Master of Paradox and the Enterprise Architect

As enterprise architects, we need to have clarity of vision to see what is and to chart a way ahead for the organization. Yet, we live amidst polarities and paradoxes, which are challenges for every enterprise architect to see through.

In the book The Empty Raincoat, by Charles Handy, the author identifies nine paradoxes that we need not only be aware of, but also be focused on, so that we can find a better way forward for ourselves, our enterprises, and society.

Here are the top six paradoxes (of nine) of our time:

1. Intelligence—“brains are replacing brawn…knowledge and know-how is the new source of wealth, [yet] it is impossible to give people intelligence by decree, to redistribute it. It is not even possible to leave it to your children when you die…It is not possible to take this new form of intelligence away from anyone. Intelligence is sticky…nor is it possible to own someone else’s intelligence…It is hard to prevent the brains walking out the door if they want to…intelligence is a leaky form of property. [Finally,] intelligence tends to go where intelligence is. Well educated people give their families good education.”
2. Work—“some have work and money, but too little time, while others have all he time, but no work and no money…we also use money as the measure of efficiency. Our organizations, therefore want the most work for the least money while individuals typically want the most money for the least work.”
3. Productivity—“productivity means ever more and ever better work from ever fewer people…as more and more people get pushed out or leave organizations…[they] do for themselves, what they used to pay others to do for them.” In a sense the newly unemployed stifle market demand and further growth.
4. Time—“we never seem to have enough time, yet there has never been so much time available to us. We live longer and we use less time to make and do things as we get more efficient…[yet] we have created an insidious cycle of work and spend, as people increasing look to consumption to give satisfaction and even meaning to their lives.”
5. Riches—“economic growth depends, ultimately, on more and more people wanting more and more and more things…If , however, we look only at the rich societies, we see them producing fewer babies every year and living longer. Fewer babies mean fewer customers, eventually, while living longer lives mean, usually poorer and more choosy customers.”
6. Organizations—“more than ever, they need to be global and local at the same time, to be small in some ways but big in others, to be centralized some of the time and decentralized most of it. They expect their workers to be more autonomous and more of a team, their managers to be more delegating and more controlling…they have to be planned yet flexible, be differentiated and integrated at the same time, be mass-marketers while catering for many niches, they must introduce new technology, but allow workers to be masters of their own destiny; they must find ways to get variety and quality and fashion, and all at low-cost.”

Can we as enterprise architects ever resolve these paradoxes?

While, we cannot resolve the polarities of society, we can find ways to balance them, move between the extremes “intelligently,” as appropriate for the situation, and search for better way to adapt. We do this not only to survive, but to help our organizations and society thrive in spite of the paradoxes. “Life will never be easy, nor perfectible, nor completely predictable. It will be best understood backwards [20-20 hindsight], but we have to live it forwards. To make it livable, at all levels, we have to learn to use paradoxes, to balance the contradictions and the inconsistencies and to use them as an invitation to find a better way.”

So as architects what specifically can we do?

As architects, we are advisors to the Chief Information Officer (from a technology-business alignment perspective), Chief Financial Officer (from an IT investment perspective), and to the Chief Procurement Officer and Line of Business Program Managers (from an IT execution standpoint) and other organizational decision-makers. In this advisory role, we can help point out the polarities and paradoxes that may be driving the organization one way or the other, or actually in a conflicting, bi-directional manner. As advisors, we can highlight gaps, redundancies, inefficiencies, and opportunities and suggest ways to improve or capitalize on this. But most importantly of all, by having a structured way of thinking about IT planning and governance, we can provide a perspective to the organization that may otherwise be neglected or trashed (in favor of operations), and we can provide clarity to the organization in terms of planning and governance processes, when the organization may otherwise just be blowing around in the wind of universal contention.

"There are kings [executives] and there are prophets [architects]...the kings have the power and the prophets have the principles...but every king needs his prophet, to help him, and increasingly her, keep a clear head amidst all the confusions...prophets in spite of their name, do not foretell the future. No one can do that...What prophets can do is tell the truth as they see it."

Master of Paradox and the Enterprise Architect

Relationships and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric enterprise architecture captures, analyzes, categorizes, and serves up information to enhance decision-making capability in the organization. However, it is not only information alone that helps us make better decisions, but also developing and nurturing important personal relationships.

In the book, It’s Not Business, It’s personal by Ronna Lichtenberg, the author reminds us that relationships are key to personal and professional success and deeply affect our decision-making ability.

• Lichtenberg asks, “is there room in our new millennium, ‘e.com’ world for relationships? Some folks would tell you there isn’t, that all that matters is performance and speed…the only problem is that all this speed has made us, to use a high-tech word, kludgy…as we whiz by one another, we don’t really connect. Which means that every decision is more complicated, takes longer, and is less intelligent because you can’t get real information about business problems from people you don’t trust.”

So in this fast-paced, high-tech world, we overlook others, but can’t we still get good information from disciplines like EA? While EA is a valuable information resource, EA information products or a repository is not a substitute for relationships, nor can you develop and maintain the EA without solid relationships.

• “We can be deceived into believing that our world is now too efficient [like through the development and use of EA information and other business intelligence methods and tools ] for relationships, that when every bit of information, and virtually any product or service, can be bought with a click of a mouse, the need for relationships has disappeared. But in fact, it has become even more important.”

How many relationships do we need? While quantity of relationships can be important, it is the quality of those relationships that is even more important. It is the “real relationships” in our lives or those of substance that provide the most satisfaction, value, and meaning to us over the long term. These relationships extend first and foremost to family and friends, but also to professional relationships between talented, dynamic people who can work together to build successful programs, products, and services for organizations and society (and this includes strategic programs like EA).

• “When working with people and investing in relationships, the value comes not in quantity, but in quality. It doesn’t matter how many people you’ve met in your career or how many Rolodex cards you’ve acquired…what matters is who will be there for you when you really need it…‘networking’ is superficial. ‘Relationships’ are deep.
• “The trick is to make it personal, to bring your heart into it, while respecting the roles and the rules of business. The goal is not to do business with your friends and it’s not to make friends out of your closest business relationships (though that sometimes happens). It’s to be present, and to bring all the nuance and intensity and affection and power of your personality into your close business relationships.”

Some obvious areas where relationships are critical in building an EA program are as follows:

• Executive commitment—an EA program needs to have commitment from the highest levels to be successful. That means not only your boss, but also the senior executive team that runs the organization. Developing relationships with senior management that helps to explain the program and gain their commitment is fundamental.
• The EA team—a good chief enterprise architect carefully chooses his or her EA team. Having experienced, knowledgeable, skilled, talented and enthusiastic people can make all the difference between a vibrant EA program and one that falls flat or fizzles out. Additionally, good synergy between team members helps to build a strong, cohesive program.
• Subject matter experts—the information in the enterprise architecture cannot be gleaned only from documents and databases. EA is built through the interaction of business and technical subject matter experts throughout the organization, as well as from those outside the organization who can provide best practices. Of course, everyone is busy, but it is through building relationships with others that one can more fully engage them with the EA program.
• Users—the dot-com adage of “build it and they will come” is way too simplistic for leveraging EA use for a wide variety of users in the organization. The chief architect needs to engage with the end users to, first of all, understand their requirements, but also to develop EA information products and governance services that are truly useful and usable to the end user.

Meaningful relationships, passion for what you do, and the commitment to give it your best, those are the elements of a solid EA program.

Relationships and Enterprise Architecture

Boeing and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture is a combination of developing and using organizational insight and managing sound oversight.

Boeing Company’s recently announced six-month delay of its new 787 Dreamliner jet shows defects in both their EA insight and oversight.

The Wall Street Journal, 7 December 2007 reports that “layers of outsourcing slow 787 production…a look inside the project reveals that the mess stems from one its main selling points to investors—global outsourcing.”

How did global outsourcing reveal the breaks in both effective insight and oversight at Boeing?

• INSIGHT—EA is the synthesis of business and technology to improve organizational decision-making. EA develops information products, so that the organization has the information it needs to improve mission execution, and so that business is driving technology. In the case of Boeing, they were so focused on getting the technology of the new jet right, that they overlooked the underlying business problems. “It figured the chief risk lay in perfecting a process to build much of the plane from carbon-fiber plastic instead of aluminum. Boeing focused so hard on getting the science right that it didn’t grasp the significance of another big change; the 787 is the first jet in Boeing’s history designed largely by other companies,” and this has been plagued with problems ranging from language barriers to their contractors subcontracting out key tasks, such as engineering. Boeing’s focus on the technology led them to ignore important aspects of the business of designing and producing the new planes. Boeing did not have sufficient insight into the business side (versus the technology) of managing this tremendous endeavor.

• OVERSIGHT—EA involves IT governance, so that IT investments are made based on sound principles of business alignment, return on investment, risk management, and technical compliance. Generally, the Investment Review Board, the EA Board, and the Program Management Office sees to it that IT projects are reviewed and managed in terms of cost, schedule, and performance parameters. In the case of Boeing, they did not ensure adequate EA oversight for the 787 jet. “Boeing overestimated the ability of suppliers to handle tasks that its own designers and engineers know how to do almost intuitively after decades of building jets. Program managers thought they had adequate oversight of suppliers but learned later that the company was in the dark when it came to many under-the-radar details.” Boeing’s general expertise in project oversight was outsourced along with the engineering and production tasks, and this led to, what an executive of one major supplier has called, chaos.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner may well end up being a true “dreamy” jet plane, but from a User-centric EA perspective, the 787 has been a real nightmare and a example of ineffective EA insight and oversight!

Boeing and Enterprise Architecture

An Online Only World and Enterprise Architecture

How long will it be before the internet becomes our primary means of storing personal data and running software applications (web-based)?

MIT Technology Review, 3 December 2007, reports that one core vision for the evolution of technology (that of Google) is that we are moving from a computer-based technical environment to an online-only world, where “digital life, for the most part, exists on the Internet”—this is called cloud computing.

Already, users can perform many applications and storage functions online. For example:

• “Google Calendar organizes events,
• Picasa stores pictures,
• YouTube holds videos,
• Gmail stores email, and
• Google Docs houses documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.”
  

Moreover, MIT Technology Review reports that it is rumored that Google is working on an umbrella application that will pull these disparate offerings together for a holistic cloud computing solution.

What’s the advantage of cloud computing?

A computer hard drive is no longer important. Accessibility to one’s information is limited only by one’s access to the internet, which is becoming virtually ubiquitous, and information can be shared with others easily. “The digital stuff that’s valuable… [is] equally accessible from his home computer, a public internet café, or a web-enabled phone.”

What are some of the issues with cloud computing?

• Privacy—“user privacy …becomes especially important if Google serves ads that correspond to all personal information, as it does in Gmail.”
• Encryption—“Google’s encryption mechanisms aren’t flawless. There have been tales of people logging into Gmail and pulling up someone else’s account.”
• Copyright—“one of the advantages of storing data in the cloud is that it can easily be shared with other people, but sharing files such as copyrighted music and movies is generally illegal.”
• Connectivity—“a repository to online data isn’t useful if there’s no Internet connection to be had, or if the signal is spotty.”

Still Google’s vision is for “moving applications and data to the internet, Google is helping make the computer disappear.” Human-computer interaction has evolved from using command lines to graphical user interface to a web browser environment. “It’s about letting the computer get out of our way so we can work with other people and share our information.”

Of course, Google’s vision of an online-only world isn’t without challenge: Microsoft counters that “it’s always going to be a combination of [online and offline], and the solution that wins is going to be the one that does the best job with both.” So Microsoft is building capability for users “to keep some files on hard drives, and maintain that privacy, while still letting them access those files remotely.”

I will not predict a winner-take-all in this architecture battle of online and offline data and applications. However, I will say that we can definitely anticipate that information sharing, accessibility, privacy, and security will be centerpieces of what consumers care about and demand in a digital world. Online or offline these expectations will drive future technology evolution and implementation.

An Online Only World and Enterprise Architecture

Microwave Energy Weapons and Enterprise Architecture

There’s a new way to stop by the bad guys—with microwave energy!

The problem is that no sooner do we develop the improved technology, then we are already telling the bad guys how to foil it. That’s incredibly self-defeating and stupid!

That’s also the epitome of poor enterprise architecture:

• good User-centric EA ensures that business drives technology and technology meets user requirements—in this case, the requirement is to be able to stop the bad guys; however, we already know how the bad guys can circumvent the technology and are telling them how— that’s not meeting user requirements, and that’s poor EA!

In this example, MIT Technology Review, 13 November 2007 is reporting that a company called Eureka Aerospace has developed a new “more efficient and compact” electromagnetic system that can send out “a beam of microwave energy [that] could stop vehicles in their tracks.”

“Pulses of microwave radiation disable the microprocessors that control the engine functions in a car. Such a device could be used by law enforcement to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles at security checkpoints, or as a perimeter protection for military bases, communication centers” and other critical infrastructure.

Sound good, and the technology is ready for deployment in 18 months. Here’s the catch—the article tells us (and the world) how the state-of-the-art technology is foiled:

• Metal shielding—“metal acts as a shield against microwave energy.”
• Older vehicles—“electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, hence the system will not work on automobiles made before that year.”
  

Some additional snafu’s from the architects who designed this:

• Collateral damage— nearby electronics will also be taken out; “so if the officer is pointing the device in the direction of the mall, he or she could end up trapping 12 people in an elevator.” Also, it “could cause a huge accident if a car is disabled and a driver loses steering control.” Here’s some more: “radiation can burn human skin and microwaves have long been suspected of being a cancer-causing agent.
  

So here’s a neat technology that sounds good on paper, until we see (and tell the bad guys) how to defeat our latest gizmo that’s designed to protect our citizen’s and troops. Plus let’s not forget the collateral damage from this “non-lethal” weapon. Architects back to the drawing board, please.

Microwave Energy Weapons and Enterprise Architecture

Democracy and Enterprise Architecture

A society that is open to thoughts, ideas, and expression is free to grow and mature. This is democracy.

The Wall Street Journal, 5 December 2007, reports that the Chinese government’s repression of ideas is being challenged through the widespread use of social and networking technology, including the use of the internet, blogging, messaging, and so on.

Generally speaking, without the ability to think and express freely, Chinese society’s development has been stifled. One Chinese blogger shares this parable to describe the effect of repression on Chinese society: “There was a kind of fish that lived deep in the ocean. It did not use its eyes very often, since it was used to the darkness there. So its eyesight degenerated gradually, until one day it became blind.”

While 162 million Chinese use the internet, the government continues to try to stymie their freedom and movement toward democracy. For example, the “Great Firewall of China”—the Chinese government’s filtering software—is used to censor website access.

In addition, there is the Chinese “mental firewall,” which is a form of self-censorship, based on “China’s Confucian values [that] teach respect for authority and the subordination of the individual to the family and state. In China’s rigid education system, young people rarely are encouraged to express their opinions. And people have learned to keep quiet as political orthodoxies changed with the wind over the decades…finding yourself on the wrong side could lead to punishment, including exile and jail.”

However, the power of technology to open societies—even those as entrenched as China’s—to free thinking and expression is compelling. Many “think that over time, the social-networking capabilities of the Internet will help Chinese people become more assertive about speaking their minds. Young Chinese have already made the Internet an integral part of their lives. It opens opportunities for them to express individuality and emotion in a way that didn’t exist before.”

In one survey, “73% of Chinese Internet users age 16 to 25 felt they could do and say things online that they couldn’t in the real world.” The Internet is opening up real possibilities for freedom and democracy that could only be dreamed off earlier.

From a User-centric enterprise architecture perspective, we as architects apply technology to solve our organization’s greatest business challenges in order to improve mission execution and drive results of operation. However, the use of technology goes way beyond our organizational boundaries and outcomes. Modern technologies based on the Internet are a major disruptive force that brings down the “great firewalls” and “mental walls” of China and other countries with similar restrictive regimes and traditions, and enables the free expression of ideas and the democratization of billions of peoples around the world. Therefore, while EA can be applied at an organizational level to drive enterprise outcomes, it can also be used on a macro-geopolitical level to drive political change, freedom, and human rights. The foundational principle of information-sharing and accessibility in enterprise architecture can be an important lever to drive social change.

Democracy and Enterprise Architecture

Exascale Computing and Enterprise Architecture

Faster computers mean more capability for problem solving some of our most difficult and challenging business, technical, and scientific quandaries.

The Washington Post, 3 December 2007, reports that by next year, the next generation of supercomputers will come online at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The computers will be petascale, capable of processing 1,000 trillion calculations per second! (note: that is almost double the current capability of 596 trillion cps.)

Imagine that we don’t even readily have a term to describe a 1,000 trillion, yet we’ll be able to do it!

That much processing power is the equivalent of 100,000 desktop computers combined.

IBM’s “Roadrunner” is the “leading candidate to become the first petascale machine,” and will enable computer simulations that will “shed new light on subjects such as climate change, geology, new drug development, dark matter, and other secrets of the universe, as well as other fields in which direct experimental observation is time-consuming, costly, dangerous, or impossible.”

Another area that supercomputers help with is in assessing “the reliability, safety, and performance of weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile” without any real-life testing necessary.

One big advantage to these powerful supercomputers is that rather than doing experiments, we can simply simulate them. So, computational science (generated by supercomputer power) supplants to some extent observational or theoretical science.

What’s more amazing yet? Scientists are anticipating the exascale machine, yet another thousand times more powerful, by 2018. Now we’re talking a million trillion calculations per second. And that’s not “baby talk,” either.

From a User-centric enterprise architecture perspective, the importance of petascale and exascale supercomputing is that we need to think beyond the existing models of distributed computing and recognize the vast potential that supercomputers can provide. As architects, we need to envision the potential of future low-cost supercomputing power and what impact this can have on our organization’s ability to better perform its mission and achieve improved results. One day, supercomputing will not only be for scientists, but it will be employed by those savvy organizations that can harness its processing power to deliver better, faster, and cheaper products and services to its users. Some day, when we apply supercomputing power to everyday problems, we’ll be approaching the vision of Ray Kurzweil’s, the singularity, where machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. But to me that point really isn’t who is smarter, man or machine, but rather can we—in organizations of various sizes, in every industry, and around the globe—harness the power of the supercomputer to make the world a truly better place.

Exascale Computing and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architect Leader = Warrior, Healer, and Tao

In the book the Tao of Leadership by John Heider, the author describes three roles for a leader:

• Warrior—“leader acts with power and decision” (the Yang or masculine)
• Healer—“leader acts as a healer and is in an open, receptive, and nourishing state” (the Yin or feminine)
• Tao—“leader withdraws from the group and returns to silence, returns to G-d…withdraw in order … to replenish my spirit.”

Helder goes on to state that “the leader who knows when to listen, when to act, and when to withdraw can work effectively with nearly anyone…perhaps the most difficult and sophisticated group members.”

In User-centric Enterprise Architecture, we bring together business and technical leaders and subject matter experts; we work vertically and horizontally in the organization as well as with stakeholders outside the enterprise. To effectively lead, collaborate, and communicate with all these group members, the architect ‘leader’ must know when to act as the “warrior” (push for change, results, and be decisive), when to act as the “healer” (listen, be receptive, and encourage others), and when to return to the “Tao” (withdraw and let others reflect or let the process evolve for a while).

In general, a great leader-architect is skilled in these various roles and is judicious on when to use each. If as a leader, for example, you talk when you should listen, or withdraw when you should engage, and so on, you can fall right on your sword (i.e. you’ll fail as a leader, as a change agent, and as an enterprise architect).

The leader-architect needs to be fluid between roles and to engage-withdraw, speak-listen, focus on work-focus on people, stabilize-seek change, push for progress-let things evolve. It’s all a fine line; many would call it a tightrope. That is why few people are truly excellent leaders. Although practice makes perfect!

Enterprise Architect Leader = Warrior, Healer, and Tao

IT Investment Reviews and Enterprise Architecture

To manage IT, you’ve got to have investment reviews, but when is it too much or not effective?

There are a number of executives (CXO’s) with a stake in the success of IT projects and a responsibility to review and manage them:

1. Chief Financial Officer (CFO)— is interested in the investment’s alignment to the mission and its return on investment
2. Chief Information Officer (CIO)—looks at IT projects in terms of technical alignment and compliance with the enterprise architecture, systems development life cycle, IT security, and other areas like privacy, accessibility, records management, and so on
3. Chief Procurement Officer (CPO)—reviews projects for contractual issues to protect the organization and ensure that “it gets what it’s paying for”
4. Line of Business (LOB) Program Officials—must review projects in terms of their project management and to control cost, schedule, and performance and ensure that the organization “controls” its investments

Usually, each of these executives has boards to carry out these review functions, and they are redundant, inefficient and drive the end-user crazy answering questions and checklists.

Part of the problem is that the executives and their review boards do not limit themselves to reviewing just their particular domains, but look across the management areas. So for example, EA often not only looks at technical alignment, but also will review business alignment and performance measures.

Moreover, not only are the review boards’ functionality often redundant between CXO’s, but even within the domain of a CXO, there will be duplicative review efforts such as between EA, SDLC, and IT security reviews.

Additionally, when an organizational component of an organization needs to conduct these reviews at their level and then again all the same reviews at a higher overall organization level, then the already inefficient review process is now doubly so.

In the end, with all the requisite reviews, innovation gets stifled, projects hamstrung, and the end-user frustrated and looking to circumvent the whole darn thing.

Obviously, you must review and establish checks and balances on IT investments, especially with the historical trends of people spending extravagantly and wastefully on IT solutions that were non-standard, not secure, not interoperable, did not meet user requirements, were over-budget, and behind schedule.

The key from a User-centric EA perspective is to balance the needs for governance, oversight, and compliance with helping and servicing the end-user, so they can meet mission needs, develop innovative solutions, and manage with limited resources. Asking users the same or similar checklist questions is not only annoying, but a waste of valuable resources, and a great way to spark an end-user revolt!

Remember it’s a fine line between EA and governance showing value to the organization and becoming a nuisance and a hindrance to progress.

IT Investment Reviews and Enterprise Architecture

Robot Warfare and Enterprise Architecture

The day has arrived. It’s the Terminator, but for real—a killer robot made to do some serious battlefield harm.

Fortune Magazine (December 2007) reports that its “1% inspiration and 99% obliteration…when engineering talent meets extreme gunsmithing.”

“It’s two feet tall, travels ten miles an hour, and spins on a dime. Remote-controlled over an encrypted frequency that jams nearby radios and cellphones, it’ll blow a ten-inch hole through a steel door with deadly accuracy from 400 meters.”

When firing in automatic mode, it shoots 300 rounds per minute and “delivers the lead equivalent of 132 M16s.”

Two such deadly bots can be carried into battle on a remote-controlled mini-helicopter, called the AutoCopter.

Robotex has built these deadly robots with investor money rather than government research money and has developed these devastating technology marvels for only $30,000 to $50,000.

These robots while new to the market are a sure bet from an enterprise architecture perspective. They meet user requirements as a superb killing machine. They take our military men and women out of harm’s way and instead intelligently use technology to conduct the “business” of war. The technology employed is low maintenance and is the finest, most reliable, firepower available (“It’s made of aircraft-grade aluminum steel, never needs lubrication or cleaning, and won’t rust. Pour sand in it and it won’t clog. It doesn’t recoil.”). It’s extremely cost-effective. And it gives us the technology edge.

Let’s hope and pray that we’re already planning counter-measures for when the bad guys get up-to-speed on these. That is very necessary EA planning for protecting our country and interests.

Robot Warfare and Enterprise Architecture

Turducken and Enterprise Architecture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turducken and Enterprise Architecture

Email and Enterprise Architecture

How many emails a day is enough?

The Wall Street Journal, 27 November 2007 reports that we are all being inundated with email and it is only going to get worse.

On average, the corporate email user received 126 messages a day last year, up 55% from 2003.

Moreover, “by 2009, workers are expecting to spend 41% of their time just managing emails.”

Further, by 2011, the average number of corporate emails sent and received per person, per day is expected to hit 228!

According to Microsoft, users fall into two general categories for how they handle all the email:

1. Filers—“strive to have an empty inbox at the end of the day”
2. Pilers—“the super-messy desk people. They’ve got 5,000 emails in their inbox, most of them unread”

One new novel architecture approach to help manage email is based on a product from Seriosity, as follows:

“Attent™ with Serios™ is an enterprise productivity application inspired by multiplayer online games. It tackles the problem of information overload in corporate email using psychological and economic principles from successful games. Attent creates a synthetic economy with a currency (Serios) that enables users to attach value to an outgoing email to signal importance. It gives recipients the ability to prioritize messages and a reserve of currency that they can use to signal importance of their messages to others. Attent also provides a variety of tools that enable everyone to track and analyze communication patterns and information exchanges in the enterprise.” (www.seriosity.com)

So for example, users may get 100 serios at the start of the week, and they get more when others send them messages. They allocate these serios to each message they send. “A message asking some if he or she wants to go out for lunch might carry a value of three ‘serios’ of virtual currency; [while] a message about an important customer with an urgent problem might get 30 serios. In this way, we try “to get people to send fewer message, or just more relevant ones.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, having senders designate the importance of messages is a wonderful idea to help receivers gauge relative importance and need to read. This is an improvement over the basic Microsoft Outlook capability that enables users to simply mark something with a “!” as important or not.

The Seriosity product is a good example of how technology can meet emerging business requirements, even when it involves managing hundreds of emails a day.

Email and Enterprise Architecture

The "Right" Way to Introduce New Technology and Enterprise Architecture

I came across some interesting lessons learned on rolling out new technology (from the perspective of franchisers/franchisees) that apply nicely to user-centric enterprise architects (adapted from The Wall Street Journal, 26 November 2007):

1) Partner with the user--"if you can get a franchisee really excited about the new technology, it's a lot simpler to get it rolled out...if I can convince you, and you can see the difference, you will be my best spokesman."

2) Testing it first--"finding a guinea pig...we have a lot of people telling us they have great concepts. We want to see that it works with our customer base, our menu, our procedures first."

3) Show the cost-benefit--"an enhancement may look promising, but if its payback is years away, the investment may not compute." Why fix it, if it ain't broke.

4) Keep it simple--"most franchisees are focused on their business, not technology...so they're not looking for something to complicate their lives." Also, focus the solution on the operators in the field and not on the headquarters staff, who may not be completely in tune with the realities on the front lines with the customers.

The "Right" Way to Introduce New Technology and Enterprise Architecture

Implicit Requirements and Enterprise Architecture

With electonic contact lists in Microsoft Outlook on the computer and on organizer programs on cellphones and other electronic gizmos, why would anyone still keep a physical Rolodex anymore?

The Wall Street Journal, 24-25 November 2007, reports that "some executives are still spinning their rotary card files...more than 20 years after the digital revolution that forecasted the paperless office, the 'rotary card file'--best known by the market-leading brand name Rolodex--continues to turn."

The article continues, "as millions of social-network users display their connectedness on their Facebook pages, a surprisingly robust group of people maintain their networks on small white cards. Most of these devotees also rely on BlackBerrys and other computer-based address books."

This infatuation with physical Rolodex files extends to models like the 6000-card wheel that are no longer even on the market. Other executives keep as many as 8 or 9 Rolodex wheels on their much needed desk space. Why?

The article states that "part of the card system's appeal has always been that it displays the size of one's business network for the world to see." Yet, social-networking sites like LinkedIn also display the number of contacts a person has, so what's the difference from a physical Rolodex file--what need is the technology not fulfilling with users?

From a User-centric EA perspective, it seems that people have a fundamental need with their contacts to not only be able to maintain them in an organized fashion and to demonstrate the size of their network (to show their value to the organization), but also to feel important and accomplished and to be able "to wear" this like a mark or medal of distinction, in this case by laying it out their Rolodex files prominently on their desks for all to behold.

In EA, when we design technology solutions, we need to keep in mind that there are functional requirements like the organizing of personal and professional contacts, but there are also human, psychological requirements that may never actually come out in a JAD session. These are unstated or implicit requirements and architects need to plan technology to meet both the explicit and implicit needs of users.

A little like Sherlock Holmes and a little bit like a psychologist, an architect must explore user needs beyond the surface if they are to successfully align new technologies with end-user and organizational requirements.

Implicit Requirements and Enterprise Architecture

One Laptop Per Child and Enterprise Architecture

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative announced at the World Economic Forum in 2005 set out to put $100 laptops in the hands of 100s of millions of disadvantaged schoolchildren within 4 years and help eliminate world poverty in the process.

The Wall Street Journal (24-25 November 2007) reports that this ambitious non-profit program has hit some snags.

The problems faced by this benevolent program provides lessons in EA for practitioners into what can go wrong if User-centric EA principles are not followed:

1. Functionality versus price--as the OLPC computer added functionality, the $100 laptop became $188 plus shipping and many potential buyers balked at the pricetag. On the other hand, countires like Libya complained about the inferior functionality and quality and said, "I don't want my country to be a junkyard for these machines." From a User-centric EA perspective, we need to understand the requirements of our users and understand the trade-offs between functionality and price. Then we need to make conscious decisions on whether we fulfill needs for greater functionality and quality or whether we seek to hold the line on price for our customers. These are important architectural decisions that will affect the organization's ability to compete in the marketplace.


2. Compete or partner--the OLPC machine went with open source software like Linux and AMD chips; these put the laptops head to head with companies like Microsoft and Intel, which come out fighting, with the gloves off. Intel is aggressively promoting its version of the laptop for developing nations called the Classmate for $230-$300, and Microsoft has announced $3 software packages that include Windows and a student version of Office. From a User-centric EA perspective, the decision of the organization whether to compete with the big players (like Microsoft and Intel) or partner is another major architectural decision. While we shouldn't make decisions based on fear of what the competition will do, we do need to be cognizant that if we go head-to-head with "the big boys", then they will respond, usually in a big way. Now OLPC is reportedly in discussions with Intel to design an Intel-based laptop.


3. Training and support--In User-centric EA, do not underestimate the importance to the end-user of adequate training and support. The OLPC made the mistake of minimizing the importance of training and support and said that the "plan is for the machines to be simple enough that students can train themselves--and solve any glitches that arise." Not very realistic given the state of technology today, and many countries quickly "questioned who would fix them if they break."

By not following certain foundational EA principles, the OLPC program has floundered and "nearly three years later, only about 2000 students in pilot programs have received computers."

This is a shame, since so much good from this initiative can still be done.

One Laptop Per Child and Enterprise Architecture

Architecting the Act of Giving

Giving charity is one of the most important things we can do. It is a fundamental expression of our humanity, an act of compassion on those not as fortunate as ourselves, and a show of belief that all that is bestowed on us comes and belongs to the One above.

According to the Wall Street Journal (23 November 2007), Americans give an estimated $97 billion to congregations in 2006, almost a third of the county's $295 billion in charitable donations." The total is the equivalent of roughly $1000 for every man, woman, and child in this country!

The great thing is, many people do tithe and that is wonderful. However, what about those that don't, should they be as the article states "urged to donate?" Is there a point where the line between giving as personal act of religion, faith, or humanity, is tainted by exonerations, required contracts, or even threats to make people give?

The Journal reports that "Mormons must give 10% to the church or they may be barred from temples where ceremonies take place. Some evangelical Protestant churches require new members to sign covenants, promising to tithe or give generously. Those who openly refuse might be denied leadership roles or asked to leave the congregation."

All the pressure is leading to a "backlash against tithing."

For example, some potential charitable givers are turned off by the way funds are being used. The WSJ gives examples of "megachurches, some with expensive worship centers equipped with coffee bars and widescreen TVs."

Yet religious institutions are increasingly employing sophisticated technology to encourage and enable charitable donations. "Some Baptist churches are trying to encourage credit card payments and automatic deductions from checking accounts...[another church] created the 'giving kiosk' machine that allows congregants to donate at the church from their bank cards [over 50 of these machines have already been deployed]...[additionally,] the machines can help track which families are giving the most."

It seems that religious institutions are doing more than using technology to enable giving--they may be crossing the line into "manipulating" people through "catching them" publicly if they don't give...they are taking away all the excuses and tracking giving behavior.

Where is the line between business and religion?

The article concludes with a church employee who worked for a pastor who "said he expected employees to give 10%," but the church employee felt "all decisions to give and how much to give are between the believer and their G-d, not meant to be used as stumbling blocks or judgments against others." This employee no longer works for the church--instead he now drives trucks.

From a User-centric EA perspective, we need to be thoughtful of our stakeholders' needs and how we work with them. The article at one point states: "you can't beat people over the head." However, you really can beat them into submission, but is this really what we want to accomplish?

From an enterprise architecture perspective, we use technology to enable business execution for all sorts of organizations. But ideally, technology is used to further legitimate human aims, and not to manipulate users into compliance. Especially from a religious perspective.

In short, good EA is applying technology to solve business problems. Bad EA manipulates people's emotions to get them to do what they may not want to do.

Architecting the Act of Giving

E-books and enterprise architecture

Does anyone really think you want to read a book on a computer screen?

Well, vendors like Sony with their "Reader" and Amazon with their new "Kindle" think you will.

However, while 110 million iPods have been sold, only 100,000 e-book readers have sold in North America. (The Wall Street Journal, 20 November 2007)

A Kindle costs $399 and downloading a best-seller is $9.99, while classics cost as little as $1.99. You can also get newspaper subscriptions online for a monthly subscription fee.

While Amazon has a wonderful vision "to have every book that has ever been in print available in less than 60 seconds," the core hurdle from a User-centric EA perspective needs to be addressed:

Users can and like to read size manageable documents online (like this blog, maybe), but a book on a screen does still not 'feel' natural and is tiring on users physically, mentally, and emotionally. The core requirement is for ergonomic reading and it's just not there!

While the current technology enables e-book reading without a backlight and "provides an experience that is akin to reading on paper, and users can even change the font size to make print larger and easier to read, the technology is not still user-friendly. Can you easily jump back and reread something? Can you easily highlight or underline? Can you annotate in the margins? Can you flip over the corner of the page to mark it as important? And with all these, can you do it in a way that is appealing to the various human sensation in a holistic way? Finally, can you easily experience (not just with a page number) your progress as you read through the book, so you can feel good about it?

As the article states: "he likes the physicality of a book and the sense of making progress as he reads." There is definitely a very human pleasure aspect missing in reading a book online and until vendors figures out the missing architectural components that links the user and the technology with an interface that is user-centric, the e-readers will continue to flounder.

The WSJ concludes that "even some dedicated fans of digital technology say they have their doubts about reading books in an electronic format," and for now so do I.

E-books and enterprise architecture

Product Design & Development Sessions (DADS) and Enterprise Architecture

Do you ever find your architects get bottled up with developing EA information products (i.e. they can’t seem to get the new information products designed and developed and ‘over the finish line’—its like they are just sort of stuck in perpetual limbo)?

Like on any enterprise initiative, there are many people involved in building the eneterprise architecture: leaders, subject matter experts (SME), users, stakeholders, and the architects themselves. And for each of these categories, their may be numerous individuals or groups with valuable ideas and content and design input.

Even for the architects themselves, there may be many involved in building an EA information product for the enterprise: for example, there’s the chief enteprise architect with the overall strategy for the architecture; there may be the architect that’s the “architecture subject matter expert” whose most familiar with the particular content area like databases, IT security, SOA, etc., another may have the contact (or “relationship”) with the relevant leadership and business/technical SMEs, while another may be the team’s design guru able to visualize or model the content into an easy to read and understand end-product, and various others (like the EA configuration manager, EA communications manager, and so on). In general, the larger and more complex the enterprise, the more business and technical people and specialists involved in building the architecture.

So it’s not hard to see, with the various SMEs and specialists involved in building often many information products simultaneously, how information products can ‘get stuck’ along the way in the development process.

From a User-centric EA perspective, it’s the role of the chief enterprise architect (CEA) to

"keep the wheels on the road" and "keep ‘em turning." In other words, the CEA is responsible for bringing everyone together and laying out the process to effecively and efficiently build the EA.

However, when the process does get stuck along the way, one way that the CEA can unclog it is with EA information product design and development sessions (DADS).

DADS are product design and development sessions, where I "sequester" the relevant SMEs in a conference room. Mandatory is a large white board. And then we close the door (and don’t let anyone out, except for bio breaks— sort of kidding) until we have a draft information product. When everyone is prepared with their materials, it usually only takes an hour or two. But focusing everyone on the objective and bridging the divides, helps get them over the proverbial ‘finish line’.

DADS are a very successful tool when done right. Recently, for example, I’ve helped an organization develop almost 50 "useful and usable" EA information products in less than 9 months!

The DADS (like JAD sessions for application development) can rapidly move an organization along the EA maturity cycle and from product development and maintenance to levaraging use of the information for IT planning, governance, and decision-making in the enterprise.

Product Design & Development Sessions (DADS) and Enterprise Architecture

Brain-Computer Interface and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, week of 24 September 2007 reports that research is being done to develop brain-computer interfaces to help “people who are fully conscious, but paralyzed on account of disease or spinal-cord injuries.”

For paralyzed people, this technology could mean a fiber optic cable connecting the brain to the arms or legs to trigger movement. Unfortunately, the technology is still primitive.

Other applications are for people to be able to control computers “using only their thoughts.” Replacing the traditional mouse and keyboard, would be telepathy (“brain computer control”)—how cool is that!

In User-centric EA, such an advance would be significant for users in just about any enterprise. Imagine how brain control of computer technology would change the way we do everyday tasks: forget about going from wired to wireless, now we’re talking about going to user interface-less! No more typing, pushing buttons, right-clicking, left-clicking, rolling the mouse, manipulating the joystick, or even voice activated commands. Just think it (maybe a little more than that – maybe you have to concentrate) and poof, the technology responds just the way it would with all the other stuff we now have to do with our fingers.

And let’s not forget another big advantage: no more (or much less) carpal tunnel syndrome; although possibly more headaches and maybe even migraines (depending on how much we have to concentrate for the brain-computer interface to work).

Anyway, all kidding aside, while I would not write this technology into the target architecture of my agency quite yet, it is inspiring and thought-provoking to have this “vision” on the radar. And it is exciting to imagine the possibilities.

Brain-Computer Interface and Enterprise Architecture

Organizational Change Means Letting Go

In the book the “Tao of Leadership” by John Heider, he discusses “the paradox of letting go.” He states, When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be…by yielding, I endure…when I feel most destroyed, I am about to grow…let go in order to achieve.”

From a User-centric Enterprise Architecture approach, I think this is very applicable to developing, communicating, and achieving consensus on a target architecture and transition plan for the organization: for the enterprise to accept a new target architecture and a plan for change, the leadership, stakeholders, and all the rank-and-file, must be ready to “let go” of the as-is state.

If we forever hold on and embrace the way things are today, avoid any sort of risk-taking, and fear change, then we will never be able to achieve what could be. But rather, by being open to change, we free ourselves of the bounds and limitations of the here and now.

Often, I hear users in the organization say things like, “we’ve done it this way forever,” or “you don’t understand how we do things around here,” or “we’ve already tried changing to [fill-in-the-blank], and it’s never worked (i.e. we’ve never really been open to changing anything). These are exactly the kinds of things people say when they’re comfortable in their status quo; when they’ve been around for 20-25-even 30 years and don’t want or see any reason to change anything.

The world is a far different place today than it was 20-30 years ago or even 3-5 years ago, but people are risk averse, afraid of change or of losing some of their power, turf, or comfort, and they cling to what they believe are strategies that worked in the past and that they mistakenly believe will continue work in the present and forever.

This is the paradox of letting go that Heider talks about—when I let go of what I am (the as-is state of being), I become what I might be (the target state of being)!” Put another way, for an organization to progress, mature, and grow, it has got to be open to change. And finally, this openness to change has got to be more than just a dictate from the top or “lip service” from the rank and file. Change is hard, and to really succeed, everyone has got to be on board.

Organizational Change Means Letting Go

Internet Advertising and Enterprise Architecture

Does anyone really pay attention to pop-up or banner ads on the internet?

Fortune Magazine, 26 November 2007 reports that “blinking banners across the top of the screen and the like—are irritants most users train themselves to ignore.”

Yet, money has been mass-exiting print and TV advertising and pouring into online advertising, which is now a $21.4 billion business and is expected to double within the next 4 years!

Search ads like those that appear on Google are some of the most effective (click through rates are over 5%) and account for 40% of online advertising. However, the other 60% of online ads have only 0.2% click through rates; that’s 1 out of every 5000, which is not very effective for sure.

Now Facebook, the social networking site, is trying something new. With your permission, every time you purchase something, this “news” is shared with all your friends (for example, with a feed from the sponsor). This leverages the long held belief that word of mouth advertising is the best endorsement for a vendor’s products or services——and “nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.”

However, aggressive ads on social networking sites could backfire and be perceived as “spamming your friends” or privacy could become a concern (especially, as the article states, purchasers hastily click though the checkout process and accidentally share private purchases with their world of online connections).

I don’t know about you, but I just about completely tune out online ads. Nor would I want to share my personal purchases with my online social network — way too materialistic and air-headed. In the Valley, I believe they say, “like, who cares.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, I find it difficult to understand the wasteful spending of advertising dollars, in its current form, to the 60% that involve pop-ups and banners online that are nothing but a nuisance to the very people that vendors are trying to reach and influence. This is use of technology that is not aligned to performance results and not effective to driving mission execution. This is technology for technology sake. Another technology bubble of sorts.

Internet Advertising and Enterprise Architecture

iPod Versus Zune and Enterprise Architecture

Zune has been playing catch up with iPod in the music player business, but from an User-centric enterprise architecture standpoint, they’ve got it all wrong!

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), 14 November 2007 reports that Microsoft has retooled the Zune so that it “marks a vast improvement; however, it’s still no iPod.”

Where is Microsoft going wrong?

1. An inferior product—“last year when Microsoft Corp. introduced its Zune music player to take on Apple’s iPod juggernaut, the software giant struck out. While the Zune had a good user interface, it was bigger and boxier, with clumsier controls, weaker battery life, and more complex software. Its companion online music store has a much smaller catalogue, a more complicated purchase process, and no videos for sale. And the Zune’s most innovative feature, built-in Wi-Fi networking, was nearly useless.” So much for competing on product quality!
2. Underestimating the competition—Microsoft is “back with a second improved round of Zune’s…Apple hasn’t been standing still…the 80-gigabyte Classic, which costs the same as 80-gigabyte Zune, is slimmer than the Zune and has a flashy new interface, if a smaller screen. And the eight-gigabyte nano, which costs the same as the eight-gigabyte Zunem now plays videos and is much smaller—yet it has a larger screen. In addition, Apple has spiffed up its iTunes software…and Apple still trounces Microsoft in the selection of media it sells…more than six million songs, about double what the Zune marketplace offers, and dwarfs Microsoft’s selection of Podcasts and music videos as well.”

The WSJ concludes, “Microsoft has greatly improved the Zune hardware and software this time. But it seems to be competing with Apple’s last efforts, not its newest ones.”

In spite of these explanations, I think we’re missing something else here. If you compare the Microsoft desktop software to Apple’s, Microsoft also has a worse product, yet is the hands-down market leader. So why is Microsoft struggling with Zune?

Maybe functionality is part of the equation, but not the whole thing. It’s interesting to me that neither the article nor advertisements I see for Zune address anything about the interoperability of the product with Apple’s iTunes. Interoperability is not only a major enterprise architecture issue, but from a consumer standpoint, do you really expect people to dump their investment in their iTunes music library when they buy a Zune?

Looking at Yahoo Answers online, I see consumers share this concern:

“Can you use the iTunes’ software with the Microsoft Zune? I am torn between which to buy, if you can use itunes with the Zune then that’s the one I’ll get, but if you can’t then I’m getting an iPod, help me decide please.”

“Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

No you cannot. iTunes only works with the iPod, Zune is a completly different player made by Microsoft, it has its own music program and marketplace called the Zune Marketplace. The Zune Software can automatically copy songs that have not been purchased from iTunes (because ones that are have copy protection on them) and put them in the Zune Program.”

Until Microsoft acts as the architects par excellence that they are, and work out the all-important EA interoperability issues of its product, and communicates this with its customers, the Zune will continue to be second-rate, functionality notwithstanding.

iPod Versus Zune and Enterprise Architecture

Business Intelligence from Enterprise Architecture

There is an interesting article by Bill Cason in Architecture and Governance Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 1 that emphasizes the importance of business intelligence to not only “the business,” but also to the IT of the organization.

What is business intelligence?

“Business intelligence (BI) is a business management term that dates to 1958. It refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information about company operations. Business intelligence systems can help companies have a more comprehensive knowledge of the factors affecting their business, such as metrics on sales, production, and internal operations, and they can help companies to make better business decisions.” (Wikipedia)

“The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” (Arie de Geus)

“The renowned Dutch business strategist got it right…repeatable success depends largely on the ability to adjust course quicker than your competition can adjust theirs. A prerequisite to that course correction is, of course, an understanding of exactly which adjustments need to be made. In the business world, the means to that end is ‘business intelligence’ or ‘BI’ for short.” (Architecture and Governance Magazine)

BI provides an organization not only access to pertinent data, but also analytics that transforms the data into actionable information.

User-centric EA is the foundation for capturing data for developing business intelligence for IT. EA captures massive amounts of data scattered in silos across the organization. The data is unified in the EA—brought together from dispersed geographies, numerous systems (manual and automated), previously stored in varied formats, and managed by disparate individuals. EA harmonizes the data, analyzes and categorizes it, and serves up the information to end user. EA provides business intelligence—EA information can be harvested by BI software to provide valuable analytics; EA synthesizes business and IT information to support decision-making.

Business intelligence from EA is used for “cost optimization, asset maximization, lifecycle management, service delivery, impact analysis, gap analysis, as-is/to-be transformations, etc.” EA enables the CIO to lead by example when it comes to developing and using business intelligence, optimizing the management of IT in support of mission execution.

EA brings information to the table for enhancing decision-making. As W. Edwards Deming said, “In G-d we trust, all others bring data.”

Business Intelligence from Enterprise Architecture

Telepresence and Enterprise Architecture

Telepresence is replacing video-teleconferencing, big time.

“Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location.

Telepresence requires that the senses of the user, or users, are provided with such stimuli as to give the feeling of being in that other location. Additionally, the user(s) may be given the ability to affect the remote location. In this case, the user's position, movements, actions, voice, etc. may be sensed, transmitted and duplicated in the remote location to bring about this effect. Therefore information may be travelling in both directions between the user and the remote location.” (Wikipedia)

Fortune Magazine, 12 November 2007 reports that CISCO’s TelePresence product is modeled after Star Trek’s vision of being able to beam people from one place to another (HP has a competing product called Halo).

With TelePresence, “high-def, life-sized, internet-based communications systems,” it’s just like being there. TelePresence is the convergence of video, voice, and data—called, Unified Communications—over the internet, enabling seamless virtual mobility of people from one place to another.

TelePresence works as follows:

• Displays—“participants appear life size on 65-inch 1080p plasma displays. When additional sites connect, the screens shifts to show the group that is speaking”
• Cameras—“each two person portion of the room is covered by its own designated high-speed camera.”
• Audio—“microphones and speakers are set so that sound seems to come from whichever participants in a room are talking.”
• Data—“projectors mounted beneath the tables can display information from a computer or any other compatible device.”

CISCO believes that “the internet will become the delivery medium of all communications—and eventually everything from security systems and entertainment to health care and education.”

Already 50 large companies have bought the pricey TelePresence system (“List price $299,000 for three 65-inch plasma screens in a special conference room and $71,000 for a single-screen set-up) since launch last winter. P&G is rolling out 40 TelePresence room worldwide over the next nine months and CISCO has rolled out 120 across the company (“paid for by ordering every department to cut its travel budget 20%).

Telepresence allows for reduced travel times and expenditures and increased worker productivity. User-centric EA should consider these benefits to the organization in incorporating it into its target architecture.

Telepresence and Enterprise Architecture

A Square Envelope and Enterprise Architecture

Would you believe me if I told you that the U.S. Post Office has trouble handling square envelopes? Well, it’s true, and moreover, the post office will actually “charge you a 17-cent surcharge for squareness.” This is called “shape-based postage.” (Wall Street Journal, 15 November 2007)

Why the surcharge? Because the post office sorting machines, “built for oblongs, can’t find the address on a square envelope. [Hence,] people have to do it.” In fact, “at a Manhattan post office…a window clerk…took one look at a square envelope and said ‘nonmachinable. I would not use that shape, period.’”

This is crazy isn’t it; we can put men on the moon, but we can’t send a square envelope easily through the mail system of the United States of America! (FYI, squares are not a problem for the mail system in the United Kingdom.)

I knew that being “square” in the seventies was a bad thing, and maybe even an insult, but what’s up with square now and how does this jive with users needs?

Well in the article, an owner from a graphics company states: “Squares…are the most current and most exciting product in paper communications.” Incredible, that the post office can’t meet their customers’ needs.

Even if squares are still a relatively small percentage of the overall mail (and according to the article they are), that may be because the post office can’t handle the shape versus the overall popularity of it with customers. As another sales rep states: “The post office cracked down…people had bad experiences with square cards. [And] if you put a stigma on something long enough, retailers aren’t going to deal with it anymore.”

So when the post office can’t handle the user needs, the card makers have innovated: “the shop has devised an oblong envelope with a middle pocket that squares slip neatly into.”

This is sounding almost like the post office is making us put a square peg in a round hole.

Just for the record, we shouldn’t blame the good men and women of the U.S. Post Office for the problems with the sorting machines. However, I believe this is clearly a job for User-centric Enterprise Architecture to align post office technology solutions for handling square envelopes with the business requirements for them. Clearly, it’s time for square equality.

A Square Envelope and Enterprise Architecture

"Inefficient Government" and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 10-11 November 2007 reports on an interview with Mitt Romney, Former Massachusetts Governor and U.S. Presidential Candidate 2008:

• Government is inefficient—“government is almost by necessity inefficient, inflexible, duplicative, wasteful, expensive, and burdensome,”
• Government structure is wrong—regarding the organization chart of the executive branch, “there’s no corporation in America that would have a CEO, no COO, just a CEO with 30 direct reports, so I would probably have super-cabinet secretaries, or at least some structure that McKinsey would put in place.”
• Government needs more consultants—“I’m not kidding, I probably would bring in McKinsey…I would consult with the best and the brightest minds, whether it’s McKinsey, Bain, BCG, or Jack Welch.”
• Government is inaction—“My wife says that watching Washington is like watching to guys in a canoe on a fast-moving river headed to a waterfall and they’re not paddling, they’re just arguing. As they get closer to the waterfall, they’ll finally start to paddle.

Whether or not you completely agree with Mitt Romney or similar commentary and criticisms from other political candidates, pundits, or office holders, there certainly appears to be plenty of work for User-centric EA to tackle.

EA can help government and the private sector to improve efficiency and effectiveness through business process improvement, organizational restructuring, performance measurement, information sharing, and advancing technology solutions for the most difficult business challenges we face.

Also, I’m not sure I agree that we need more consultants or that we already don’t have the “best and brightest” in the millions of government employees and contractors that we already have. It sure seems like we have every consulting company under the sun here in Washington, D.C.—and they all charge a pretty penny :)

True, government is large, but the problems we face are also large—terrorism, world-wide human rights, energy dependence, global warming, global economic competition (from low-wage countries), budget deficits, bankrupted social programs (like social security and Medicare), crisis in healthcare, and so on. It’s easy to criticize, but difficult to come up with constructive solutions. Isn’t that what politics is all about?

"Inefficient Government" and Enterprise Architecture

Polarization of User Demands and Enterprise Architecture

What happens when users want conflicting things from their EA programs?

Recently, as part of a discussion following an EA briefing, I received a number of interesting comments from some users.

While multiple users talked about the EA capturing some terrific EA information that is being used for IT governance and planning, the users wanted the focus of future EA to go in different directions:

• IT Governance—on one side of the table, one user wanted to see more IT governance and standards and less IT planning (target architecture), “since target architecture should be set by the technical subject matter experts and EA was more of a policy and management function”
• IT planning—across the table, another user wanted to see more IT planning (target architecture) and less IT governance, since “target architecture is the ‘real’ architecture, and the rest was just management.”

This sparked a lot of discussion throughout the room. Someone else asked, “Well, if you could only do one of these things well, which would you choose?” And another asked, “What is your vision for the ultimate direction of the EA program?”

To me, I believe firmly that ultimate answer to these questions is that you really need both IT planning and governance to have a viable EA program.

• IT planning without governance—is developing and maintaining the baseline, target, and transition plan without using these to influence and drive actual decision-making. The IT plans are shelfware!
• IT governance without planning—is trying to leverage EA information to support capital planning and investment control (CPIC) and to enhance overall organization-wide decision-making without having the necessary information to support sound decisions.

So at the end of the day, with limited resources, “which would I do?” and “what is my vision?”

You have got to do both IT planning and governance. IT planning is the process and IT governance is the implementation. One without the other would be utterly meaningless.

So with limited resources, we manage expectations and progress in a phased implementation in both areas—continually building and refining the EA information base so it is increasingly relevant (IT planning), and simultaneously, creating effective governance processes to manage IT investments in new projects, products and standards (IT governance). In this way, EA practitioners make the information useful and usable.

Polarization of User Demands and Enterprise Architecture

Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Enterprise Architecture

According to Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) Theory, adopters of any new innovation or idea can be categorized based on the bell curve, as follows:

• Innovators (2.5%) — most likely to conceive and develop new methodologies and technologies; the most daring and especially prone to taking risks
• Early Adopters (13.5%) — a person who embraces new technology before most other people do.
• Early majority (34%)
• Late majority (34%)
• Laggards (Luddites) (16%) — slow or reluctant to embrace new technology; actively fear or loathe new technology, especially those they believe threaten existing jobs.

Each adopter's willingness and ability to adopt an innovation would depend on their awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. People could fall into different categories for different innovations -- a farmer might be an early adopter of hybrid corn, but a late majority adopter of VCRs.

When graphed, the rate of adoption formed what came to typify the DOI model, an “s shaped curve.” (S curve) The graph essentially shows a cumulative percentage of adopters over time – slow at the start, more rapid as adoption increases, then leveling off until only a small percentage of laggards have not adopted. (Rogers Diffusion Of Innovations 1983)

From a User-centric EA perspective, each of these user roles is important and needs to be considered in providing useful and useable information products and governance services to them.

On one hand, for the innovators and early adopters, User-centric EA encourages innovation and creativity, but also works to mitigate risk though business and technical alignment and architectural assessment related to sound capital planning & investment control.

On the other hand, for the laggards, User-centric EA set targets for technology adoption and phases in new technology and process according to a transition plan. While EA cannot “make” people less hateful of new technology, it can create a more controlled environment for change management in the enterprise, one which reduces the fear factor. Additionally, by EA demonstrating the benefits to the organization and the individuals therein of new technologies aligned to the mission and strategy of the organization, perhaps those who fear the technology will come around to embrace it.

Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Enterprise Architecture