Undersea Internet Cables-See Them for Yourself

I've always been interested in maps, geography, and geospatial information systems (GIS).

Coming across Greg's Cable Map--I thought this is sort of idiosyncratic, but fascinating too.

This is an interactive map of our global undersea telecommunications infrastructure.

If you ever wondered how you were able to connect with someone anywhere in the world in split seconds (satellites aside--since we all don't have immediate access to that), here it is.

How it works: Either you can search the list of cables of the right, click on any one of interest and it highlights it on the map for you or vice versa click on a telecommunications link on the map and it bring up in the right-hand column the points of the cable landings and reference to more information .

Another cool feature, is the ability to display the telecommunications infrastructure from before, during, or since any period of time--so you can get a historical perspective of what the Internet for example looked like or didn't look like only ten or fifteen years ago. Can anyone say carrier pigeon? :-)

There is also the ability to click on the bottom of the map on the check boxes for either or both the active or future cable links to see where we are now ("as-is") and where we are going ("to-be") in terms of Internet connectivity.

Next time you read in the newspaper about a large-scale Internet outage like the multiple ones that occurred when undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean in 2008 causing outages from the Mideast to India, you can look it up here and see for yourself how "the foot bones connected to the ankle bone."

Enjoy and have a good weekend!

Undersea Internet Cables-See Them for Yourself

Apples or Oranges

There are lots of biases that can get in the way of sound decision-making.

An very good article in Harvard Business Review (June 2011) called "Before You Make That Big Decision" identifies a dozen of these biases that can throw leaders off course.

What I liked about this article is how it organized the subject into a schema for interrogating an issue to get to better decision-making.

Here are some of the major biases that leaders need to be aware of and inquire about when they are presented with an investment proposal:


1) Motivation Errors--do the people presenting a proposal have a self-interest in the outcome?

2) Groupthink--are dissenting opinions being actively solicited and fairly evaluated?

3) Salient Analogies--are analogies and examples being used really comparable?

4) Confirmation Bias--has other viable alternatives been duly considered?

5) Availability Bias--has all relevant information been considered?

6) Anchoring Bias--can the numbers be substantiated (i.e. where did they come from)?

7) Halo Effect--is success from one area automatically being translated to another?

8) Planning Fallacy--is the business case overly optimistic?

9) Disaster Neglect--is the worst-case scenario imagined really the worst?

10) Loss Aversion--is the team being overly cautious, conservative, and unimaginative?

11) Affect Heuristic--are we exaggerating or emphasizing the benefits and minimizing the risks?

12) Sunk-Cost Fallacy--are we basing future decision-making on past costs that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered?

To counter these biases, here are my top 10 questions for getting past the b.s. (applying enterprise architecture and governance):

1) What is the business requirement--justification--and use cases for the proposal being presented?

2) How does the proposal align to the strategic plan and enterprise architecture?

3) What is return on investment and what is the basis for the projections?

4) What alternatives were considered and what are the pros and cons of each?

5) What are the best practices and fundamental research in this area?

6) What are the critical success factors?

7) What are the primary risks and planned mitigations for each?

8) What assumptions have been made?

9) What dissenting opinions were there?

10) Who else has been successful implementing this type of investment and what were the lessons learned?

While no one can remove every personal or organizational bias that exists from the decision-making equation, it is critical for leaders to do get beyond the superficial to the "meat and potatoes" of the issues.

This can be accomplished by leaders interrogating the issues themselves and as well as by establishing appropriate functional governance boards with diverse personnel to fully vet the issues, solve problems, and move the organizations toward a decision and execution.
Whether the decision is apples or oranges, the wise leader gets beyond the peel.

Apples or Oranges

Who's On First

I have a new article in Public CIO Magazine (April/May 2011) on the topic of Accountability In Project Management:

We've all be to "those" kinds of meeting. You know the ones I'm talking about: The cast of characters has swelled to standing-room only and you're beginning to wonder if maybe there's a breakfast buffet in the back of the room.

It seems to me that not only are there more people than ever at todays meetings, but meetings are also more frequent and taking up significantly more hours of the day.

I'm beginning to wonder whether all these meeting are helping us get more work done, or perhaps helping us avoid confronting the fact that in many ways we're stymied in our efforts.

Read the rest of the article at Government Technology.

Who's On First

Turning IT From Frenemy to Friend

Fast Company (December 2008) describes Frenemies as a "thrilling intricate dance" of friend-enemy relationships.

Half a year later, CBS News (July 2009) reports that this words is added to the dictionary: "Frenemy--someone who pretends to be a friend, but is really an enemy."

Recently, I've heard the term applied to Information Technology, as in they they here to help (i.e. friend-like), but boy are they often an obstacle as well (i.e. enemy-like).

Obviously not the message any IT executive wants to hear about their folk's customer service and delivery!

Today, the Wall Street Journal (25 April 2011) writes about the "discontent with the [IT] status quo" and it calls somewhat drastically to "Get IT out of the IT department."

Why?

Based on responses from business and IT leaders, here are some of the key reasons:

- "IT is seen as overly bureaucratic and control-oriented" (51% business and 37% IT)

- "IT doesn't deliver on time" (44% business and 49% IT)

- "IT products and services doesn't meet the needs of the business" (39% business and 29% IT)

- "IT consists of technologists, not business leaders" (60% business and 46% IT)

Therefore, the WSJ states "both for competitive and technological reasons...business unit leaders need to start assuming more control over the IT assets that fuel their individual businesses."

This is being called "Innovative IT"--where "IT shifts to more of a support role. IT empowers business unit self-sufficiency by providing education, coaching, tools, and rules, which allow for individuals to meet their needs in a way that protects the overall need of the enterprise."

The result is rather than delivering IT to the business, we deliver IT "through the business."

In this model, there is an emphasis on partnership between the business and IT, where:

- IT provides services to the business (i.e. through a service-oriented architecture of capabilities)--systems, applications, products, tools, infrastructure, planning, governance, security, and more.

- The business exploits these services as needed, and they innovate by "dreaming up ideas, developing prototypes, and piloting changes" that will most impact on-the-ground performance.

I believe this is consistent with stage 4 (the highest) of architecture maturity--called Business Modularity--as described by Ross, Weill and Robertson in Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: In this stage, we "grant business unit managers greater discretion in the design of front-end processes, which they can individually build or buy as modules connected to core data and backend processes. In effect,managers get the freedom to bolt functionality onto the optimized core." The result is a "platform of innovation...[that] enables local experiments, and the best ones spread throughout the company."

Related to this are interviews in the WSJ today with 3 CIOs, that all bear out this IT leadership direction:

- Frank Wander (Guardian Life Insurance)--"We have IT embedded into each business and we have a seat at the table. We're partners."

- Norm Fjeldheim (Qualcomm)--"We're structured exactly the same way Frank is. IT is embedded in the business. I'm only responsible for about half the IT budget."

- Filippo Passrini (Proctor & Gamble)--"Our business partners are people outside IT....in the past we were always in 'push' mode...now...there is a lot of 'pull'."

So one of the goals of IT and business is to transform from a relationship of frenemies to friends and genuine partners; this will leverage the strengths of each--the expertise of our technology professionals and the customer insights and agility of our business people.

Turning IT From Frenemy to Friend

From Pocketbooks to Whirlybirds

From Inspector Gadget to Transformers--there is more than one purpose to everything and that is the type of flexibility that we need to be agile, competitive, and efficient.

Miche Bags is a new amazing example of a company that has "got it" in terms of architecting their products for re-use.

The bags work in 3 easy steps:

1) Consumers pick a bag base--big or small.

2) Then they choose the shell (design) on the outside that they like--and this can be changed out as often as desired.

3) Finally, there are plenty of accessories--organizers and straps to select from.

Viola, your own bag creation; tire of it--and choose something else and simply swap it out.

According to CNBC, the idea for the changeable bags came when to the owner when she spilled something on one of her bags and wished that she could just change it out.

Sure, sometimes, it's nice to have a whole new product--take my old smelly sneakers for an example--those have got to go! :-)

But at other times, it can just make more economical and environmental sense to just freshen up a product with a change or new look.

Cell phones and smartphones seemed to have gotten that idea in their changeable "skins" that let people snap on and off different colors, textures, and materials.

Another example is Crocs (shoes) that accessorize with Jibbitz or colorful charms that snap into the holes on the shoes--these range from sports team to Disney characters, flowers, flags, and more.

Of course, there's lots of other, more familiar examples--reversible belts and coats and removable comforter covers just to name a few.

In a dynamic and faced-paced world, where at the same time resources are more and more constrained, the ability to change out components and at the same time reuse basic elements is what is needed more than ever.

It's great to have the versatility to personalize and accessorize skins, but it's even better and more powerful to be able to change out components--like expanding the memory on our computers.

Like Inspector Gadget, you never know when a cap that changes to a "whirlybird propeller" that flies you out of harm's way will come in handy!

From Pocketbooks to Whirlybirds

Civic Commons-A Lesson In Sharing

Love this concept on Civic Commons that was presented at the Gov 2.0 Summit (2010) and is now becoming a reality.

Presented by Bryan Sivak the CTO for DC--Civic Commons is about governments collaborating and building technology once and reusing multiple times, rather than reinventing the wheel over and over again--a critical enterprise architecture principle.

Governments have similar needs and can share common solutions--products and projects--for these.

A number of successful examples:

1) DC and San Francisco building Open 311 (which I wrote about in a prior blog).

2) Minnesota building a $50 Million Unemployment Insurance System and then sharing it with Iowa who implemented it at less than 1/2 that.

Some initial products that have been committed:

1) White House IT Federal Dashboard

2) Track DC (Operational Dashboard)

3) San Francisco Master Address Database Geocoder

4) New York Senate's Open Legislation Application

And more will be coming...all of which can be used and improved upon.

It is great to see so many state governments collaborating--across the Nation--from Seattle to LA, Boston, San Francisco, NY, and Chicago. Moreover, they are coordinating with the Federal Government, as well as with supporting organizations, such as OpenPlans, Code For America, O'Reilly Media, and more that are helping with coordination, facilitation, and support.

This is another great step in breaking down the silos that separate us and becoming more efficient in working together and learning to share what can benefit many.

Civic Commons-A Lesson In Sharing

Computer History Museum - Check IT Out!

I am very excited about the Computer History Museum housed in Mountain View, CA. (Silicon Valley) since 2002 (although I don't think that their overview video necessarily does it justice).

The computer museum was recently revamped with a $19 million renovation in large part from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to BusinessWeek (Jan. 31-Feb. 6 2011), "the museum documents the rise not only of computers but also of technology over thousands of years."

The museum and nearby research warehouse include a collection of over 100,000 artifacts and describe "how we came of age" from a technology perspective.

Innovation is critical to where we are going to, but history is from where we are coming and from which we must preserve and learn--the Computer History Museum is the bridge between the two and can educate as well as inspire.

While I personally have not made it to the exhibits yet, I look forward to getting there soon.

And when I am there, I want to wander the halls and ponder at how all the "bits and bytes" from so many great minds have helped to transform our lives, and where things go next.

Computer History Museum - Check IT Out!

The Center Of Gravity Is Information

Center of Gravity (COG) is a military concept that Dr. Joseph Strange defines as “primary sources of moral or physical strength, power, and resistance.” From a military perspective, this is where we should concentrate when attacking the enemy. As Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz states, “that is the point against which all our energies should be directed.”

In “Center of Gravity Analysis” (Military Review, July/August 2004), Army Colonel Dale Eikmeier describes the framework for COG and how an enemy (your threat) attempts to exploit them, as follows:

· Center of Gravity—the organizations that do the work (e.g. the military/industrial complex)

· Critical Capabilities (CC)—the strengths of the organization—its “primary abilities”

· Critical Requirements (CR)—the supplies that a COG use—the inputs that are their opportunities, if leveraged for future plans

· Critical Vulnerabilities (CV)—the vulnerabilities a COG has—e.g. exposed or unguarded critical infrastructure

From an enterprise architecture perspective, I greatly appreciate this analysis of COG as it aligns beautifully with Albert Humphrey’s famous Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis for organizational strategic planning.

Aside from typical SWOT analysis to develop your organization’s strategy, the COG analysis adds greater offensive analysis to SWOT--like the military, organizations using the COG model can disrupt competitors’ advantages by seeking to weaken them where they are most vulnerable.

For example, EA used in this fashion may lead a company to build a sophisticated online sales site that directs customers away from your competitor’s retail location. Similarly, acquiring a major supplier (i.e. vertically integrating) may disrupt a competitors’ supply capability, and so on. The point is that EA becomes a force for attack rather than a mere planning tool or information asset.

It is at this point that I disagree with the assertion in the article that “Information is not power; it is a tool, an enabler. It helps wield military or economic power. By itself, it is simply information.”

Far to the contrary, information is one of the greatest assets that we have. It is the way that an advanced, intellectually based society competes. Of note, our declining performance in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), which is so greatly worrisome to our leadership, is of concern because it is directly a threat to our competitive advantage, both militarily and economically, in the global environment.

Information, as embodied by the Internet, is now the center of our society. With it, we perform critical tasks of information sharing, collaboration and education. Used effectively, our military has developed robust command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance (C4ISR)—all information-based. Similarly, our industry is highly competitive and advanced because of the engineering, innovation, and people behind it.

Enterprise architecture, once a small part of the IT infrastructure, can actually play a far greater role in the information society if we allow it to. We have morphed from the industrial age of the 18^th and 19^th centuries to a highly advanced information society that creates new sources of critical capability, but also new critical vulnerabilities that must be defended. And we must also leverage the vulnerability of our enemies in order to stay viable. Whether it’s cyber-warfare or economic survival, information is at the heart of everything we are successfully doing today.

The Center Of Gravity Is Information

Microsoft’s Three-headed Play

Computerworld, 8 November 2010, has an article called “Ozzie to Microsoft: Simplify, Simplify.” Unless Microsoft can become nimbler and less bureaucratic, they will not be able to keep pace with technology change in the marketplace.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s departing Chief Software Architect (and Bill Gate’s successor since 2006) has prepared a five-year plan for the company that “exhorts the company to push further into the cloud—or perish.” (Hence, a recent Microsoft stock price that is half of what it was more ten years ago!)

According to Ozzie—and I believe most technology architects today would agree—the future of computing is far less about the PC and Windows and much more about mobile devices and services, which are not traditional core competencies of Microsoft.

The new technology landscape is one that is based on:

• Mobility—access anywhere (smartphones, tablets, and embedded appliances)
• Pervasiveness—access anytime (24/7, “always on”)
• Shared services—access that is hosted and shared, rather than device or enterprise-based.

Despite seeing the future, Microsoft is having trouble changing with the times and many are questioning whether they are in a sense a “one pony show” that can no longer keep up with the other technology innovators such as Apple, Google, Amazon, and others that seem to be riding the mobility and cloud wave.

Wes Miller, a technology analyst, states about Microsoft: “My frustration is that it’s a big ship, and the velocity with which the boat is going will make it hard” for them to move from a PC-centric to a cloud-oriented world. “You’re talking about competing with companies that are, if not out-innovating Microsoft, then outpacing them.”

With the deep bench of intellectual talent and investment dollars that Microsoft has, why are they apparently having difficultly adjusting with the changing technology landscape that their own chief architect is jumping up and down screaming to them to confront head-on?

To me, it certainly isn’t ignorance—they have some of the smartest technologists on the planet.

So what is the problem? Denial, complacency, arrogance, obstinance, accountability, leadership, or is it a combination of these coupled with the sheer size (about 89,000 employees) and organizational complexity of Microsoft—that Ozzie and Miller point out—that is hampering their ability to effectively transform themselves.

This certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the small and nimble have outmaneuvered lumbering giants. That’s why according to Fortune Magazine, of Fortune 500 companies, only 62 have appeared on the list every year since 1955, another 1,952 have come and gone. It’s sort of the David vs. Goliath story again and again.

While Microsoft is struggling to keep pace, they are fortunate to have had people like Ray Ozzie pointing them in the right direction, and they have made major inroads with cloud offering for Office365 (Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync—formerly OCS), Windows Azure (service hosting and management), and Hyper V (for server virtualization).

As I see it, Microsoft has 3 choices:

1. Change leadership—find someone who can help the company adapt to the changing environment
2. Break up the company into smaller, more nimble units or “sub-brands,” each with the autonomy to compete aggressively in their sphere
3. Instead of focusing on (the past)—base product enhancements and the “next version,” they need to be thinking completely outside the box. Simply coming out with “Windows 13” is a bit ridiculous as a long-term strategy, as is mimicking competitors’ products and strategies.

As is often the case, this is really isn’t so much a question of the technology, because Microsoft can certainly do technology, but it is whether Microsoft can overcome their cultural challenges and once again innovate and do it quickly like their smaller and more agile rivals.

Microsoft’s Three-headed Play

Doomsday Clock Architecture

There is something fascinating to me about the doomsday clock—where we attempt to predict our own self-destruction and hopefully prevent it

The chart in this post from the Mirror in the U.K. shows the movement of the Doomsday Clock over the last 60 plus years.


Currently in 2010 (not shown in the chart), we stand at 6 minutes to midnight (midnight being a euphemism for the end of the world or Armageddon).


Since 1947, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has hypothesized and visualized with the dials on the clock how close they believe mankind is to self-extinction.

The closest we’ve gotten is 2 minutes to midnight in 1953 after the U.S. and Russia test the first nuclear devices.

The furthest we’ve gotten from midnight is 17 minutes in 1991, when the Cold War was over, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed, and the U.S. and Russia took their fingers off the hair-trigger alert on their nuclear arsenals pointed at each other.


While some may take the Doomsday Clock as a morbid or pessimistic reminder of our human frailties, missteps, and movement toward potential calamity, I see it as a tool that attempts to keep us—as humankind—from going over the edge.


This is very architecture-like, to me. We look at where we are and (implicitly here) set targets for ourselves to move the hands backward away from Armageddon. The architecture piece that we need to concentrate on is a crystal clear plan to get those hands on the clock way back to where we can feel more secure in our future and that of our children and grandchildren.


Wired Magazine (October 2010) has an article called “Suspend the Deathwatch,” calling for the measurement of “a wider variety of apocalyptic scenarios” and for the addition of a “Doom Queue, with a host of globe-killing catastrophes jockeying for slot number one.” The main idea being that we “do more than predict The End; it would organize our collective anxieties into a plan of action.”


I definitely like the idea of a plan of action—we need that. We need to plan for life, continuity, and a flourishing society that goes beyond the limits of sustainability of our situation today.


We are aware of the world’s growing population (aka the population explosion), the scarcity of vital resources like water, energy, arable land, etc. and the potential for conflict that arises from this. We need to plan for the “what ifs” even when they are uncomfortable. That is part of responsible leadership and a true world architecture. That is a big, but meaningful job indeed.

Doomsday Clock Architecture

See A Compelling Future and Make It That Way

I really like Tony Robbins and especially his show on NBC "Breakthrough."

Tony Robbins is incredibly motivational, inspirational, and has a vision for a better future for individuals and society.

I liked this piece he did on relationships (but which can be applied more broadly) with the basic message of three lessons that everyone involved in enterprise architecture can certainly appreciate:

1. "See things as they are, but not worse than they are" -- People make things worse than they are, so they don't have to try ("it takes no guts to be a pessimist").
2. "See it better than it is; see a compelling future" -- "Today can be tough, but if the future is compelling, we can get there."
3. "Make it the way we see it" - This last one, in my opinion, is why we're here in life: to improve things, to add value, to leave things better than when you found them.

We all can have a positive impact in this world, in our work, in our relationships.

All we need to do is find our true selves, do something we truly believe in, and commit to it--no excuses, lots of hard work and of course have fun with it!

See A Compelling Future and Make It That Way

Keeping It All In Perspective

Here are some amazing photographs from Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

This is someone who can truly see the bigger picture and help us to see it as well.

If we can all see beyond the minutia every day, I think we could appreciate the opportunities and challenges before us so much more, and be able to address them more effectively--in perspective.

To me, this is the clarity of vision that I aspire to and I hope you do too.

Keeping It All In Perspective

Dilbert on Process Management

Dilbert on Process Management

Why EA and CPIC?

Note: This is not an endorsement of any vendor or product, but I thought this short video on enterprise architecture planning and capital planning and investment control/portfolio management was pretty good.

Why EA and CPIC?

Listening to Each Other to Succeed as a Team

There is an oft-cited best practice for conflict resolution called the speaker-listener technique—in which the speaker explains their position and the listener repeats back to the speaker what he heard him say. Then the speaker and listener switch roles.

After both sides have had a chance to express themselves, and the other side has repeated what they heard, both parties are ready to resolve their differences with greater understanding of each other.

The Wall Street Journal, 27 July 2010, in an article called “Fighting Happily Ever After” promotes the speaker-listener technique for improving couples communications and making happier, longer-lasting relationships.

I believe that the speaker-listener technique works not only because it improves the actual information flow and understanding between people, but also because it improves the perception that people have towards each other—from being adversarial to being collaborative.

In the sheer act of reaching out to others through genuine listening and understanding, we establish the trust of the other person that we want to work toward a win-win solution, as opposed to a clobber the other guy with what you want to do, and go home victorious.

In contrast, think of how many times people don’t really talk with each other, but rather at each other. When this occurs, there is very little true interaction of the parties—instead it is a dump by one on the other. This is particularly of concern to an organization when the speaker is in a position of authority and the listener has legitimate concerns that don’t get heard or taken seriously.

For example, when the boss (as speaker) “orders” his/her employees to action instead of engaging and discussing with them, the employees (as listener) may never really understand why they are being asked to perform as told (what the plan is) or even permitted to discuss how best they can proceed (what the governance is).

Here, there is no real two-way engagement. Rather, workers are related to by their superiors as automatons or chess pieces rather than as true value-add people to the mission/organization.

In the end, it is not very fulfilling for either party—more than that when it comes to architecture, governance, and execution, we frequently end up with lousy plans, decisions, and poorly performing investments.

Instead, think about the potential when employers and employees work together as a team to solve problems. With leaders facilitating strategic discussions and engaging with their staffs in open dialogue to innovate and seeking everyone’s input, ideas, reactions. Here employees not only know the plan and understand it, but are part of its development. Further, people are not just told what to do, but they can suggest “from the front lines” what needs to be done and work with others from a governance model on where this fits in the larger organizational context.

Speaking—listening—and understating each other is the essence of good conflict management and of treating people with decency and respect. Moreover, it is not just for couple relationship building, but also for developing strong organizational bonds and successfully planning and execution.

To me, creating a framework for conflict resolution and improved communication is an important part of what good enterprise architecture and IT governance is all about in the organization. Yet we don’t often talk about these human factors in technology settings. Rather the focus is on the end state, the tool, the more impersonal technical aspects of IT implementation and compliance.

Good architecture and governance processes help to remedy this a bit:

With architecture—we work together to articulate a strategic roadmap for the organization; this provides the goals, objectives, initiatives, and milestones that we work towards in concert.

With governance—we listen to each other and understand new requirements, their strategic alignment, return on investment, and the portfolio management of them. We listen, we discuss, we understand, and we make IT investment decisions accordingly.

Nevertheless, at this time the focus in IT is still heavily weighted toward operations. Research on IT employee morale shows that we need to better incorporate and mature our human capital management practices. We need to improve how we speak with, listen to and build understanding of others not only because that is the right thing to do, but because that will enable us to achieve better end results.

Listening to Each Other to Succeed as a Team

Newer Isn’t Always Better

I love new technology as much or more than the next guy, but...

Last month, I came across an article in USA Today called “Army Ditches Velcro For Buttons,” which chronicles how after deploying high-tech, “space-age Velcro” in uniforms in 2004, the Army found that the good old button worked better on keeping pants packets closed. The Army is now substituting three buttons for Velcro on the cargo pockets of its pants to keep them from opening up and spilling out.

To me, the point is not whether we use new, newer, or even the newest technology out there (like space-age Velcro), but whether we are right-fitting the technology to our organization (in this case, the button met the needs of the soldier better).

I’m sure you may have noticed, as have I that certain technology enthusiasts like, want and literally crave the “latest and greatest” technology gizmos and gadgets, whether they fully work yet or not.

These enthusiasts are often the first to download a new (still buggy) app and the ones that line up (often bringing their own lounge chairs) the night before a new iPhone or other “hot” consumer technology product goes to market.

Similar, and perhaps well-intentioned, enthusiasm for new technology can end up in pushing new technologies before the organization is ready for them (in terms of maturity, adoption, change, priorities, etc.). In other cases, newer technologies may be launched even before the “ink is dried” on IT purchases already made (i.e. the technologies bought are not yet implemented and there has been no return on investment achieved!).

At the extreme, organizations may find themselves with proverbial IT storage closets full of still shrink-wrapped boxes of software and crates of unopened IT hardware and still not be deterred from making another purchase and another and another…

I remember in graduate school learning about shopaholics and those so addicted to consumerism that their behavior bordered on the abnormal according to the Bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM).

This behavior is in sharp contrast with organizations that are disciplined with technology and strong stewards with their organization’s investment dollars—they tend to follow a well-thought-out plan and a structured governance process to ensure that money is well-spent on IT—i.e. it is requirements-driven, strategically aligned, ROI-based, and technologically compliant with the architecture.

In such organizations, responsibility and accountability for IT investments go hand-in-hand, so that success is not measured by whether new technologies get identified and investments “go through,” but rather by how beneficial a technology is for the end-user in doing their jobs and how quickly it actually gets successfully implemented.

This latter organization model is the more mature one and the one that we need to emulate in terms of their architecture and governance. Like the Army, these organizations will chose the old fashioned button over the newer Velcro when it suits the soldier better and will even come out saving 96 cents per uniform.

New technology is great--the key is to be flexible and strategic about when it is needed and when it is not.

Newer Isn’t Always Better

Needed: User-centric Enterprise Architecture Now!

Article from New York Times, 27 February 2010, called "We Have Met the Enemy and He is Powerpoint" should be titled "We Need User-centric Enterprise Architecture Now!"

"Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter."

As the article later points out, "No one is suggesting that PowerPoint is to blame," but rather the problem is in how we architect solutions and communicate information about this to our users.

No more spaghetti charts, please. No more convoluted, eyesores masquerading as useful information. No more blah, blah, blah, gobble-de-gook writing. No more architecture that go nowhere, but in circles.

We need to use common sense when we think, architect, and communicate or even the wisest of generals and his advisors will be laughing their heads off at what is fallaciously presented as information.

Needed: User-centric Enterprise Architecture Now!

Powerful Information Visualization Demo

This is not an endorsement of any vendor or product, but rather just sharing a great example of how robust visualization and enabling technology can help us comb through myriads of data and get meaningful information quickly to the people of the front line.

This is the type of architecture that pulls together end-user mission requirements, the vital information to perform, and the system to meet those needs in an eliquent end to end solution.

Powerful Information Visualization Demo

Breaking Down Organizational Bottlenecks

Improving organizational performance is often grounded in identifying bottlenecks (constraints) and fixing them, so that the firm runs better, faster, cheaper than before and at an advantage to it’s competitors.

Enterprise architecture helps us to locate the bottlenecks through an understanding of our business processes, information flows, and systems and then facilitates our reengineering these though business process improvement and the introduction of new technologies.

Harvard Business School (HBS) put out a working paper in February 2010 called “The Strategic Use of Architectural Knowledge by Entrepreneurial firms,” by Carliss Baldwin that describes how “an entrepreneurial firm can use architectural knowledge to unseat a larger incumbent.”

The premise is that knowledge is a firm’s most critical resource, “including knowledge about how to assemble resources to pursue an opportunity.”

We can architecturally disassemble and assemble our resources and processes whereby we—“isolate the bottlenecks” and then “alleviate the bottlenecks.”

This process is grounded in modularity theory, where we use architectural knowledge to modularize (or breakdown) a complex system into its functional components as well as address how these components are related (through their interfaces).

Once we decompose the firms business, data, and systems into its modular components, we can then “remodularize” (or assemble) them into strategically more effective systems for doing business.

Moreover, the paper suggests that the firm “insources bottleneck components and outsources non-bottleneck components,” so as to focus resources (and innovation) on the trouble spots—the areas that are potentially a source of competitive advantage.

Fixing bottlenecks can produce valuable differentiators for a company that we would not want shared with those outside the organization and made available to competitors.

In my opinion, bottleneck functions can also be outsourced, whereby we decide to “let the experts handle it,” when the functions are not strategic in nature. For example, many companies outsource things like payroll and basic call center functions, and it enable the organization to focus its energy and efforts on its core mission.

The notion that enterprise architecture itself is a strategic differentiator for organizations that know how to wield the architecture knowledge is critically important. Through decomposition and assembly of processes and enabling technologies, we can create stronger organizations that not only reduce bottlenecks, but also drive improved decision-making in terms of what to invest in and how to source those investments.

While many organizations treat architecture as a compliance only mechanism and reap little to no benefits from it, those that understand EA’s strategic significance can use the knowledge gained to their organization’s competitive advantage.

Breaking Down Organizational Bottlenecks

Can Microsoft Stomp Out The iPhone?

So much for letting the best product win. According to the Wall Street Journal, 13-14 March 2010, Microsoft is forcing their employees to “choose” Microsoft phones for personal use and to push those who don’t into hiding.

Is this a joke or a genuine throwback to the Middle Ages?

Apparently this is real: “Last September, at an all-company meeting in a Seattle sports stadium, one hapless employees used his iPhone to snap photos of Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. Mr. Ballmer snatched the iPhone out of the employee’s hands, placed it on the ground, and pretended to stomp on it in front of thousands of Microsoft workers.” That sends a pretty clear message!

I guess the employee can consider himself lucky that Mr. Ballmer didn’t put him (instead of the iPhone) on the ground underneath his foot or perhaps maybe even just burn him at the stake for heresy against Microsoft.

Further, in 2009, Microsoft “modified its corporate cellphone policy to only reimburse service fees for employees using phones that run on Windows.”

While many workers at Microsoft can evidently be seen with iPhones, others are feeling far from safe and comfortable doing this. According to the article, one employee told of how when he meets with Mr. Ballmer (although infrequently), he does not answer his iPhone no matter who is calling! Another executive that was hired into Microsoft in 2008 told of how he renounced and “placed his personal iPhone into an industrial strength blender and destroyed it.”

Apparently, Mr. Ballmer told executives that his father worked for Ford Motor Co. and so they always drove Ford cars. While that may be a nice preference and we can respect that, certainly we are “big boys and girls” and can let people pick and choose which IT products they select for their own personal use.

While many employees at Microsoft have gone underground with their iPhones, “nearly 10,000 iPhone users were accessing the Microsoft employees email systems last year,” roughly 10% of their global workforce.

My suggestion would be that instead of scaring the employees into personally using only Microsoft-compatible phones, they can learn from their employees who choose the iPhone—which happens to have a dominant market share at 25.1% to Microsoft 15.7%—in terms why they have this preference and use this understanding to update and grow the Microsoft product line accordingly. In fact, why isn’t Microsoft leveraging to the max the extremely talented workforce they have to learn everything they can about the success of the iPhone?

It’s one thing to set architecture standards for corporate use, and it’s quite another to tell employees what to do personally. It seems like there is a definite line being crossed explicitly and implicitly in doing this.

What’s really concerning is that organizations think that forcing their products usage by decree to their employees somehow negates their losing the broader product wars out in the consumer market.

Obviously, IT products don’t win by decree but by the strength of their offering, and as long as Microsoft continues to play medieval, they will continue to go the way of the horse and buggy.

Can Microsoft Stomp Out The iPhone?