When the Plan Fails and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture develops the roadmap for the organization and no roadmap is foolproof. With any roadmap, sometimes there’s a traffic jam, an overturned tractor-trailer, or a washed-out bridge. Whatever the scenario, the EA plan is not the right way to go all the time, every time. That is why the plans need to be agile and responsive to the events as they unfold on the ground.

Similarly, in our personal lives, not every road we take is going to lead us to success. In business school we learn that 90% of new businesses fail within the first 5 years. Nowadays, even marriages fail at a rate close to 50%. And according to ExecuNet, the “average executive tenure is less than four years…[and] 18% of executives do not survive their first year in a new job.” So as individuals and as organizations, we can plan for success, but there are no guarantees.

Fortune Magazine, 9 June 2008, reports “a reversal or two can pave the way to triumph…[or] adversity makes you stronger.” Here’s how you can persevere in the face of adversity (adopted from Fortune, but my thoughts on what they mean):

1. Calculated risk taking—just because you or your organization fails at something, doesn’t mean it’s the end of the line. You have to pick yourself back up onto the proverbial horse and start riding again. It is risky to keep trying, of course. Life is full of risks. You can’t avoid risk. So you take calculated risks and keep trying until you succeed.
2. Get rid of the naysayers—doubters and naysayers can take the wind out of your plans and ambitions. Yes, listen to reason and experience and learn from it. But don’t just abandon your dreams. If you believe you can do something and can make a difference, you owe it to yourself to try.
3. Live a purpose-driven life—similar to an organization needing a mission, vision, strategy, and architecture to provide a purpose and roadmap for the organization, so to an individual needs a purpose and a plan to advance their personal goals and aspirations.
4. Visualize success—I’ve heard this one many times used successfully for those in sports, entertainment, going into interviews, and even those with illness and disabilities. You have to train your mind to think, feel, and actualize the success experience. If you can just visualize success, you are truly a step closer to it.
5. Lessons learned---We all make mistakes. It’s part of being human. The key though is to learn from those mistakes, so that you do better the next time around. Life’s lessons build on each other. That’s why with age comes wisdom. Experience can go a long way to a new round of success.
6. Failure is not a life sentence—While we may certainly feel that failure is the end of the world, more often than not, failure is temporary. We’ve got to see past the failure—see the light at the end of tunnel and make our way toward it. That light is success waiting for us.

In the end, we have to be strong to deal with the bumps and bruises we call life. I see enterprise architecture as a structure for dealing with risk and uncertainty. In its most simplistic form, identifying where you are, setting a target of where you want to go, and charting a course to get there is a lens that we can use in almost every aspect of our organizational and personal lives. Rather, than wandering along aimlessly, let’s set a path and try to have an interesting journey filled with learning, growth and hopefully some success for our efforts.

When the Plan Fails and Enterprise Architecture

Compassionate Change and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture, as John Zachman said, is about managing change and complexity.

Naomi Karten has an interesting op-ed in ComputerWorld, 19 May 2008, on change management.

Naomi writes: “managers don’t want to have to deal with the resistance and objections and pushback and grousing and grumbling that so often accompany change efforts.”

Change causes angst (hey, we’re all human!):

“The reality, however, is that turbulence is a fundamental part of the change experience. Replace what’s familiar and predictable with that which is unfamiliar, confusing, ambiguous or potentially risky, and people react…Almost any change (and sometimes even just the rumor of a change) upsets the relative equilibrium.”

Reaction to change is deep and occurs on many levels:

“People’s reactions are often more emotional and visceral than logical and rational. Some people display shock, anxiety, fear or anger. Some become preoccupied, absent-minded, forgetful, distracted or fatigued—even if they view the change as positive.”

Change management is important to successfully implementing change, modernization, and transformation:

“You can’t eliminate the turbulence. But you can minimize the duration and intensity of the turbulence, and therefore implement the change more smoothly and with less gnashing of teeth.”

So how do we help people see their way through change?

“What people need most in order to cope is communication in the form of information, empathy, reassurance and feedback.”

Aren’t adults really just big children, with fear and anxiety over the unknown? (Remember the “bogeyman” under the bed?) How many of you with children hear them express some nervousness right before the first day of a new school year or going to a new school or summer camp. It’s human nature. We are creatures of habit; change the structure we are used to and we’re like fish out of water, working just to catch our breath.

The truth is, all human beings are mortal and can be hurt by change. Cut them and they bleed. Pull the rug out from under them and they can fall on their face, especially if they don’t know first that the rug will be moving! That’s what change is—it’s moving the pieces around and expecting a person to know where things are.

As enterprise architects, leaders, change agents, it is crucial that we treat people with respect, dignity, equality and compassion. Yes, “business is business,” but we can elevate ourselves above the everyday tough business decisions, and recognize that our authority, initiatives, and change efforts have a human impact that we need be sensitive to. Part of enterprise architecture therefore needs to be building communication and sound human capital management into our IT planning and governance processes. For example, our transition plan to move from the baseline to the target state needs to not only address business process improvement and technology modernization, but also human capital management.

People need to worked with. They need to understand the changes taking place and how they fit in. They need to have time to adjust. They need support and encouragement. They need to be treated with humanity. Let’s not lose this in our effort to reach for the future state of the organization.

Compassionate Change 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

Fear, Greed and Enterprise Architecture

Fear and greed can have a huge influence on our decision making processes. Rather than making rational, informed decisions, we are driven by fear and greed and herd mentality to do stupid things.

Irrational decisions driven by fear and greed are the antithesis of rational, well-thought out decisions driven by enterprise architecture planning and governance.

In an interview with Fortune Magazine 28 April 2008 (and on a day of teaching students from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business), Warren Buffet stated: “when people panic, when fear takes over, or when greed takes over, people react just as irrationally as they have in the past.”

Similarly, in The Wall Street Journal 18 April 2008, an MIT financial economist, Andrew Lo, stated: “You have to understand the mechanism of how fear and greed impact market decisions.”

Fear and greed are affected by our endocrine system. According to Andrew Lo, “for better or for worse, biochemistry makes money go to our heads. ‘We need to understand that physiological aspects of brain behavior really impact financial decisions.”

Testosterone is the hormone that makes us irrationally exuberant, confident and greedy, and another hormone, cortisol, causes us to feel fear and gloom.

Do these hormones and the resulting emotions we feel impact our decisions and behavior?

Your bet!

“Among males and females, testosterone is a natural component in the chemistry of competition…it enhances persistence, fearlessness, and a willingness to take risks. Among athletes it rises in victory, and falls in defeat. “

Endocrinologists have identified “the ‘winners’ effect,’ in which successive victories boost levels of testosterone higher and higher, until the winner is drunk with success—so overconfident that he can no longer think clearly, assess risk properly or make sound decisions.” On the opposite side of the spectrum, “too much cortisol, secreted in response to stress, might in turn make them overly shy of risk.”

In the face of fear and greed, decision making is impaired and becomes irrational. Decisions are no longer driven by the facts on the ground or by judicious planning or sound governance that comes with disciplines like enterprise architecture. Instead, people become slaves to their hormones and emotional effects.

In Fortune Magazine, Warren Buffet warned against falling into the fear/greed trap of decision making. He stated: “I always say you should get greedy when other are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. But that’s too much to expect. Of course [at a minimum] you shouldn’t get greedy when others get greedy and fearful when others get fearful.”

Rather than optimizing decision making, our fears and greed destabilize our ability to think clearly and rationally. When this happens, we need to rely more than ever on our enterprise architecture target and plans and on our governance processes, so that we stay focused on our goals and path to them and not be sidetracked by, as Alan Greenspan stated, “irrational exuberance” or irrational fears.

Fear, Greed and Enterprise Architecture

Robot Swarms and Enterprise Architecture

In the not-too-distant future, battlefield engagements will involve swarms of robots overcoming traditional warfighters.

This notion is no longer only the domain of Hollywood writers and producers for movies like iRobot, Battlestar Galactica, and the Terminator. The vision is becoming a reality and potentially a devastating one for our adversaries.

The Gulf Times, 8 April 2008, reports: “Robot Troops on the March.”

“Now ground, air, and sea-based robots of all kinds are playing an increasing role in warfare. Pilotless robots are used for reconnaissance, targeting, and missile guidance. Some of them can even destroy targets. Ground-based robots are used for mine clearing and breaching barriers. Many of them are armed and can be used in warfare in high-risk urban environments."

“There will be a time when robots will become the best value for the money. When this happens, a couple of battalions will be able to destroy an enemy tank division.”

What’s the vision or target architecture for robots to fight?

“Each robot will be armed with two-guided missiles and a machine gun [or two]. Equipped for a total of 1,200-2,400 robots controlled by 200-300 operators from a distance of several kilometers, these two battalions will be able to inflict heavy losses on enemy divisions, and destroy most of their tank and infantry combat vehicles.”

Similarly in the air and at sea: “enemy aircraft will be destroyed not by fighters, but by [swarms] of pilotless flying vehicles controlled from flying command posts.” [And] “Nuclear-powered submarines…will encounter the massive use of relatively compact underwater robots capable of carrying torpedoes.”

What are the primary benefits to robotic warfare?

1. Minimal loss of human life, at least on the robot side of the battlefield
2. Minimal financial cost in losing relatively inexpensive robots.
3. Stealth and precision of robots

What are the major limitations?

1. Robots do not have “high-level artificial intellect” that enables prompt reactions to ever changing situations. “This is why remote controlled rather than fully autonomous robots are used.”
2. Robots’ optical systems are inferior to the human eye-brain coordination.

I find this target architecture for the military to be on one hand fascinating and on the other hand frightening.

The potential of robotics for both helping and hurting people is enormous.

ComputerWorld, 12 April 2008, reports that "Robots are really an evolution of the technology we have now...they are evolving into something you will engage with and will serve you in your life somehow."

Robots can work on the assembly line and produce the goods we need to survive; they can work jobs that are dangerous and dirty; and they can provide caretaking tasks and alleviate suffering and the physical demands on people. David Levy, a British Artificial Intelligence specialist even goes so far to predict that by the year 2050, humans will have not only emotional relationships with robots, but even love and intimacy. (OK, this is a little extreme!)

At the same time, robots are inanimate machines, without dictates of conscience or emotion; they can kill people or destroy things without hesitation or remorse. The clincher is that both these potential uses for robots (good and bad) are in the making and will come to fruition. The potential benefits as well as devastation to humanity are enormous.

Reflecting on this, I believe that EA plays an important role in ensuring that IT projects (like robots in warfare) are implemented with careful thought as to the potential consequences and managing the risk of these.

How can EA help with this?

Robots are a target architecture with commercial and military applications. Robots can be used in both positive and negative ways. In a sense, robots are like nuclear energy, which can be used to power the country or for developing weapons of mass destruction.

These targets architectures need to be planned and governed effectively to ensure safety and security. Through planning you develop the requirements, use cases, and develop the technologies, and through governance you make certain that they are implemented responsibly and effectively.

The EA functions of planning and governance are mutually reinforcing and self-correcting. EA plans are a strategic information asset for enhancing governance, while IT governance is the enforcement mechanism for EA plans. In this way, governance can be a counterbalance to planning, so that plans are thoroughly vetted and rationalized. Through governance, we enhance the organization’s decisions and plans and ensure that they are making the “right” investments, that they are wisely selected, implemented, and controlled.

So for example, with robotics, the planning element of EA provides the goals, objectives, and strategies for robotics in the target architecture, while the governance aspect of EA would ask relevant questions about the benefits, risks, strategic alignment, and architecture and ensure a clear way ahead.

EA planning is strategic, while EA governance is tactical.

Robot Swarms and Enterprise Architecture

Analysis Paralysis and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is a planning (and governance) function. Planning is a valuable endeavor when it is used to drive meaningful change (outputs and outcomes). One of the worst things that can happen to a well thought out plan is for it to sit unused, collecting dust, until it is simply obsolete. What a waste of time and money. And what of the lost opportunities for the organization to grow and mature and serve it stakeholders better, faster, and cheaper.

Often, one of the reasons a plan never goes anywhere is that an organization is stuck in “analysis paralysis,” an unfortunate mode where leaders are not able to conclude the analysis phase, make a final decision, and move on—implement/execute. Instead, leadership is paralyzed by fear and indecision.

The Wall Street Journal, 10 April 2008, reports that “No Italian Job Takes Longer Than This Bridge: Proposed 142 Years Ago, Plan for Link to Sicily Is Now Campaign Issue.”

“Shortly after the birth of modern Italy in 1865, the government began preparing to build a two mile span linking the island of Sicily to the mainland. The bridge…was to be the physical symbol of the country’s unity. It has been in the planning ever since, and over the years. Experts have studied the bridge’s impact on everything from the Mediterranean trade to bird migration. But ground has yet to be broken, making the bridge an emblem of the chronic indecisiveness that links Italy to the past.”

Is the bridge the only example of analysis paralysis in Italy?

“With a price of nearly…$7.9 billion, the bridge is an example of profligate public spending. Many say Italy is littered with half-finished projects.”

Many argue that with its endless planning, the nonexistent Sicily bridge is little more than a costly ruse. ‘It’s a bottomless pit for funding.’…In more than 20 years of operation, the company created to build the bridge…has spent just $235 million…To be sure, nothing has been done with the money.”

So the Italian bridge that was supposed to unify a country, be a architectural marvel and an engineering feat (“because of the swift currents, earthquake-prone shores, and great distance) has been an endless series of plans, drawn up and thrown into the drawer.

Unfortunately, plans like this bridge—that never get finalized and go nowhere—are a defeat for organizational progress. They are a waste of resources and drain on people’s creativity, talent, and morale.

As an enterprise architect, it is an imperative to complete the plans that we start and to work with leadership to implement them. Of course, over time, we need to course correct and that is a natural part of the process. But if we never “get off the dime” and embark on the journey, then as an organization we may as well be doing something else—something worthwhile!

Analysis Paralysis and Enterprise Architecture

Malthusian Fears and Enterprise Architecture

As enterprise architects, we plan for an unknown future. In most cases, we plan to grow and evolve our organizations to provide products and/or services well into the future. In the best case scenario, we are planning for organizational growth in terms of serving more customers, stakeholders, shareholders. We view growth as a sign that we are succeeding in the marketplace.

What happens though as the world grows more populous--is there a limit to the ability of the world to support this growth? And in such a scenario, where growth potential outstrips our ability to meet demand, how is architecture planning affected?

The Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2008, reports that “across the centuries, powerful voices have warned that human activity would overwhelm the earth’s resources…[yet] each time there were new resources to discover, new technologies to propel growth.”

But is there a limit to these resources and technological boundaries that are cause for concern?

“As the world grows more populous—the United Nations projects eight billion people by 2025, up from 6.6 billion today” and up from 1.65 billion at the turn of the 20^th century. By 2050, the projection is for 9.19 billion people!

The English demographer and political scientist, Thomas Malthus in 1798 forewarned of this problem: “The power of population is so superior to the power of the Earth to produce sustenance for man that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”

Similarly, The Club of Rome think tank in 1972 raised these concerns: “If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime in the next 100 years.”

The problem with the population explosion is magnified by the population becoming more prosperous. “The average person is consuming more food, water, metal, and power. Growing numbers of China’s 1.3 billion people and India’s 1.1 billion are stepping up to the middle class, adopting the high protein diets, gasoline-fueled transport, and electric gadgets that developed nations enjoy.”

“The result is that demand for resources has soared. If supplies don’t keep pace, prices are likely to climb further…and some fear violent conflict could ensue.”

Many say not to worry, that economic forces and human ingenuity will spur technological innovation, which will overcome the limits of growth and the scarcity of resources.

As enterprise architects, we play a critical role in matching requirements to technological enablers and in driving business process improvement. These are essential to organizations and the world doing more, productivity-wise, with less resources.

“New technology could help ease the resource crunch. Advances in agriculture, desalinization, and the clean production of electricity among other things would help.”

“Indeed, the true lesson of Thomas Malthus…isn’t that the world is doomed, but that preservation of human life requires analysis and then thorough action.”

For enterprise architects, we are at the center of capturing these data points, analyzing them, and making solid recommendations for our organizations to spur them to action to meet the growth head-on. Growth is good, but it is also challenging. As the population continues to grow, we are about to face extraordinary business and technological challenges for providing for the needs of many a billion.

Malthusian Fears and Enterprise Architecture

Gross National Happiness and Enterprise Architecture

“Gross domestic product, or GDP, of a country is one of the ways of measuring the size of its economy. GDP is defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within a given country in a given period of time (usually a calendar year).” (Wikipedia)

Generally, enterprise architecture looks to improve business processes and enable them with technology to improve results of operation and productivity measures. Our national productivity is often measured in terms of its gross domestic product (GDP). But is productivity alone really the measure we need to be focused on?

The Wall Street Journal, 22-23 March 2008, reports that in the “tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan,” they have developed a new measure, called Gross National Happiness (GNH).

The idea of GNH is to balance the country’s modernization and democratization with things that will “boost morale.” The leaders of Bhutan “want to prove that they can achieve economic growth while maintaining governance, protecting the environment, and preserving an ancient culture.

“By traditional economic measures, Bhutan is doing well averaging about 7% growth annually over the past decade.” However, “fast growth should also not usher in a consumerist invasion that affects the national mood.” In other words, materialism isn’t and shouldn’t become the be all and end all!

GNH is a commitment “that if we are going to manage this change, we have to be able to measure it.” So “the government has contracted a local think tank to conduct a nation-wide survey to determine what makes people happy and what makes them sad or stressed out.”

“Researchers have fanned out across the country interviewing more than 1,000 households…the sample size is considered large in a country with only 750,000 people and not a single traffic light.”

The survey is quite comprehensive and includes “nearly 300 questions [that] take several hours to complete.”

Interestingly enough, Bhutan’s planning commission was even renamed early this year to the Gross National Happiness Commission—as we know, enterprise architecture is all about planning and governance too; wouldn’t it be cool to call EA, enterprise happiness and have it focus on a balance of organizational performance factors that are not just based on productivity, but also on truly improving human life?

Even the blueprint for Bhutan’s future (or their target architecture) includes happiness as a goal. The plan is called “Bhutan 2020: A Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and Happiness.” How many of us can say that our organizations’ strategic plans or architectures includes happiness as a dimension of our planning?

While, we focus on architecting our organizations for success, we need to remember that success is multi-dimensional. Yes, productivity, innovation, efficiency, and technological prowess are important. But we must not lose sight of the bigger picture, which is respect for the individual, and as the United States Declaration of Independence so eloquently puts it—what really important— “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Gross National Happiness and Enterprise Architecture

Doomsday and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is about planning and transitioning from the baseline to the target state.

However, as architects, there are times when we need to plan for the worst and hope for the best, as the saying goes.

As the price of oil has reached and exceeded $100 a barrel and significant new findings of oil are becoming a rarity, some people are starting to get nervous and are planning for a day when oil will be scarce, pricey, and society as we have come to know will cease to exist. Yikes, doomsday!

Are these people simply uninformed, pessimists, or non-believers that technological progress will outpace the demands we are placing on this planet’s resources?

The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2008, reports about everyday people, like the Aaron Wissner in Middleville, Michigan, a school computer teacher with a wife and infant son, who became “peak-oil aware.” This term refers to his “embracing the theory that world’s oil production is about to peak.

These people fear the worst; “Oil supplies are dwindling just as world demand soars. The result: oil prices ‘will skyrocket, oil dependent economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.’” Mr. Wissner’s forebodings include, “banks faltering” and “food running out.”

And they believe that we cannot stop this from happening. “no techno-fix was going to save us. Electric cars, biodiesel, nuclear power, wind and solar—none of it will cushion the blow.”

So Mr. Wissner and his family are preparing and transitioning themselves for the worst, they “tripled the size of his garden…stacked bags of rice in his new pantry, stashed gold…and doubled the size of his propane tank.”

According to the article there are thousands of people that adhere to the peak-oil theory.

Of course, there are many doomsday scenarios out there that end in war, famine, disease, and so on. During the cold war, people built bomb shelters in their back yards, and school children had drills hiding under their desks. These days, many fear that globalization will drive this country to economic ruin. Al Gore and other environmentalists espouse the global warming theory. And since 9/11, fears are heightened about terrorists hitting us with nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological agents. Even Hollywood has entered the fray with movies such as Armageddon about meteors hitting the Earth or The Day After Tomorrow with the greenhouse effect sending us back to the ice-age.

Whether you adhere with any of these various doomsday scenarios or visions of the future (their believed target architecture, not necessarily their desired one) and how they are preparing (transitioning) to it or you think they are just a bunch of nut-balls, it seems important as an enterprise architect to recognize that targets are not always rosy pictures of growth and prosperity for an organization, and the transition plans are not always a welcome and forward movement. Sometimes as architects, we must plan for the worst--hoping, of course that it never comes--but never-the-less preparing, the best we can. As architects, we don’t have to put all the enterprise’s eggs in one basket. We can weigh the odds and invest accordingly in different scenarios. Our organization’s resources are limited, so we must allocate resources carefully and with forethought. Of course, no architecture can save us from every catastrophe.

Doomsday and Enterprise Architecture

Creating Competitive Advantage and Enterprise Architecture

Planning endeavors, such as enterprise architecture, typically help drive competitive advantage for the organization.

In the book, Making Change Happen, by Matejka and Murphy, the authors summarize Porter’s model for competitive advantage, developed at Harvard University.

To achieve competitive advantage, an organization typically follows one of five strategies based on differentiation or scale:

1. Differentiate based on superior customer service—“provide such excellent customer service that it results in strong customer loyalty. These satisfied customers not only provide repeat business, but also enthusiastically refer your business to others.” The overall strategy is encapsulated by the slogan, “the customer is always right.” User-centric EA is an excellent enabler for customer service orientation, since the architecture captures lots of information on internal and external factors, analyzes, catalogues, and serves up this information to end-users to enhance decision-making and thereby provide superior customer service. For example, the EA can identify performance metrics such as customer satisfaction, quality, timeliness, and so on and apply business, information, and technology resources to achieve superior customer service.
2. Differentiation based on superior products—“build a better mousetrap…make products and services that are clearly better than your competitors from a feature and function perspective.” The goal is to command a price premium through innovation, superior product and service design. EA supports the development of superior products through the use of emerging or specialized technologies that can give the enterprise’s products an edge in their design and development. The EA identifies that baseline and target architectures and transition plan, and can use these to direct innovation and superior product development.
3. Differentiation based on niche market space—“identify and focus on smaller market segments and produce products and services that appeal to those unique markets…the goal to provide a more informed, personal touch that make customers feel special, because they identify with the image associated with the product or service.” The customers in essence feel special and become members of an affinity group. User-centric EA provides for strong requirements management capability, whereby the requirements of niche customers can be identified and business and technical solutions can be deployed to satisfy their unique needs.
   
4. Scale based on cost orientation—“become the low cost producer!” Common strategies to achieve low cost include: “achieving economies of scale (volume production); installing efficient (and volume discounted) supply chain management; continually improving production processes (including lean production techniques that eliminate waste); and outsourcing non-core competencies.” Here, the strategy is to “pursue continuous improvement and new technology.” EA can facilitate the investment in new technologies or more efficient technologies that reduce cost or make possible mass production and the attainment of economies of scale.
   
5. Scale based on market dominance—“be the 800-pound gorilla.” Strategies here include: “acquisitions, joint ventures, exclusive supplier relationships, new product development, new market entries, warranties or guarantees, integrated sales and IT structures.” The strategy here is to “keep growing market share.” EA is vital in identifying gaps that can be filled through strategic M&A, and in integrating disparate enterprises, consolidating redundant IT systems, developing interoperability between merging or partner organizations, and providing standards and governance for these large scale enterprises.

User-centric enterprise architecture is critical to achieving Porter’s vision of competitive advantage, driving organizational change, and achieving a winning business strategy.

Creating Competitive Advantage and Enterprise Architecture

Contingency Theory and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric EA seeks to develop an organization both through integration and differentiation.

In Lawrence and Lorsch's groundbreaking work "Organization and Environment," the authors explore the implications of integration and differentiation in the enterprise.

• Integration is the "state of collaboration that exists among departments that are required to achieve unity of effort."
• Differentiation is when different departments have different structures and orientations (such as short-term versus long-term outlooks or relationship versus task foci).

Both integration and differentiation can be useful in different environments. For example, in stable environments an integrated organization tends to function best, while in an uncertain or turbulent environment, an organization that is differentiated internally has greater prospects for success. A key finding of Lawrence and Lorsch’s research was that the most successful organizations simultaneously achieved high levels of both.

Contingency theory states that there is not one best way for an organization in terms of structure or leadership style. Rather, according to contingency theory, it is best to vary the organizational structure and management style depending on the environment in which the enterprise operates.

EA should plan for organizations in various environments. No one plan can be successful in every type of environment. Therefore, EA should use contingency theory to develop options or alternate paths for an organization to take depending on the landscape it finds itself in. Refining the degree of differentiation and integration of departments in the enterprise is one way to navigate in different operational environments. Centralizing or decentralizing decision making, situational leadership, and altering task versus people orientation are just some of the other factors that can be varied to adjust to changing environments. The key is to keep the options open, to be nimble and agile with planning, so that the enterprise is not hamstrung by ill-conceived plans that were developed for a future state that may not exist.

Contingency Theory and Enterprise Architecture

Agile Planning and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal in conjunction with MIT Sloan School of Management on 15 September 2007 reports that “markets, technologies, and competition are becoming more dynamic by the day. To succeed in this environment…requires a whole new level of flexibility.” Instead of strategy that “too often locks managers into decisions that may turned out to be flawed, because something outside their control doesn’t go as planned. What is needed is…flexibility into strategy—a plan that lays out a series of options for managers to pursue or decline as developments warrant.”

By practicing agile planning (as I call it), decisions are broken down into stages, where management can review events and decide whether “to proceed, hold back, or retreat at each stage” or alter course altogether.

From a User-centric EA perspective, I really like the idea of agile planning in coming up with the architecture target and transition plan. What we may think today is the best business or technical plan to meet user needs, may not be the case 6 months or a year later. Moreover, as plans extend beyond 3-5 year timeframe, the ability to hit the target is often grossly exaggerated.

The concept of agile planning is to come up with milestones and then based on event-driven triggers follow through to a series of next steps. Agile planning gives the enterprise tremendous flexibility to adjust to changes (whether internal or external-driven), and not get trapped in the “planning pit” , whereby decision-makers are caught in the decision hole that they dug for themselves.

While as planners, we cannot be wishy-washy—we must develop a clear way ahead for the organization—developing the capability to move forward, yet be nimble enough to adjust to changing circumstance is the way to build a truly wonderful plan.

Agile Planning and Enterprise Architecture

Strategy and Enterprise Architecture

There are many schools of thought when it comes to strategic planning in which the organization develops its strategic plan through the following means:

• Design – facilitating a fit between the internal capabilities and external possibilities; strategy is prescriptive.
• Positioning – selecting the competitive positions in the marketplace they desire to occupy (examples include: low cost leader, high quality supplier, niche player, #1 service provider, and so on).
• Entrepreneurial – grounding it on the leader, who is the visionary guiding the organization forward; there is no formal strategic plan.
• Cognitive – understanding and responding to how customers and competitors perceive us.
• Power – Negotiating, persuading, networking, developing alliances, and lobbying; all based on power and politics.
• Cultural – Deriving organizational shared beliefs and social interactions.
• Learning – trial and error based on results of strategy implementation.

(Adapted from American Management Association)

In User-centric EA, it is helpful to understand all these approaches to strategic planning. The schools of though are not mutually exclusive, but rather all affect—to a greater or lesser degree—how the EA target and transition plan is formed.

What I believe is fascinating is that planning is only partially about the plan itself (i.e. what the plan actually contains and prescribes), and that much of planning is about the process for developing it.

The process of planning benefits the organization almost as much as the end-product plan itself, since the process is a journey of self-discovery for the organization. In other words, if the plan was just dropped on the organization—without the process of having developed it—it would be of little to no value. The process of planning teaches the organization what it is currently, what challenges and opportunities it faces, and how to adapt, incrementally change, and occasionally transform itself. The planning process is quite involved and often includes aspects from all the schools of thought, including: designing a capabilities-possibilities fit for the organization, positioning it in the marketplace, incorporating the vision of the leader, identifying perceptions of customers and competitors, navigating through organizational politics, realizing a shared organizational culture, and continuous learning through it all.

Strategy and Enterprise Architecture

Driving Innovation and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2007 reports that “managing innovation is one of the biggest challenges that companies face.” Why? “They not only need to come up with new ideas, but also need to foster a culture that encourages and rewards innovation.”

Douglas Solomon, the Chief Technology Officer of IDEO (an innovation and design consulting firm) provides some insights on how to make a culture more innovative:

In general, “corporations inherently have antibodies that come out and try and kill any innovation.” Small companies don’t have sufficient resources and big companies “don’t always have the thought processes and the skills to really think outside their current business, nor the permission to really do it.”

Here are four things organizations need to be innovative:

1. Degree of discomfort—“there are still people who say, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And I don’t think these companies are in a really good position to change…you have to have a certain degree of discomfort in your business to be willing to make the changes that are necessary”
2. Design thinking—rather than analytical thinking extrapolating from the past to the future, innovative thinking requires ‘design thinking’, which is rooted in creativity, optimism and is goal-driven, trying to create new possibilities for a new future.
3. Time to innovate—“you have to actually build processes, you have to support people, you have to give them time…to think on their own…you have to provide a reward system for encouraging innovation.”
4. Risk tolerance—“you have to tolerate risk, if you’re going to try to be innovative.” Doug Merrill the VP of engineering and CIO of Google adds that “Every company in the world says ‘don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness.’ Every company in the world says ‘It’s OK to fail.” And for 99% of them, it’s probably not true.”

In User-centric EA, developing a target state and transition plan for an organization requires innovation. If there is no innovation in your target architecture and plans, then you’re just regurgitating the same old stuff to the enterprise and it’s probably of very limited, if any, value. EA must step outside its traditional box and come to the table with innovative ideas and new approaches to the business; that is it’s real value add.

As we see above, being innovative is hard: It requires sometimes going against the grain, standing out amidst nay-sayers and the ‘old guard,’ looking outside the enterprise for best practices and marketplace trends, and being optimistic and open-minded to future possibilities that are not eclipsed by ingrained thinking and turf battles. Finally architecting the future state must be grounded in present realities (including constraints such as resources, politics, and other priorities and requirements), but innovate we must if we are to make a better state tomorrow than the one we have today!

Driving Innovation and Enterprise Architecture

Jonah and Enterprise Architecture

There was an interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal, 19 September 2007 about the Book of Jonah (that we read on Yom Kippur). Jonah was commanded by G-d to exhort the people of the city of Ninveh to repent or face G-d’s wrath. But Jonah flees and we all know what happens with him and the whale.

Jonah was concerned that he was in a catch 22. On one hand, if he warns the people of Ninveh and they repented and nothing happened (i.e. they were spared), then they would “assail Jonah for forcing them to make needless sacrifies.” On the other hand, if Ninveh did not repent and was destroyed, the Jonah would be a failed Prophet. (Yes, I know Jonah should’ve had faith that everything would be okay.)

Jonah’s dilema is repeated throughout history. During crisis, leaders frequently encounter this catch 22—no win dilema.

• “Winston Churchhill, for example, prophetically warned of the Nazi threat in he 1930’s, but if he had convinced his countrymen to strike Germany pre-emptively, woul dhe have been hailed for preventing WWII or condemned for initiating an unnecessary conflict?”
• Similarly, “Harry Truman predicted that Japan would never surrender and that a quarter of a million GIs would be killed…and so he obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki only to be vilified by many historians.”
• This type of denounciation, for prevening an unknown, is what President Bush is experiencing for invading Iraq after 9/11 to stave off another terrorist attack in the United States.

What’s the leadership lesson here?

“This is the tragedy of leadership…policy makers must decide between costly actions and inaction…they will be reproved for the actions they take to forestall a catastrophe, but may receive no credit for averting cataclysm that never occur.”

In User-centric EA, like in all planning endeavors, we face a similar crisis of leadership. EA develops the enterprise’s target and transition plan, yet whatever actions (or inactions) that the target state and plan take, the architects are wide open for criticism.

• If their planning in any way helps avert a future corporate crisis, no one will recognize them for some unknown that did not occur.
• And if the plans in any way misses the mark (and no plan is perfect), then the architects are villified for the “errors of their ways”.
• Finally, even with the best laid plans, who can definitely make the causal relationship between the plan and results.

So, architects, like Jonah, are in tough spot—hopefully, we don’t get swallowed by the whale of nay-sayers and critics. Of course, its always easier to criticize than to be constructive.

Jonah and Enterprise Architecture

CEO and Enterprise Architecture

An organization’s performance is closely linked to the lives and state of mind of its leadership.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), 5 September 2007 reports that based on a 10 year study of 75,000 Danish companies, profitability of companies declined after the CEO suffered from the death of a child (-21.4%), spouse (-14.7%), parent (-7.7%). [Further, the study reports that profitability actually increased when the CEO lost his/her mother-in-law (7%).]

These results are really not surprising nor or they hard to understand.

Leaders are people first—as human beings, we are all vulnerable to the tragedies of life and these affect us profoundly!

The WSJ puts it this way: “These are individuals…It’s important to understand they’re not automatons.”

The study called, “It’s All About Me” goes on to state the company’s profitability also typically fell after the CEO purchased a mansion. Researcher speculate that the leadership is either cashing out of the company (i.e. they no longer believe in the company’s future prospects) or that the leaders have become distracted by their own narcissism (i.e. enjoying their wealth rather than working hard).

For a quite a while, people have questioned the hefty executive pay packages, but as the WSJ states, perhaps these questions will be somewhat muted by these “studies [that] generally conclude CEOs do matter to their companies’ performance.”

In User-centric EA, people matter and leadership matters. If the leader is distracted or physically or emotionally wounded, the enterprise most certainly suffers. However, EA can help function as shock-absorber in the organization, since it provides for broad-based business and technical input, planning, and governance. By having the long-term mechanisms in place, such as a well researched and accepted EA plan and vetting mechanisms for how to invest corporate resources, the reliance on any single individual or individuals is lessoned. Leadership will always play a crucial part in organizational success (or failure) and as individuals we are all at the mercy of heaven above, but developing sound mechanisms by the which the organization can weather some of life’s shocks is a role EA can play.

CEO and Enterprise Architecture

Austerity and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric EA believes in planning for the future —often uncertain, but always full of potential.

Fortune Magazine, 20 August, 2007, identifies an important tenet of Carlos Slim (the richest man in the world) as follows: “maintain austerity in prosperous times (in times when the cow is fat with milk); it accelerates corporate development and avoids the need for drastic changes in time of crisis.”

While user-centric EA cares about the individual, it also must take into account the needs of the overall organization and “the greater good.”

User-centric EA is not about being miserly, but rather about being frugal. It’s not about being pessimistic about the future, but about having a plan to weather whatever may come. In user-centric EA, planning includes alternative analysis and looking at the spectrum of all options. User-centric EA is about diversifying capabilities and at the same time building competencies and differentiating.

User-centric EA adopts planning as the mechanism to “maintain austerity”, to “accelerate corporate development”, and to “avoid the need for drastic change in time of crisis”. EA is a stabilizing factor for an organization in an ever changing world.

Austerity and Enterprise Architecture