UPS is Enterprise Architecture Fait Accompli

Fortune Magazine, 12 November 2007, has an amazing article about UPS ( a company which last year had $47.5 billion in revenue and 100,000 driving jobs)—they are a flawless example of the integration of people, process, technology, training, and a keen customer focus; a shining example of what enterprise architecture hopes to instill in the organization!

1. People—“UPS drivers make an average of $75,000 a year, plus an average of $20,000 in health-care benefits and pension, well above the norm for comparable positions at other freight companies.”
2. Process—UPS relies on “human engineering” and has “’340 methods’, a detailed manual of rules and routines” that is taught to UPS’s legions of driver candidates. Moreover, detailed metrics are kept on trainees and throughout their professional career at UPS, so that “a supervisor meeting a new driver for the first time will know every single possible thing there is to know about him.”
3. Technology— UPS has the delivery information acquisition device (DIAD), their electronic clipboard, “which is GPS-enabled, plans drivers’ routes, records all their deliverables, and is said to rival the iPhone in capability.”
4. Training—UPS has opened a new full-service training center, a $34 million, 11,500 square-foot facility, called Integrad. “The facility and curriculum have been shaped over here years by more than 170 people, including UPS executives professors, and design students at Virginia Tech, a team at MIT, forecasters at the Institute for the Future, and animators at an Indian company called Brainvisa.” The facility even has a “slip-and-fall simulator” to safely prepare trainees bodies to be alert to falls, and a UPS “package car” with see-through sides, sensors to measures that forces on trainees joints, and videocameras to record their movements as they lift and lower packages.”
5. Customer—“What’s new about the company now is that our teaching style matches your learning style. But we’re still taking care of the customer.” UPS is “the world’s largest package–delivery company…delivering an average of over 15 million packages a day.”

“While customers may be at the heart of UPSs business, it’s drivers who are at the heart of UPS itself…watch closely and those deliveries [are] an exhibition of routines so precise they never vary, limbs so trained they need no direction, and words so long remembered, they are like one’s own thoughts.”

UPS has mastered all of the following enterprise architecture aspects or perspectives:

• BUSINESS—the precision of honed business processes (“340 methods”)
• PERFORMANCE—the measurement of every critical management aspect, especially as it relates to their all important drivers and their deliveries.
• INFORMATION—UPS is an information-driven company that captures information, analyzes information, and uses it to train and refine their personnel and operations.
• SERVICES—business services such as delivery and training are best practice and tailored to meet customer and employee needs.
• TECHNOLOGY—the UPS electronic clipboard enables the information capture and provision that is needed to continuously meet mission requirements.

While, I don’t love their brown uniforms (that is supposed to hide dirt), to me the successful integration and implementation by UPS of these core architecture factors makes it a case study for EA!

UPS is Enterprise Architecture Fait Accompli

Leadership Development and Enterprise Architecture

Fortune Magazine, 1 October 2007, reports on the world’s best companies are finding out that “no matter what business they’re in, their real business is building leaders.”

“’People are our greatest asset’, CEOs always say that. They almost never mean it. Most companies maintain their office copiers better than they build the capabilities of their people.” But now companies are finding in this high liquidity market, that they are less dependent on financial capital, and more on human capital, and so they are getting serious about leadership development!

Fortune provides a number of good ideas for organizations to help develop their future leaders:

1. Invest in leadership—“you don’t build leaders on the cheap.” You’ve got to invest not only money, but also the time of the organization’s executives to help develop leaders.
2. Identify leaders early—“begin to evaluate leadership capability on day one of employment.” Moreover, begin their leadership development early.
3. Assign leadership positions strategically—assign promising leaders to work on things they need work on, rather than those things they are already good at: challenge them!
4. Give lots of honest feedback—Provide feedback on a continuing basis and make it candid!
5. Inspire leaders to perform—motivate performance through sense of mission; passion for one’s job in an organization is contagious.

In a world economy built on human capital, organizations must develop their leaders and mean it!

While many incorrectly think of enterprise architecture as simply a technology-based endeavor, EA is really a broad-based blueprint for the organization.

In User-centric EA, we look to build the capabilities of the organization to meet mission requirements: this includes everything from technology solutions, to more efficient business processes, to information sharing, to human capital development.

Previously, I have called for a human capital reference model (and persepctive) to be added to the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA):

• Peter Principle and Enterprise Architecture
• Human Capital is Missing Perspective
  

The pressing need for more and better leadership (and management) development is yet another reason to finally get this done by really focusing attention on the organization’s human capital needs through its inclusion in the FEA.

Leadership Development and Enterprise Architecture

Effective Teams and Enterprise Architecture

In User-centric EA, not only is human capital (individuals) important to the organization’s growth and development, but also groups or teams of people are vital to getting the most difficult of jobs done.

The Wall Street Journal, 13 August 2007, states that the CEO of ICU Medical Inc. “had an epiphany watching his son play hockey. The opposing team had a star, but his son’s team ganged up on him and won.” The lesson for the CEO was that “the team was better than one player.” The CEO used this lesson about the importance and strength of teams encourage teaming in his organization, and in general to delegate better to his employees, and getting their input on decisions

While EA is a program often associated with and reporting to the Chief Information Officer, and is thus considered somewhat technical in nature, a large part of architecting the enterprise is understanding and believing in the importance of people—individuals and teams—to getting the job done and getting it done right.

Moreover, teams can accomplish what individuals cannot. There is strength in numbers. Like the CEO of ICU Medical learned, a great player can be overcome by even a mediocre team.

Effective Teams and Enterprise Architecture