GovNet and Enterprise Architecture

In Government Computer News, 10 December 2007, Edward Meagher, the deputy chief information officer at the Department of the Interior (DOI) asks why the federal government doesn’t have one IT infrastructure. He states:

“Despite the huge costs and inefficiencies, we still cling to the notion that each department and agency is so unique and special that we each have to create and maintain our own infrastructure to support our mission area.

I am convinced that a day will come when the billions of dollars we spend each year on each department’s stovepiped IT infrastructure will not only be viewed as incredibly wasteful but also incredibly stupid. It will be seen as the equivalent of having allowed each department to drill its own water wells, generate its own electricity and treat its own sewage.

The notion of a true “GovNet” has been around for many years, but I believe the time is fast approaching when we will agree on the terms and conditions and get about the business of designing, building, converting to, operating and managing a secure, unclassified IP network that will deliver all IP services to federal civilian agencies.”

What has the federal government done so far to advance the idea of one IT infrastructure?

An IT Infrastructure Line of Business (ITILOB) has been established as a Presidential Initiative as part of the President’s Management Agenda for e-Government (eGov).

The vision of ITILOB is:

• “An effective and efficient IT infrastructure enabling government-wide customer-centric services.”

The goals of ITILOB are:

• “Infrastructure enables interoperability of functions across agencies and programs.
• Optimize the infrastructure to enable collaboration within and across agencies, sectors, and government levels.
• Efficiencies realized from infrastructure investments will be recapitalized in support of agency mission.
• Infrastructure investment governed to achieve agency mission and government-wide goals.” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/egov/c-6-9-ioi.html)

Are we on the road to success with ITILOB?

The ITILOB links to a related site http://www.itinfrastructure.gov/. It is not clear what the relationship between IT Infrastructure LOB and IT Optimization Line of Business (IOI) are. However, the IT Optimization LOB states that “The Infrastructure Optimization Initiative (IOI) puts in place a government-wide approach for measuring and optimizing agency infrastructures to enhance cost efficiency/service level and better enable core agency missions and customer-centric services. While the IOI provides the standardized framework for comparing performance across the federal government, departments/agencies remain responsible for choosing appropriate strategies for optimizing their commodity infrastructure cost efficiency/service level metrics. The IOI does not mandate how agencies optimize their infrastructure – it will provide tools for agencies to leverage.”

So, while it seems that the vision of one IT infrastructure or GovNet is a noble one and probably one worth pursuing, if done right; the mandate of the existing IT Optimization LOB does not go far enough to actually mandate usage by federal agencies. This makes this initiative rather weak and unlikely to succeed, in its current form.

Are there similar initiatives in the federal government?

DHS has an Infrastructure Transformation Program (ITP) that has been working for a number of years now at “consolidating and centralizing control of its data centers, e-mail systems and help-desk services, and sensitive but unclassified video communication networks under three directorates.” (Government Computer News, 22 August 2005)

Is this DHS infrastructure consolidation perhaps, a first step, where each major federal department (like DHS), starts by consolidating its agencies, and then moves on toward an overall federal consolidation. Possibly, this two phased approach would give the overall federal consolidation a greater chance for success.

Meagher at DOI states: “Congress, the administration, the federal bureaucracies and the vendor community must come together to tackle the impediments and move rapidly to create a well-managed, 21st-century equivalent of the Eisenhower-era National Highway System.” Will a federal IT infrastructure be as successful?

GovNet and Enterprise Architecture

Blu-ray and HD DVD and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric EA focuses on providing useful and usable information and services to end-users and in satisfying user requirements.

In the high definition format wars, the sense of User-centric EA seems to have been lost, as Blu-ray and HD DVD has been set as the new target architecture for optical disc formats. As Stephanie Prange, Home Media Magazine, editor in chief states, “the battle has confused consumers…[and] many people don’t [even] see the need for high-definition anyway.

What is Blu-ray and HD DVD?

• “Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience…seven of the eight major movie studios (Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM) have released movies in the Blu-ray format and six of them (Disney, Fox, Sony, Warner, Lionsgate and MGM) are releasing their movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format.” (http://www.blu-ray.com/info/)

• “HD DVD delivers true high definition video content on the next generation optical disc format approved by the DVD Forum. With up to six times the resolution of DVD, HD DVDhttp://www.tacp.toshiba.com/hddvd/) offers a superior video experience.” (

So what is the conflict between Blu-ray and HD DVDs?

“HD DVD is currently in a ‘format war’ with rival format Blu-ray Disc, to determine which of the two formats will become the leading carrier for high-definition content to consumers.” As of November 27, 2007, 344 HD DVD titles have been released in the USA. As of November 25, 2007, 415 titles had been released on Blu-ray Disc in the United States (Wikipedia). Not only have more titles been released in Blue-ray, but Blue-rays have outsold HD DVDs by 2-to-1 in the U.S. last year. (Reuters)

On 4 January 2008, Warner Brothers studio announced that “it would exclusively release high-definition DVDs in Sony’s Blu-ray format, a big blow to Toshiba’s rival HD DVD technology.” (Reuters) Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Disney have earlier done the same. Of the big American distributors, only Paramount and Universal Pictures continue to release for HD DVD. (Wikipedia)

So for now, Blu-ray is looking to be the winner in the HD format war.

How are consumers being affected?

Consumers are asking is whether they will have to dump and replace all their DVDs (something that the movie studios are hoping for)─this is similar to all the record collections that went in the trash after CDs were launched. I found the question online with a favorable answer for consumers.

"Will Blu-ray be backwards compatible with DVD?

Yes, several leading consumer electronics companies (including Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, Sharp and LG) have already demonstrated products that can read/write CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs using a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical head, so you don't have to worry about your existing DVD collection becoming obsolete. In fact, most of the Blu-ray players coming out will support upscaling of DVDs to 1080p/1080i, so your existing DVDDVD, the format is far too popular to not be supported. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) expects every Blu-ray Disc device to be backward compatible with DVDs.” (http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/) collection will look even better than before. While it's up to each manufacturer to decide if they want to make their products backwards compatible with

What is wrong with the new high-definition format release of Blu-ray and HD DVD from a User-centric EA perspective?

While the new Blu-ray and HD DVD technologies may be a leap ahead from a technology perspective, the introduction of these products has been dismal from a User-centric EA perspective. Consumers have been caught up in the technology tug-of-war between these high definition formats─similar to the way consumers were ping-ponged between the old VHS and Beta formats. Additionally, the marketing and communications to consumers of why they need Blue-ray or HD DVD has been ineffective if not more or less absent. Finally, aside from the studio and technology companies wanting to make more money on replacements of DVDs, it has been unclear whether there is even user demand for the new format. This has been another “technology for technology’s sake” initiative by Sony and Toshiba, rather than true business needs driving technology.

Blu-ray and HD DVD and Enterprise Architecture

Immortality and Enterprise Architecture

In the book The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, the author states: “Among all the animals, we alone are conscious of the fact that we will die, and we are obliged to spend our lives with knowledge of the paradox that while we may be capable of G-d-like spiritual transcendence beyond our bodies, our existence is dependent on a finite structure of flesh and bone that will ultimately wither away and disappear.” Becker believes that we deny the reality of death by pushing the fear of it into our deep unconscious.

Gareth Morgan, in the book Images of Organization, explains how the denial of death manifests itself not only in the individual, but also in the organization’s “quest for immortality.” “In creating organizations, we create structures of activity that are larger than life and that often survive for generations. And in becoming identified with such organizations, we ourselves find meaning and permanence.”

People and organizations want to “preserve the myth of immortality” by “creating a world that can be perceived as objective and real.” “This illusion of realness helps to disguise our unconscious fear that everything is highly vulnerable and transitory.”

How does EA deal with the “myth of immortality” of the organization?

Enterprise architecture is a forward looking discipline. EA takes the current state of the organization and develops a target and transition plan. However, when EA looks forward, does it acknowledge the ultimate mortality of the organization or does it seek to perpetuate the organization indefinitely?

Of course, as employees of the organization, our job is to do the best for the organization we work for: to plan and work for its survival, and more so, its growth, maturation, and ultimate competitiveness.

However, if as architects, we see that the organization will not be competitive and survive in its current form, then we need to acknowledge that reality. As architects, we are in a somewhat unique position to help remake and transform the organization so that it can live on and prosper. We can do this by envisioning a new state and planning for changes in what the organization does and/or how they do it. We can do this through process reengineering, new technologies, or a more drastic “organization makeover” in terms of a new/revised mission, strategy, leadership, and so on. Unlike a human being, whose life is fleeting, an organization can either die or be reborn again to live and compete another day.

Immortality and Enterprise Architecture

Creating Competitive Advantage and Enterprise Architecture

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

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

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

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

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

Creating Competitive Advantage and Enterprise Architecture

Customization and Enterprise Architecture

While User-centric EA seeks to provide useful and useable products and services to the end-user, the heavy customization of major application systems to meet user needs is a huge mistake. Major customization of IT systems is a killer: it is a killer of the application and a killer of the underlying business processes.

What do I mean? When you heavily customize an application system (and I am not talking about changing settings), you do the following:

• You greatly increase the implementation cost of the system, since you have now added all sorts of modifications to the system.
• You greatly increase you maintenance burden, because new versions of the software often will need to be recoded.
• You hamper the ability of the system to interoperate with other systems that it was designed to work with (even when it is built with open standards), since you have tinkered and tweaked away at it.
• You missed one of the biggest opportunities to improve and reengineer your business processes; instead of aligning your business processes with those identified (by usually hundreds, if not thousands of other organizations) as best practices and written into the software, you have made your enterprise the odd man out and overwrote the best practices in the application system with your specific way of doing things. That’s a big no-no.
  

Let’s face it, most (and there are exceptions to every rule) organizations at their fundamental “business” (not mission) practices are often close to identical. Areas like finance, human capital, and even IT and considered utilities to the organization. These areas are often run in ways to exploit enterprise solutions for large organizations (for example, one timekeeping system, one payroll system, or one general ledger system ) and these functions are the first to be looked at for integration and downsizing on the corporate side during mergers and acquisitions.

Instead of insisting that your processes are so different, see why others are doing it another way and whether there is merit in it, before you go and customize and chip-away at the system—you may be doing yourself more harm than good. Generally (and there are exceptions to every rule), you’re better off changing business processes to meet widely used and verified software.

Customization and Enterprise Architecture

Change Management and Enterprise Architecture

“Change denotes the transition that occurs between one state to another…[There are two primary] “cultural attitudes towards change [either]:

• Change is random, lacking determinism or teleology, [or]


• Change is cyclical, and one expects circumstances to recur. This concept, often seen as related to Eastern world views such as Hinduism or Buddhism, nevertheless had great popularity in Europe in the Middle ages, and often appears in depictions of The Wheel of Fortune.

Change [does]...require organisms and organizations to adapt. Changes in society have been observed through slow, gradual modifications in mindsets and beliefs as well as through dramatic action (see revolutions). History is one of the tools used to document change.” (Wikipedia)

In the book, Making Change Happen, by Matejka and Murphy, the authors show how the United States is well suited to handle change, but also why we must be vigilant not to let our prosperity lead us into a lull.
“Since its birth as a nation, the United States has consistently been on the cutting edge of change. Why? Immigration, invention, and the belief in a better tomorrow…[we] have created the most diverse nation on the face of planet Earth…immigration has led to the invention. Each group brings different values, cultures, ideas, and prospectuses and is motivated to achieve the American dream. [Finally,] our belief in possibilities—a better tomorrow—has further stimulated change. This belief in what could be is an optimistic, creative approach to life itself.”
Ultimately, in our diversity lies our strength!
So what’s the issue?

“Evan a country such as the United States, generally more comfortable with change than other nations, has occasionally seen its collective organizations caught off-guard, dwelling in the past, asleep at the switch!”
Here’s one telling example:

“…a former member of the board of directors of Motorola (the leader in the cell phone industry at the time). At one board meeting, a board member walked in holding a small cell phone and exclaimed, ‘who the heck is No-ki-a and where are they? Sounds Japanese!’ When told that Nokia was a new competitor, located in Finland, the board member remarked, ‘Finland? How can that be? There’s nothing in Finland but ice and snow!’”
This is the new marketplace, “where firms you never heard of, from places you aren’t familiar with, can suddenly appear on your radar screens one day and steal your competitive advantage the next.”
So from a User-centric enterprise architecture perspective, there are two major imperatives here:

• Information is key to survival—“The way to stay afloat now is to go into a ‘heads up, sensing, searching, sorting anticipating, adjusting, survival mode.’ Pay attention! Scan the environment. Gather information quickly and process it even faster. Your life depends on it. As external changes accelerate and competitive advantages shift, leading change becomes an organizational imperative.”
• There must be an imperative to change—“The true paradox of ‘success and change.’…We must learn to change when we are performing successfully. But success makes us cocky and content. Change is the antithesis of the much-loved maxim ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ First organizations must be willing to change. But willingness depends on the belief that a change is necessary and that the proposal is the right change.” What makes change even more difficult is that strategic change is the enemy of short term efficiency (and profits).

In enterprise architecture, the architects are the change agents and the architecture is the roadmap for strategic change. The EA provides the information for the organization on internal and external factors that enable it to understand the nature, intensity, and impact of the oncoming change, and to take action to adapt, transform, survive, and even thrive. Further, EA is often maligned for shaking things up and there is often significant resistance to EA and change efforts; however, EA is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing, which is helping the organization change strategically, even when things are going well, and where operational efficiency may possibly ‘suffer’ somewhat. Strategic change is for the long term survival of the organization and this needs ongoing care and feeding to be successful, and not just an adrenaline shot when the heart of the organization is already in cardiac arrest.

Change Management and Enterprise Architecture

Ruminations and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 23 October 2007 states: “at work there are countless things you should and could and would have said. But the tormenting fact is, you didn’t. So hemmed in by forces such as the fragility of reputations, your dependence on a paycheck, or even just slow-footedness, you re-enact one of the countless little workplace defeats in the confines of your head.”

Ruminations—“the process of chewing over old conversations.” This is sort of like 20-20 hindsight, again and again; thinking or saying to yourself, “If only…”

How often do you replay incidents over and over again in your mind? Probably, the more devastated, hurt, or taken aback you were by an incident, the more you hit the replay button!

Apparently, the more people ruminate, the more they let things fester, the more anger builds up in them—until they “go postal” or something crazy like that..

Perhaps they are angry at those who slighted them or possibly, they are just angry at themselves—at how ineffectually they think they handled things.

Fortunately, “cognitive tasks can distract us from ourselves.” Hence, crossword puzzles, sudoku, even needlework can take our minds off our troubles. Related to this, you can actually ruminate so much that you essentially “habituate” (or bore) yourself out of it.

In any case, you cannot just say anything you want to at work, even to respond to someone else's provocations. At work your interpersonal relationships are critical to your being able to get your job done.

In an information economy, most of our jobs are heavily dependent on having, strong interpersonal skills. As enterprise architect practitioners, this is certainly the case. Enterprise architects work with leaders, business and technical subject matter experts, and stakeholders, up, down, and across the organization as well as outside of it (to capture information, bring in best practices and trends, conduct benchmarking, and develop policies and practices to share information and build solutions to enable mission execution).

To be a good enterprise architect, you have to have great interpersonal and communication skills. Moreover, you’ve got to have a thick skin (like an elephant or better yet, like an Abrams tank!) The point is not to let people’s slights get to you, not to ruminate about things, and certainly not to get angry or frustrated. You’ve got to take it in stride and keep focused on the mission.

In a leadership class, I remember learning an important lesson: Managers usually incorrectly hire for technical skills, and then try to train people in interpersonal skills. Instead, the experts contend, managers should hire for interpersonal skills (the harder and more important) and train for technical skills.

Ruminations and Enterprise Architecture

Zen and Enterprise Architecture

Zen believes in the transience of everything in this world and seeks enlightenment or an understanding of the way of the world for its followers.

The Book of Zen, by Eric Chaline, states that “nothing we can see, hear, or touch in the world has any permanent existence. It will of necessity, pass away.” This is the concept of “emptiness.”

Emptiness means that “all forms or appearances in the universe” are constantly changing and transient. For example, a simple chair was once “a piece of wood from a tree.” And over time, the “wear and tear on the chair will change its appearance and structure: losing some of its wood and gaining deposits of dirt. In time, the chair will break, and the wood will decay, rot, and finally fall to dust.”

This is similar to how the Torah/Bible describes the lifecycle of mankind, “for dust thou art and unto dust shall thou return.” We are simply passing through this world.

Similarly, in the Jewish high holy day prayers of Yom Kippur, we recognize and contrast G-d’s kingship and everlasting permanence with the earthly transient world of mankind which is likened to “a broken shard, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream.” The point here is not to bemoan our mortality, but to rejoice in G-d’s eternalness.

Like in Judaism, Zen and other religions and belief systems, User-centric EA seeks to understand the “as-is” nature of things, in this case, the organization, and it seeks to reconcile the “emptiness” and transiency of the current state with the necessity for adaptation and metamorphosis to its future state. EA recognizes that the way things are today and not the way they will be tomorrow; all factors inside an organization as well as the external factors affecting the organization are constantly in a state of flux. Therefore, the state of the organization is temporary and the organization must adapt or die. EA seeks organizational change and transformation through the development of a new “to-be” state along with a transition plan to get there.

In that sense, EA is a form of enlightenment for the organization and its transformation to a new state of being.

Zen and Enterprise Architecture

Strategy and Enterprise Architecture

In the book Translating Strategy into Action, by Duke Corporate Education, the authors provide numerous insights into strategy development that are applicable to User-centric EA.

• Strategy is hard—“As managers, the combination of more information, a faster pace, greater geographic reach, greater interdependence, and elevated scrutiny means the environment we manage and the problem we face are increasingly complex.” The EA strategy is hard to develop, but even harder for today’s overtaxed managers to quickly and simply execute.
• Strategy is a differentiator—“Strategy is about being different and making choices…it outlines where and how a company will compete [or operate]…it provides direction, guidance, and focus when you are faced with choices.” The EA is a differentiator for where and how the organization will operate.
• Strategy is purpose—“Creating strategic context for your team creates a greater sense of purpose by connecting what they are doing to the bigger picture.” The EA sets up an alignment between IT and business and establishes context and purpose.
• Strategy must be adaptable—“Strategy will always be in a state of flux and should be adaptable to today’s fast-paced environment.” The EA must be flexible and adapt to a changing environment.
• Information is king—“Implementing a strategy requires managers to move from data acquisition to insight. How managers make sense of information is what will set them and their companies apart.” In EA, information is captured, analyzed, and catalogued for developing strategy and enabling decision-making.
• Always start with a baseline—“Strategy translation and execution always entails moving from where you are to where you want to be. Without an honest and incisive analysis of where you are, this journey begins on faulty ground.” In EA, you’ve got to have a baseline in order to get to your target.
• Think capabilities—“The more important step is to focus on building the capabilities necessary to achieve these [strategic action] steps, and ultimately the intended vision.” EA should help you define and develop your operational and technical capabilities and competancies
  
• Embrace change—“Get comfortable with change. Continue to learn how to adapt because the degree and pace of change is increasing. Your firm’s strategy will change, maybe not in major ways, but always in subtle and important ways.” EA requires that the enterprise is open to change, not for change’s sake, but for adapting to changes in our environment.
  

Enterprise architecture is a strategic, big picture endeavor. It involves developing the baseline, target, and transition plan. The EA is the enterprise strategy and blueprint for bridging information requirements with IT solutions. EA is the CIO’s strategy for meeting mission requirements.

Strategy and Enterprise Architecture

Kiwi and Enterprise Architecture

Most of us don’t give must thought to a company like Kiwi, founded in 1906, that makes shoe polish (you know, the ones sold in the round tins with the twist handles that prop open the lid). However, Kiwi has been remaking itself and in 2007 contributed $310 million in sales to Sara Lee Corporation.

The Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2007, reports how two years ago, Kiwi “interviewed 3500 people in eight countries about their shoe care needs” and they found that “on a list of more than 20 attributes people desired in their shoes, shine ranked merely 17th.” Kiwi went on to re-architect the company from being a shoe shine-centric one to one with a varied shoe care product line more in tune with customer needs for fresh smelling and comfortable shoes.

The Chief Executive of Kiwi states─ “‘it became clear: innovation was a key value of ours’…but innovation wasn’t enough…products had to be informed by the needs and desires of consumers.”

Kiwi’s approach was very much in line with User-centric EA. They focused on the user requirements first and foremost. Then, and only then, did they apply innovation to new products to satisfy the needs.

The company went on to develop: “’fresh’ins’ (thin lightly fragranced shoe inserts for women) and ‘smiling feet’ (a line of cushions for heels and the balls of feet, anti-slip pads and strips that can be placed behind the straps of high-heel sling-back shoes.”) Kiwi transformed itself and became “a foot care brand without losing its edge as the world’s shoe-care expert.”

How did they transform themselves?

1) Requirements gathering: They surveyed and sought to understand their customers’ needs.
2) Solution analysis and design: They consulted podiatrists and physiologists “to understand foot anatomy and how bacteria trigger odor buildup in shoes.”
3) Prototype development: Kiwi created “prototypes that customers could actually put on their feet.”
4) Marketing planning: Kiwi designed new packaging and made a new merchandising system for in store displays that grouped “their women’s products, athletic products, [and] shoe shine products by color─moves intended to make the shoe-care aisle easier to shop.”

Kiwi implemented a true User-centric EA approach to its transformation efforts. They did not let advances in foot care products drive the business approach, but rather they let the consumers and their requirements drive the business and its product development expansion. Moreover, the company focused not only on product development, but integrated a comprehensive solution to meet their consumer needs through a whole new line of foot care products (augmenting their shoe care line) and incorporated testing and marketing to ensure a successful launch. What an amazing feat for Kiwi (no pun intended)!

Kiwi and Enterprise Architecture

Social-Comparison Theory and Enterprise Architecture

We all compare ourselves to others, that’s human nature, and its part of what’s called Social-Comparison Theory.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), 18 September 2007 states that “we compare ourselves to others because it can feel great,” as when we compare ourselves to higher status individuals to improve self-image by association or when we compare ourselves to others less fortunate.
Social comparison can also make us feel horrible when we feel relative deprivation compared to those who have more than us (more money, power, family, friends, social status, even better health, and so on).

While we probably can never stop comparing, we can stop being jealous (in fact, that is one of the 10 commandments). And realizing that “everyone’s got their basket’—that includes both good and bad in life as well as their own challenges and demons to confront, can make this possible.

In the work environment, the feeling of relative deprivation is lessened, when one realizes as the WSJ puts it that “company leaders aren’t [necessarily] the wizards you thought…’a boss has intellectual limitations just like we all do.’”

The WSJ gives a funny example of “when he once rushed past a secretary to speak to an executive, she tried to stop him, implying the boss was busy with important work, [and] ‘he was playing Solitare.’”

So the lesson is we are all human; no super humans out there (like they portray in the TV series Heroes).

From a User-centric EA perspective, it is important to realize as we work with leadership, subject matter experts, users, and other stakeholders inside and out the enterprise that we are all just people. And for EA to be successful in planning or governance, there must be a collaborative effort by many people to make it happen. So don't get frustrated, discouraged, angry, or jealous of others; whether you look up, down, or sideways at the people you work with (or in your private life), have confidence in their humanity and yours, and work the best you can together to make things better today than they were the prior day.

Social-Comparison Theory and Enterprise Architecture

Indoor Positioning System and Enterprise Architecture

Many of us are users or are familiar with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) Navigation, such as the Garmin, which many people use in their cars for navigating their streets and highways. If you ever have tried to use it indoors, you know it doesn’t work typically because the signal inside buildings is too weak and frequently bounces off surfaces.

However, CNET provides a report by Reuters on 12 December 2007 that there is a new satellite navigation system (developed by French company, Thales) that actually works indoors. It is called an Indoor Positioning System (IPS).

What could this new satellite navigation capability be used for?

IPS “was aimed initially at helping fire services, although it could also be used by the police and armed forces. Eventually, it could also be applied in the consumer market and offered as an additional service with GPS-enabled cell phones, allowing users to navigate around shopping malls or airports.”

How does it work?

“The new system was based on a new kind of radio signal, called Ultra Wide Band, designed for very short range and high data-rate links. It uses radio pulses that can, for example, establish the positions of firefighters inside a building with respect to each other and to fire trucks outside.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, this new technology is very exciting. I don’t know about you all, but I very much appreciate my GPS when traveling or stuck in traffic and looking for an alternate route─it is truly invaluable. The extension of this technology for indoor use, potentially linked with our cell phones, makes for a terrific capability for professionals, like emergency first responders, or everyday consumers, like you and I, who can benefit from knowing where we’re going and how to get there. Like EA itself, IPS will help us locate the where we’re going (similar to the target architecture) and will tell us how to get there (like the EA transition plan). IPS is a great new technology for architects to be on the lookout for and a simile for enterprise architecture, itself.

Indoor Positioning System and Enterprise Architecture

Do Me a Favor and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architects need to collaborate with lots of people inside and outside the organization. Collaboration is a must-have for developing and maintaining relevant content in the enterprise architecture, so that it is current, accurate, and complete representation of the business and technology and in order that the targets and transition plan be validated, accepted, and followed. Collaboration is also vital for effective IT governance through the EA Board, in which subject matter experts come together to review proposed new IT products, products, and standards and provide findings and recommendations on these for the apportionment of IT funding by the Investment Review Board.

The question is do people willingly and openingly collaborate for the good of the organization or is it a “no tickee, no shirtee” world (i.e. one in which people collaborate when there is clearly something it in it for them, even if it’s only the ability to call in a future favor)?

The Wall Street Journal, 18 December 2007, states: “people can’t resist doing a big favor—or asking for one...in any office’s underground economy, favors are the currency by which productivity is purchased and goodwill is gained.”

“Some favors are done with the expectation of nothing returned. Others are performed in the spirit of getting.” One college administrator tells how she “has run into colleagues whose job includes easy access to information. But it doesn’t seem easy when she asks for it. ‘they act like it’s moving a mountain…people think they’re doing this enormous favor.’” Similarly, asking one’s busy colleagues for information for building or maintaining the EA, can be often met with anything from genuine enthusiasm to mild resistance to outright hostility.

Interestingly enough, studies show that if you preface a request (such as for collaboration or information for the EA) with the phrase “can you do me a favor”, compliance goes up significantly. In a study by Stanford’s graduate school of business, the participation in a questionnaire actually went up from 57% to 84%!

Whether as enterprise architects, you preface requests for collaboration to build the EA by asking for a favor or not is a matter of personal preference. However, I believe that the quality of your relationship at work and the maturity of the processes of your EA program will certainly play a factor in people’s cooperation. Strong relationships and mature processes for simplifying the collection of information or validating information helps to ensure ongoing program support. Maybe even more important is strong marketing and communication for the EA program, so that people understand the mandates for the EA, the benefits, the processes, the roles, and the overall vision, targets, and transition plan. In terms of benefits, clearly showing people the “what’s in it for me” is critical and explaining why it’s good for the enterprise as a whole is a not so distant second, but both help people to understand their need to participate, favor or not.

Do Me a Favor and Enterprise Architecture

Power of Persuasion and Enterprise Architecture

In Fortune Magazine, 12 November 2007, Retired General Wesley Clark explains “Leadership is the art of persuading the other fellow to want to do what you want him to do.”

Wesley K. Clark, Former Supreme Commander of NATO, explains that effective execution of power, includes the following:

Key lesson #1:

“In business, it is important to motivate through the power of shared goals, shared objectives, and shared standards.”

Clark goes on to explain that there are three ways to persuade others:

• Education—“Employee education is one of the most cost-effective investments that businesses can make.”
• Participation—“Employees need to become vested in their work through participation.”
• Co-option—“Building and maintaining the emotional bonds of teamwork, loyalty, and trust.”

Key lesson #2:

”Essentially leaders have to sell themselves and their programs to their teams, in order to influence.”

Leadership, influence, persuasion, building shared community—these are all necessary skills to developing and maintaining an effective User-centric EA program. Architecture isn’t done in a vacuum or an ivory tower, it’s a grass roots effort that takes leadership skills to motivate others through the development of shared goals and objectives—such as, business-technology alignment, information sharing and accessibility, systems interoperability and component re-use, technology standardization and simplification, and information confidentiality, integrity, availability, and privacy.

We get to these EA goals, through educating others, engaging with them, and building a shared vision and sense of team, and “not by calling in the air-force.” as Wesley Clark would say.

Power of Persuasion and Enterprise Architecture

Information Privacy and Enterprise Architecture

The Privacy Act of 1974 states: “no agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains.” However, there are certain exception for statistical, archival, and law enforcement purposes.

What is privacy?

In MIT Technology Review, “The Talk of The Town: You—Rethinking Privacy In an Immodest Age” (November/December 2007), by Mark Williams, the author states Columbia University professor emeritus of public law Alan F. Westin defines privacy as, ‘the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.’”

Do we have privacy?

Already in 1999, Sun Microsystems chairman Scott ­McNealy stated, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”

These days, there is no illusion of privacy, as young people routinely put their biographical details and images online at a myriad of social-networking websites. Moreover, “kids casually accept that the record of their lives could be Googled by anyone at any time…some even considered their elders' expectations about privacy to be a weird, old-fogey thing--a narcissistic hang-up.”

Privacy is certainly not an absolute, especially since we need to balance the right to privacy against the first amendment guarantee of free speech. However, when people think their rights to privacy has been abused they have recourse to tort, defamation, and privacy law.

EA’s role in privacy:

User-centric EA supports the Investment Review Board selection, prioritization, and funding of new IT investments with architecture reviews and assessments; these EA reviews include a detailed appraisal of everything in the “information” perspective, including information management, sharing, accessibility, assurance, records, and of course privacy issues.

Furthermore, more detailed privacy impact assessments (PIAs) must be conducted, according to the the E-Government Act of 2002, “when developing or procuring IT systems or projects that collect, maintain or disseminate information in identifiable form from or about members of the public.”

Although Generation Y does not particularly seem to value their privacy as you'd expect, EA, along with the privacy officer and the chief information security officer, plays a critical role in monitoring and ensuring the privacy of information managed by the enterprise.

Information Privacy and Enterprise Architecture

Master Data Management and Enterprise Architecture

“Master Data Management (MDM), also known as Reference Data Management, is a sub-discipline of data architecture within Information Technology (IT) that focuses on the management of reference or master data that is shared by several disparate IT systems and groups. MDM is required to enable consistent computing between diverse system architectures and business functions.” (Wikipedia)

“Master data are the critical nouns of a business and fall generally into four groupings: people, things, places, and concepts. Further categorizations within those groupings are called subject areas, domain areas, or entity types…Master data can be described by the way that it interacts with other data. For example, in transaction systems, master data is almost always involved with transactional data. A customer buys a product. A vendor sells a part, and a partner delivers a crate of materials to a location… Master data can be described by the way that it is Created, Read, Updated, Deleted, and searched. This life cycle is called the CRUD cycle…Why should I manage master data? Because it is used by multiple applications, an error in master data can cause errors in all the applications that use it. (“The What, Why, and How of Master Data Management” by Wolter and Haselden, Microsoft Corporation, November 2006)

How can MDM software help manage MDM? Wolter and Haselden identify three primary methods:

• Single-copy of master data—where all changes and additions are made to the master and all applications accessing it use the current master data set
• Multiple copies of master data—master data is updated in a single master, but the data is sent out to the source systems where data sets are stored locally and changes to non-master data can be made)
• Continuous merge—where changes are made to the source data sets and are sent to the master to be merged and resent out to the source data sets again.

CIO.com, in “Demystifying Master Data Management”, 30 April 2007 reports that “unfortunately, most companies don't have a precise view about their customers, products, suppliers, inventory or even employees. Whenever companies add new enterprise applications to "manage" data, they unwittingly contribute to an overall confusion about a corporation's overall view of the enterprise. As a result, the concept of master data management (MDM)—creating a single, unified view of an organization—is growing in importance.” However, the article notes that adding MDM technologies will not magically correct an organization’s data quality issues, as noted in “a recent report from The Data Warehousing Institute that found 83 percent of organizations suffer from bad data for reasons that have nothing to do with technology. Among the causes of poor-quality data were inaccurate reporting, internal disagreements over which data is appropriate and incorrect definitions rendering the data unusable.”

So the essence of an MDM initiative is to first improve data quality by developing the process to define, categorize, and identify authoritative sources for data, and only then to apply MDM software to build a single view of the data.

MDM is important to enterprise architecture for a number of reasons:

• Information sharing—MDM is critical to information sharing, data integration, and reconciliation, as it establishes an authoritative source of data that can be shared between systems or organizational entities.
• Data governance—MDM helps establish the basis for sound data governance, since data owners, stewards, and users need to be able to distinguish good data from bad data, define data objects, establish data standards, metadata requirements and registries for discoverability, access rights, transfer protocols and methods, and maybe most importantly a governance process that defines who is allowed to change system data and how.
• Business Intelligence—MDM enables business intelligence by providing for an integration of data for mining, reporting, and decision support.

Creating authoritative master data is an imperative for data and systems integrity, and good decision making based on sound enterprise data.

Master Data Management and Enterprise Architecture

The Dunbar 150 and Enterprise Architecture

We need a network of people in our life (family, friends, and colleagues) to accomplish most anything meaningful, including building an enterprise architecture to grow and mature an organization.

But is there a limit to how many significant others we can have?

The Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2007 reports that “several commentators and news articles have cautioned that there is a natural limit to a friendship circle. They typically cite the so-called Dunbar number, 150, as the ceiling on our personal contacts.”

However, with social networking sites and other technological means of keeping in contact (cell phones, email, instant messaging, and so on), we are looking at an expansion of our ability to connect with others and the numbers of others we can stay in contact with.

Some have questioned, whether as you increase the number of casual relationships, it comes at the expense of those closest to you—“those you turn to when in severe distress.”

Others have questioned whether technology really enables close relationships. In other words, technology helps communicate and stay in contact with larger numbers of people, but to be close “you really do need to be touchy-feely with people.”

What social networking sites do help with is “less-close friendships and acquaintances,” those “at the outer edges of your friend group…people who you don’t talk to regularly…but your likely to swap tales, or more, should your paths cross...you have a history.”

The Dunbar 150 limit on effective social interactions seems more limited to a time when people were less mobile and were confined to a single village or a lifetime job. “But modern man moves among several groups in a fragmented world.” New ranges for maintaining effective relationships are between 100 to 300.

In the end, while cheap and readily available communication can “enrich your life wih more contacts,” real relationships require more than just communication, such as mutual investments of time, giving (sacrifice), trust, and respect to name a few,

Clearly, a large undertaking like building and maintaining an enterprise architecture (that influences organization-wide decision-making, serves as a true planning mechanism, and is utilized for IT governance, cannot be done by a single architect or by a staff of architects. It is an endeavor that requires outreach and communication up and down and across the organization as well as reaching outside for best-practices and looking at market trends. To build an EA for large organization, I think the Dunbar 150 may be a limit easily exceedable by a good chief enterprise architect.

The Dunbar 150 and Enterprise Architecture

Want Versus Should and Enterprise Architecture

In the Harvard Business Review (HBR) whitepaper entitled, “Harnessing Our Inner Angels and Demons” by Milkman, Rogers, and Bazerman, the authors describe the “conflict when deciding whether to behave responsibly or indulge in impulsivity”, what the authors call the want/should conflict.

How do we define want and should?

“Some options are preferred by the should self (e.g. salads, documentary films, trips to the gym, etc.), while others are preferred by the want self (e.g. ice cream cones, action films, skipping the gym, etc.).”

How do we decide between the want and should options?

“The optimal choice between want and should options requires summing the short-run and long-run utility that would be gained from each option and selecting whichever provides more discounted net utility. Although should options have more long-run benefits than want options, in many cases the short-run benefits of a want option may be significant enough to outweigh the long-run benefits of a should option.”

An example:

While salad is a should option, and pizza a want option, we frequently chose the pizza, because the short-term instant gratification of the pizza outweighs the perceived long-terms health benefits of the salad.

How does this should/want conflict impact EA?

User-centric EA is all about making choices and trade-off decisions. The enterprise has limited resources and so must chose between IT investment options. Some of these investment may be want options and others may be should options. For example, user may want to upgrade their desktops with the “latest and greatest” computer model and options every year or two. However, the enterprise should invest in business intelligence or customer relationship management software, for example, that will yield significant long-term utility to the organization. Which option does the Investment Review Board choose? Which option is called for in the EA target architecture and transition plan? The HBR whitepaper shows us to measure the utility and make decisions based on the net utility to the enterprise. In this way, the organization gets the greatest good for its IT investment dollars.

Want Versus Should and Enterprise Architecture

Wii and Enterprise Architecture

We all think of kids and teens playing with video games like the Wii, but how about senior citizens?

Well, The Washington Post, 15 December 2007, reports in “Granny Got Game” that “Wii’s move-around style appeals to a new demographic,” the senior citizen.

“Bingo is looking a little like last year’s thing, as video games have recently grabbed a spot the hot new activity. More specifically, retirees are enthusiastically taking to games on the Wii.”

One 73 year old retired marine says he “likes that the Wii emulates the motion of real sports.” And research has shown the physical games are helpful in fighting obesity, similar to how mental activity is beneficial in staving off dementia.

Market research company ESA states that “in 2007, 24 percent of Americans over age 50 played video games, an increase from 9 percent in 1999.” The seniors seem to enjoy games, such as Wii “hockey, bowling, shooting, fishing, and billiards.”

For Nintendo the maker of the Wii, demand from the various demographics continues to outpace supply. “Some analysts have said the company could sell twice as many as it is making available today, even as it puts out 1.8 million units a month.”

The Wii is a brilliant stroke of User-centric enterprise architecture. The Wii is a genuinely a technology product with mass market consumer appeal with users in demographics that range from children to seniors. It is the fulfillment of IT planning by Nintendo, which “had always wanted to appeal to a large consumer base with the Wii.”

Nintendo hit a home run by aligning the Wii technology to the requirements of their users. Nintendo did this by developing a technology solution to handle not only people’s desire for gaming and entertainment, but also their need for physical activity and sports. What’s particularly amazing is that video games, which have traditionally been for kids and teens have extended their reach so much so that “among retirement communities…the Wii is ‘the hottest thing out there.’” That is good User-centric EA in action!

Wii and Enterprise Architecture

Monopoly and Enterprise Architecture

Monopoly─“a board game published by Parker Brothers, an imprint of Hasbro.…since Charles Darrow patented the game in 1935, approximately 750 million people have played the game, making it "the most played [commercial] board game in the world.” (Wikipedia)

Now according to The Washington Post, 15 December 2007, the classic board game is getting a technology makeover.

Monopoly “is one of the most popular games ever…its colored stacks of money─from the white $1 bills to the coveted bright orange $500 bills—have iconic status.”

Yet, even this classic game is being re-architected for the 21^st century. In a new edition of Monopoly released this year, electronic bank cards replace colored money and the processes to track your game’s transactions has been reengineered and replaces good old-fashioned counting and scorekeeping.

The changeover in the game of Monopoly is mimicked in the new game of Life, Twists & Turns, and is a reflection of the change in society from being currency-based (with bills and change) to credit and debit cards. As a senior analyst at a consumer behavior research firm states: “I think this is a case of updating the game play/design to reflect the times.”

These days, “our wealth (or lack thereof) becomes just a number, printed on a bland receipt spit out from an ATM.” Moreover, “cash has become such a hassle that it is a nuisance even in our imaginations.” Imagine that: saying the cash is a nuisance (I bet that is a nuisance that a lot of people would like to get their hands on. J)

So Hasbro has reinvented the game to reflect changes in our society. This is a clear case of technology (electronic bank cards) being applied to a business problem (the out-datedness of the paper-based currency in the game). This is enterprise architecture and consumer marketing at work together and in tandem.

If even the Monopoly game that I used to play with as a kid can be refashioned with some good ‘ol doses of EA, imagine what EA can do for other businesses, products, and services. Reengineering business processes and applying technology to improve outcomes is a plus for board games, but an even stronger medicine for organizations and our economy.

Monopoly and Enterprise Architecture

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Enterprise Architecture

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was the thirty-second President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. A central figure of the 20th century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war, he has consistently been ranked as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents in scholarly surveys.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Roosevelt created the New Deal to provide relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy, and reform of the economic and banking systems. Although recovery of the economy was incomplete until almost 1940, many programs initiated in the Roosevelt administration continue to have instrumental roles in the nation's commerce, such as the FDIC, TVA, and the SEC. One of his most important legacies is the Social Security system.”

“The New Deal had three components: direct relief, economic recovery, and financial reform. These goals were also called the ‘Three Rs.’"

• “Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population most affected by the depression.
• Recovery was the effort in many programs to restore normal economic health.
• Reform was based on the idea that the Great Depression was caused by market instability and that government intervention was necessary to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor.”

President Roosevelt was a man of great accomplishment:

• Domestically—“On the homefront his term saw the vast expansion of industry, the achievement of full employment, restoration of prosperity and new opportunities opened for African-Americans and women.”
• Internationally, At War—Additionally, during World War II, “Roosevelt…provided decisive leadership against Nazi Germany and made the United States the principal arms supplier and financier of the Allies who later, alongside the United States, defeated Germany, Italy and Japan.”
• Internationally, At Peace—“Roosevelt played a critical role in shaping the post-war world, particularly through the Yalta Conference and the creation of the United Nations.”
• Personally—FDR showed amazing courage and was determined to regain use of his legs (that had been laid waste from the disease polio) through swimming.

(adapted from Wikipedia)

Wow, what an amazing President!

FDR was the impedemy of a doer and fighter. When the world was in chaos, whether from the Great Depression, World War II, or on a personal level when he contracted Polio at age 39, he came out with a plan and acted on it—whether the war he was fighting was povery and social ills, fascism and totalitarianism, or personal illness—FDR was a man of action and achievement, and this country was the great beneficiary.

FDR “brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/fr32.html)

FDR is a role model for leadership, but to me, he is also a paradigm for User-centric EA. Why? EA done correctly is not only about having a plan OR about taking action, but rather it is about developing a sound plan AND executing on it the way FDR did over and over again over 4 terms as President. He came up with the plan for the New Deal and successfully executed it, so that 75 years later many elements are still fundamental to our system of social and economic policy and administration. Also, FDR came up with a plan to defeat the Axis in WWII and he with Winston Churchill led us to success. Unfortunately, no amount of planning or execution could successfully fight Polio before the discovery of a vaccine by Jonas Salk.

In summary, EA is not only about planning and governance, but it’s about helping the organization to execute and achieve on its plan. EA does this by developing the transition plan, which logically sequences incremental change for the organization, as well as by working closely with leadership, subject matter experts and stakeholders to actually guide and influence positive change.

All EA practitioners can learn to plan and execute from the master, FDR!

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Enterprise Architecture

Disruptive Technologies and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric EA plans for the future of the enterprise and is on the lookout for both incremental innovation as well as disruptive technologies.

• A disruptive technology is a technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market. Sometimes, a disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents. (Adapted from Wikipedia).Disruptive technologies are innovations on steroids.
  
• Innovations improve product performance of established products. Innovations are often incremental; however, they can also be radical or discontinuous.
  

How does EA plan for innovation, whether incremental or those that are revolutionary and disruptive?

• Structure and content—First, EA captures critical baseline and forward looking content from subject matter experts and is responsible for developing a useful and usable structure for the content which enables analysis and recommendation for filling gaps, eliminating redundancies, and creating efficiencies through new technology solutions and process improvement. EA does not actually "own" the content of the architecture. EA develops and maintains the structure. EA works with the subject matter experts (business and technical) to capture the content. In general, facilitates the architecture development, maintenance, and use, so that the content stays current, accurate, and complete, is easy to understand, and is readily accessible to end-users.
  
• Synthesis of business and technology—EA synthesizes business and technical information to get a holistic view of the enterprise and where it is going in terms of mission execution performance, functions and process, information requirements, and technology solutions. In this way, EA ensures that new technologies are aligned to mission (i.e. that business is driving technology, rather than technology for technologies sake).
  
• Target architecture—EA captures explicit and explicit information in the enterprise and conducts market research and outreach to partners to continuously understand the business and technical landscape and how it may be changing and builds this into the target architecture.
• Change management (transition plan)—EA believes in a phased approach to change, and helps to manage, guide, and influence these through EA information products and governance services (such as EA Board technical reviews of new EA projects, products, and standards). So even though technology may be radically changing, EA will guide the organization through a phased transition plan, such that the enterprise vets proposed changes, gradually adopts new innovations and is able to integrate it with its existing processes successfully. In other words, EA seeks to ensure that technology is not brought in prematurely, before business process reengineering or improvement occurs. Thus, even though technologies may be disruptive from a market perspective, they are not disruptive to the organization and its mission performance. There is always innovation, and this is a great thing for all of us. It provides us with new opportunities and better, faster, and cheaper ways of doing things.

EA is at the forefront in facilitating innovation—continuously scanning for innovations to bring into the target architecture, conducting regular outreach and market research to synthesize business and technology information, building a useful framework for the EA information, and vetting and phasing in change in consumable chunks by the organization.

Disruptive Technologies and Enterprise Architecture

The Dialectic and Enterprise Architecture

“Hegel [a German philosopher (1770-1831)] stresses the paradoxical nature of consciousness; he knows that the mind wants to know the whole truth, but that it cannot think without drawing a distinction. Unfortunately, every distinction has two terms, every argument has a counter-argument, and consciousness can only focus on one of these at a time. So it fixes first on the one, then under pressure fixes second on the other, until it finally comes to rest on the distinction itself. Hegel refers to this process of alternation and rest as dialectic. Dialectical motion has three stages: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.”

Here is an example of how the dialectic works:

• Thesis: Starting point—the glass is half full
• Antithesis: Negation of the thesis—the glass is half empty
• Synthesis: Negation of the opposition between thesis and antithesis—the glass is half full and half empty

“The mind generally moves from one side of an opposition to another, finally discovering a deeper unity from which the two sides are derived.”

(http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/courses/hegel/DIALECTX.HTM)

In common man’s terms, I believe this is like the metaphor of the swinging pendulum. The pendulum swings from one side to the opposite (like one’s thinking or behavior), until finally settling somewhere in the middle. The dialectic is little deeper in that it has the added dimension of not just a middle position, but actually a synthesis of the two extremes.

In Judaism, there is a principle similar to the “synthesis” in the dialectic, advocated by the Rambam, called the Shvil Hazahav, the golden path. The golden path is also sometimes referred to as the middle of the road approach. This is the concept of the importance of maintaining a balance in one’s thinking, behavior, and in life, in general. Extremes on either side (to the right or to the left) are viewed as negative and possibly even dangerous. But by following the path in the middle, a person is on “safe ground” and will thrive.

In User-centric EA, the dialectic is central to the EA practitioner and EA is a major synthesizing agent in the organization, in the following ways:

• EA practitioners take two dialectical opposites (business and technology) and bring synthesis to them. EA practitioners integrates the two realities of the organization, business and IT: business drives technology and technology enables business. EA is a communication channel and mechanism for bridging the needs of the business with the capabilities and solutions of technology.
• EA synthesizes the architectures of all the distinct lines of business, users, and developers. EA is not focused on the individual segments (lines of business) or on solutions (users and developers), but on the synthesis of these—the overall enterprise itself.
• EA develops the target and transition plan for the organization; in doing this, it hears positions and requirements from many different leaders, subject matter experts, and stakeholders, and must synthesize these into a viable and effective strategy for the organization.

EA, like the dialectic, synthesizes various extremes to derive deeper meaning from the distinct elements (such as business and technology, segment and solutions architecture, leaders and subject matter experts). By synthesizing various types of information, EA perspectives, stakeholders, and architectural views, EA brings out a richer, deeper meaning of IT planning and governance for the organization.

The Dialectic and Enterprise Architecture