”

When you ask questions that create new boxes to think inside, you can prevent people from getting lost in the cosmos and give them a basis for making and comparing choices and for knowing whether they’re making progress.”

Here are some questions that drive breakthrough thinking:

• “What is the biggest hassle about using or buying our product or service that people unnecessarily tolerate without knowing it?”
• “How would our product change if it were tailored for every customer?”
• “Which customers use or purchase our product in the most unusual way?”
• “Who uses our product in ways we never expected or intended?”
• “Who else is dealing with the same generic problem as we are but for an entirely different reason? How have they addressed it?”
• “Which technologies embedded in our product have changed the most since the product was last redesigned?”

“The most fertile questions focus the mind on a subset of possibilities that differ markedly from those explored before, guiding people to valuable overlooked corners of the universe of possible improvements.”

From a participant’s standpoint, do the following to encourage breakthrough thinking.

1. Selection—“select participants who can product original insights.”
2. Engagement—“ensure that everyone is fully engaged;” provide incentives as appropriate. People are competitive by nature and a little competition can go a long way to idea generation.
3. Group size—break the participants into groups of around four, since that group size encourages everyone to participate and not hide-out.
4. Focus—set boundaries using preselected questions; “don’t worry about stifling creativity. It is precisely such boundaries…that will channel their creativity.”
5. Results—At the end of the brainstorming, “narrow the list of ideas to the ones you will seriously investigate…nothing is more deflating to the participants of a brainstorming session than leaving at the end with no confidence that anything will happen as a result of their efforts.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, what better way to serve the users than by thinking how to serve them better with improved products and services? The chief enterprise architect should facilitate breakthrough thinking to create the target architecture and transition plan for the enterprise.

Breakthrough Thinking and Enterprise Architecture

Turducken and Enterprise Architecture

When I asked a friend at work, how they enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday, they said great, they spent the day making (and then eating) turducken!

In the conversation, I was to learn what turducken is…

Turducken—“a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The name is a portmanteau of those ingredients: turkey, duck, and chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.” (Wikipedia)

I thought to myself, is it strange that someone made a recipe that combines 3 different birds and named it as if it was a new species with three heads or something?

My friend told me how much work it was to make this recipe and put these three birds together as one; also what a mess it made of the kitchen.

As I continued to hear and think about turducken, I realized it was all about good old innovation. Any plain old turkey, duck, or chicken—that’s old news. We’re in a society, where we are always looking to do and try something new. While “new” is not always better, it is the adventure, the creative process, the forever trying that is part of our creed. Like in Star Trek at the beginning where they say, “to go where no man has gone before.”

This creative spirit is an essential part of User-centric EA. Architects are masters at not only studying and analyzing the business and technology of today, but also aspire to innovate a better technology enabled business in the future. Aside from the “not another data call” EA is about piecing the business-technology puzzle of the organization together and incorporating all the economic, political, and social influences to create a viable vision and execution model for bringing the organization into the future.

So EA will never be satisfied with a plain old turkey, duck, or chicken. User-centric EA will always be looking to create an innovative turducken recipe!

Turducken and Enterprise Architecture

With Age Comes Wisdom and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 11 October 2007 reports that “in boardrooms these days, it is rare—perhaps too rare—for old-timers voices to be heard.” A main reason for this is that board members are frequently required to retire at age 70 or 72.

Are we to value or decry our seniors?

• Experience—some people are starting to questions forced retirement, since it is the older people that have more experience and expertise.Perhaps, we are wasting a most valuable resource by not tapping these older directors for longer.The same could be said for leaders, in general.Why put good leaders out to pasture, simply because of age?If leaders are healthy, have all their faculties and want to continue working, why not let their “wisdom, common sense, and institutional memory” continue to lead the way?
• Drawbacks—of course, we don’t want the elderly napping in the boardroom. Nor do we want “founder and their heirs” to main absolute control over companies and stifle healthy change and innovation.
• A balanced approach—probably, the best approach is to judge each individual case on its own merits, so that healthy, competent seniors can continue to be a source of wisdom to their organizations.

From a User-centric EA approach, it is important to recognize the valuable contribution that senior people in the organization can bring to the strategic issues that we face daily.

• Preventing mistakes—those who have served for 20, 30 or more years have a wealth of experience and institutional knowledge to keep the organization from making unnecessary mistakes.
• Sustaining creativity—seniority should not stifle healthy change, creativity, and innovation; also, just because something failed in the past, doesn’t mean it is a doomed approach forever.

With age comes wisdom, no question. But the organization needs to balance the valuable contribution of its seniors with the creativity, enthusiasm, and new ideas of new generations.

With Age Comes Wisdom and Enterprise Architecture

24 TV Series and Enterprise Architecture

“24, last year’s most Emmy Award-winning television series with five Emmys, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Kiefer Sutherland) and Outstanding Drama Series, is one of the most innovative, thrilling and acclaimed drama series on television.” (TV.com)

What makes 24 so thrilling?

Well there is the drama, the intrigue, the ever twisting plot and constant terrorist threats, and of course, Keifer Sutherland and the rest of the 24 team.

There is also the technology and its application to track the terrorists, communicate effectively, and the business intelligence to decipher the terrorist plots. While the technology is not perfect and often it is used by the terrorists to thwart CTU as well, it still comes across quite impressively.

On a Bluetooth technology website, I found this:

“Fox's hit television show ’24’ has always displayed the latest in cutting edge technology.CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) agents and terrorists alike. But which model of Bluetooth headsets are they actually wearing?” (bluetomorrow.com) During this season (Day 5) of 24, Bluetooth wireless headsets can be seen constantly being used by both

The technology used in 24 is viewed as cutting-edge and trend-setting (i.e. everyone wants to know which model CTU is using).

On another site, Government Computer News, 7 January, 2007, it states: “Federal superspy Jack Bauer battles fate and countless foes on the hit TV show “24”—a drama unfolding in real time and depicted on several windows within the screen. Like the Bauer character, who himself is the fictional successor to an earlier superagent who liked his tipple “shaken, not stirred,” federal IT users frequently will have to share information quickly if they hope to prevail or even survive in 2007.” (http://www.gcn.com/print/26_01/42874-1.html)

Again, the 24 series is viewed as a model for information technology users and IT sharing.

In the same GCN article, Homeland Security Department, G. Guy Thomas, the Coast Guard’s science and technology adviser for the Maritime Domain Awareness Project, states: “The ultimate goal that technologists and policy-makers should strive for is user-definable interfaces, which would provide a ‘common operational picture [COP] that serves as an interface to a collaborative information environment.’”

The COP contains an operational picture of relevant information shared by more than one command and facilitates collaborative planning and assists all echelons to achieve situational awareness. This type of operating picture is often seen being used in CTU to track and ultimately catch (with Bauer’s help) the terrorists.

For Homeland Security enterprise architecture, 24 can serve as a target state forsynthesizing business process and technology. For example, the integration between the business processes and the technology is virtually flawless in CTU, where business intelligence at the Los Angeles office is communicated and made virtually immediately available to the agents in the field for quickly following up on leads and cornering conspirators.

Additionally, even the character Jack Bauer himself displays not only tremendous heroism and patriotism in his efforts to protect this nation and its citizens, but also his innovative and can-do persona is a model for enterprise architecture development of creative yet grounded target technology states and transition plans for our organizations.

Additionally, from a User-centric EA perspective, we need to look outside our agencies at business and technology best practices in the public and private sectors, and yes, even at fictional portrayals. It is even from dramas like 24, and maybe especially from such visionary elements that EA can adapt information, creativity, and innovation to plan a genuine target state for our enterprises.

24 TV Series and Enterprise Architecture

Space Elevator and Enterprise Architecture

In User-centric EA, having a vision for the future is critical in developing the target architecture and transition plan.

At one time, man looked up at the heavens, and imagined that one day people would actually walk on the moon — and on July 21, 1969, this once unbelievable vision became a reality.

Today, some very smart people from Las Alamos National Lab, NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, and MIT are envisioning a space elevator 62,000 miles long that would move along at 120 miles an hour. The top of the elevator would rotate with the earth at 20,000 miles an hour and could be used to springboard to the moon, mars, and beyond. Sounds crazy? Well, NASA has invested millions of dollars and 22 teams (mostly universities) have signed up for a competition to design the space elevator.

The point is that using the imagination to envision the future is a really important part toward actually making the leap forward. The ideas have to start somewhere, and while the ideas need to be moderated and prioritized, big idea thinking is imperative to both evolutionary and revolutionary change. Enterprise architecture is a great place for using creativity, imagination, and vision and opening up often insular organizations to new ideas and ever greater possibilities for the future.

Space Elevator and Enterprise Architecture

Hollywood Has the Vision, Why doesn’t the CIO or EA?

Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, James Bond, 24, and so many more films are creative and future looking. Indeed, Hollywood seems to be the global repository for creative talent and vision. In Hollywood, they are able to see things in the future or in fact, mold the future in ways that the rest of can’t.

But isn’t the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)and Chief Enterprise Architect (CEA) to not only to meet the mission needs of today, but also to plan for the technology needs of tomorrow? From the technology perspective, it is the CIO and CEA that especially need to be looking prospectively, with innovation and foresight, to understand the mission needs of tomorrow and what technologies can fulfill those needs.

Moreover, it is apparently, not only technology executives that seem to struggle with planning and vision, but there seem to be so many examples of organizations in the public and private sectors reacting to events, rather than “thinking out of the box” and proactively preparing for what could be (9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the auto industry, the stock market bubble a few years ago, are but a few in recent times).

Yes, it’s easy to talk with 20-20 hindsight, but are many of these events really so hard to envision and plan for. Are we so fat and happy that we can’t see beyond today?

User-centric EA believes that we must not only meet the needs of today, but that we must have vision and creativity and courage to see beyond today. This means that we need to envision not just what is, but what could be. It mandates that we increase our capabilities and competencies, so that we can really go with our minds and innovation “where no man has gone before”.

Hollywood Has the Vision, Why doesn’t the CIO or EA?