From the Frontlines: An insight to Enterprise Architecture

4 02 2010

What is Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture is a form of management and a documentation method. This means that the Enterprise Architecture can aid the management of the organization with a better view of how the enterprise works and how to bridge the gap between the current architecture and the desired future state of the architecture with a so called EA program. The EA program has to be based on an EA transformation management plan.

The documentation framework of Enterprise Architecture can be viewed as a tool the management and top leadership among others can make use of to understand how the organization interacts with the various components the organization consist of.

The best way to enable understand of how the enterprise works will be by applying (and installing) as so called repository that has to be available for all the members of the organization so they understand how the enterprise architecture is defined.

Why Enterprise Architecture is important and is diffused through one industry to another is that the management style and the documentation framework is comprehensive and tries to communicate how the systems in one way or the other can be understood by the members of the organization. Thereto are there several benefits associated with implementing Enterprise Architecture and later on Coherency Management correctly.

The rumor of the benefits often leads to that organizations in various industries wants to implement Enterprise Architecture.

“Everyone have to join the hype. Therefore should and will the business side of the organization demand that the organization (as a whole) should be able to the same as the rest of the industry” – John Goetze.

However this blog post also deals with the benefits of successfully implementing an Enterprise Architecture. Remember that all organizations have an enterprise; however the maturity of the enterprise has a great impact of how the organization can use it strategically.

Advantages of Implementing an Enterprise Architecture

There are several benefits associated with an Enterprise Architecture and as before mentioned one of these is that the organization becomes aware of the gaps in its current Enterprise Architecture and the gaps in how the “line of sight” works compared to its own architecture. This can eliminate irrational tasks and processes.

The Enterprise Architecture will lead to a greater degree of alignment of resource allocation to those processes that adds value to the organization and its customers (and other stakeholders).

The awareness that the Enterprise Architecture creates enable the advantage of greater awareness of the security of the organization.

Disadvantages of implementing an Enterprise Architecture

Implementing an Enterprise Architecture often leads to that the organization in one way or the other will allocate resources to an EA program that have to focus on how to work with several different identification tools and methods. Thereto a consultant, certification, employing a chief architect and enterprise architects aren’t cheap and since all organizations in the world have to relate to “capacity constraints” then the implementation of an Enterprise Architecture Program will be associated with a certain risk.

There are some risks that are more common than others e.g., rejection of the Enterprise Architecture if the members of the organization feels that the EA program is a hostile take over of their departments (loss of freedom), large costs of diverting people away from the business processes to focus on assisting the EA program and learning from the EA program.

It is however worth noticing that Enterprise Architecture rarely can be implemented as a “big bang” change; however CXOs often see Enterprise Architecture as a method and management style that requires .This can be summed up in the quotation below:

”Boil the Ocean – - to use all means and options available to get something done” – Louis Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? HarperBusiness (2002).

However experience from the 1990s shows something differently which can be summarized in the quotation.

”If we’ve learned one thing from the 1990s, it’s that big bang, IT-driven initiatives rarely produce expected returns.” – Brown & Hagel, HBR comment to Nicholas Carr’s IT Doesn’t Matter.

This means that the Coherency Architect or the EA program manager has to manage the stakeholders expectations to the Enterprise Architecture and what it will be able to provide for the Enterprise.

Legacy systems can become an obstacle for the implementation of Enterprise Architecture but it is not an imperative to decommission legacy systems or to convert them to a new platform.

“Every Architects dream is to gain access to a ‘green field’ which can be a field that is totally empty and where the architect can build something on” – John Goetze.

The Conclusion

It can therefore be concluded that Enterprise Architecture can lead to major benefits for those organizations who apply the management style or choose to apply the documentation framework; however the allocation of resources to initiate an EA program can lea to disadvantages as well; if not to mention that the EA program can be rejected by the employees of the organization.

However for many organizations the implementation of an EA program that is based on iterations can unlock a competitive advantage for the enterprise. Never the less it demands management commitment.

The Frontlines of EA (1)


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Categories : Discipline, Enterprise Architecture

The New Age of Management: The Focus on Coherency Management!

16 01 2010

The Development of the Organizations:

As you know that the organizations have evolved over time from once in the 19th century where the organizations (companies etc.) where small and insufficient. The organizations in the United States were of the size of 1 – 4 employees who were not selected on their ability but through their social network.

The 20th century formed organizations and created tendencies and pressures in the market that demanded that the organizations had to adapt to create the goods of a high quality for a low price so new markets could be reached. The 20th century introduced a scientific approach to management which was introduced by Frederick W. Taylor. This approach led to the creation of Taylorism and the core principle of Taylorism was to eliminate ineffective work processes.

This led to the construction of a management paradigm which has led to the foundation of the current management approach for the organizations.

Today we see organizations that are multinational or global and these have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of employees e.g., International Business Machines, Ford Motors, Microsoft, Google etc.

All of these works with a specific organizational design typically these have been hierarchical and this has led to specialization, productions increase, profit maximization etc.; however since the end of the production economy by this I mean the economy which was dominated by companies that produced physical products e.g., Cars (Ford). The Western economies evolved from focusing on physical products into providing services and later to focus on how to produce knowledge. The knowledge economy is characterized by the employees are those who are the asset. Their knowledge is the asset which is used to create products and services; however the products and the services are normally produced or provided by a different company in the third world e.g., India, China, Vietnam or Indonesia. Since the employees are the most valued asset then the goal is to make sure that the employees don’t leave the organization and enable them to create more creative and sustainable solutions of which the organization will be able to capitalize on.

This leads us to the evolution of the concept of management.

The Evolution of Management:

Management is defined as:

“Management is the art to getting things done through people” – Mary Parker Follet (Barret 2003, p. 51).

Management has evolved over time like the organizations. There have been several views on how to manage organizations; however this blog post will only deal with what a Coherency Architect should conclude to be relevant.

As mentioned before then there are the first form of structured management is the Taylorism (as mentioned under Scientific Management). This form of management insufficient in the knowledge economy since knowledge workers needs other forms of stimulation than monetary incentives and written orders to perform.

Naturally there was a reaction to the Taylorist approach. This happened when the Japanese companies introduced cheaper products and of superior qualitative which meant that the Western companies had evaluate the way they managed and motivated their employees.

Since the 1970s have the Western companies in one way or the other tried to imitate Japanese companies by developing management and quality systems like Six Sigma, LEAN and Toyota Production System. The reason for why the Western companies haven’t been successful is that they so far have simplified the systemic approach the Japanese makes use of.

The Japanese have a very different approach than Western companies when it comes to management and motivation. First of all the Japanese companies make use of a bottom up approach when it comes to how the organization articulate and implement their strategies. Second of all the Japanese companies have been known for motivating their employees by making them proud of their work and putting an honor in quality. Third of all the Japanese companies are known for lifetime employment which means that they commit themselves to keep the employees employed and as a result of this they expect a higher degree of loyalty and commitment.

The IT waves in the 90s and early 2000s led to leadership and motivation; however to many organizations (typically IT related organizations) didn’t realize how to enable more productivity or for that matter crystallize better products by applying the new forms of leadership. As a result of that many of the organizations failed to survive the IT bobble which proved that to many organizations didn’t have the appeal of the market to survive or they simply didn’t understand their Enterprise Architecture. If these organizations had understood their Enterprise Architecture then a lot of them would have been able to scale the need of their consumption of resources and as result they would have survived.

The new paradigm is that the employees are the asset of the organizations and these should be encouraged to enable them to develop their own products.

Coherency Management:

All organizations have an architecture regardless if members of the organizations are aware of it or not (Doucet et al.).

Coherency Management then deals with how the organization can gain advantages by using Enterprise Architecture. This is done by maturing the organization by diffusing the knowledge of Coherency Management and the by applying the tools from Enterprise Architecture to other parts of the organization. This diffusion needs to be build upon the idea that these have to be embedded in the business processes and continuously be applied with the maturity of the Enterprise Architecture.

In many ways the concept of Enterprise Architecture is based on the same paradigm as the management systems of the 20th century which is defined as structuralism and according to Doucet (Doucet et al., 2009) Coherency Management and the underlying tools such as Enterprise Architecture are typically defused by the IT department to the rest of the organization. This is typically done by the Chief Information Officer who anchor the paradigm in the middle and top management of the organization and gives the members of the IT department the “necessary protection” to enable change within the organization.

Therefore it is safe to assume that the Coherency Management approach will lead to a top down approach as it was the case for many other Western styled organizations. This might lead to the conclusion that Coherency Management in some way will be in a different paradigm than those tools which are suggested by Gary Hamel. However Coherency Management do also have elements which needs to be diffused via the bottom up approach and it has to be embedded into the organizational culture and employees with many different backgrounds have to apply their own views onto the concepts of Enterprise Architecture.

When this come to the consideration of Coherency Management then the drive to implement the concepts of Coherency Management and Enterprise Architecture is defining what paradigm to make use of. If Coherency Management is build upon the idea that the employees should help define the framework and tools the Coherency Management Office will apply in the various processes in the organization. In the other hand quite a few people are scared of change and change anchored in the hands of employees won’t necessary led to change or innovation like Henry Ford mentions in relation the innovation of the mass produced car: “If I had asked them then they would have asked for faster horses”. Therefore should the Coherency Architect keep in mind that the only way to enable change in an organization is to influence the organization culture. The culture can be changed in many ways by the tools of many different paradigms.

In this article I will however only deal with a few frameworks for change.

The first framework is the structuralist approach which where Kotter’s framework will fit into. John P. Kotter presents in his article “Why Change Fails” and this could be supplemented by Kurt Lewin’s unfreeze, move and freeze approach.

The second framework is the interpretive paradigm where the organization constructs some form of “internal” economy where the members of the organization can influence the projects which the organizations initiates. This is done by establishing a form of stock exchange where all the members can invest a fictional amount of company-money to found the projects.

The organizations that adapt this framework needs a strong Enterprise Architecture and move towards Coherency Management; otherwise will the entire change effort be in wane.

The third framework is based on the idea that the employees themselves should be able to choose their leaders and regulate their own production schedules etc.. This kind of coordination needs like the second framework a strong focus on their Enterprise Architecture and thereby also on Coherency Management to assist the employees and the management with keeping the organization on track.

The New Age of Management: A Focus on Coherency Management!$


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Categories : Alignment, Architecture Maturity, Enterprise Architecture, Methods

The Case study Method: From a Coherency Architect’s Point of View

28 12 2009

Why this method is Important

The Coherency Architect should consider the case study method an important tool since the Architect has to investigate the organization or organizations they work with to investigate and uncover problems that needs to be solved before the organization can continue with it plans to achieve its goals.

The Case Study Method gives the Coherency Architect tools which can assist him or her with identifying the problems and articulate the right solutions for the right problems.

Therefore will the Case Study Method be presented and dealt with in this particular blog post. Please note that you can download a compendium dealing with the case study method (The Case Study Method from a Coherency Architect’s Point of View).

The First Step

According to Robert K. Yin there are logical steps the investigator (in our case the Coherency Architect) should deal with in a particular order

The Coherency Architect should articulate a problem statement. The problem statement should primarily deal with how, what, who and why questions which need explanations. The Coherency Architect should know how to articulate an academic problem statement since it is presumed that the Coherency Architect has attended a business school an University related education.

Then the second step follows.

The Second Step

This step deals with how the Coherency Architect designs the case study. The case study can be designed various form of collecting data and different forms of analyzing them. When it comes to the Coherency Architect will work with both qualitative data and quantitative data when he or she is about to study an organization.

There several forms of case studies which the Coherency Architect can choose to work with. The first one is called explanatory case study, the explorative case study and the causal case study.

The explanatory case study used to explain a phenomena or tendency. The causal case study is used to identify what kind of decisions or processes that led to the outcome of the situation e.g., why the organization developed as it did and who were in charge of it. The third is known as the explorative case study which is used to (as the name indicates) to explorer if a hypothesis is sound.

It is important that the Coherency Architect understand the theory which he or she is about to apply to the case study otherwise the design will fail. Therefore should the Coherency Architect work with this particular issue before he or she starts the procedure at this step.

Yin are of the opinion that there are two types of case studies. The first one is known as the single case study and is the most commonly known; however the second kind of case study called the multiple case study is more rare but it is easier to generalize the findings of them.

Thereto are there two forms of case studies. The first kind of case study is known in education where the investigator (in our case the Architect) doesn’t need to stay objective to the evidence (data) which he or she has collected. The other case is the scientific case study where the investigator has to stay object and critical towards the evidence (data) he or she has collected. The Coherency Architect will most likely work with the scientific case.

When it comes to scientific case study then it is important to emphasize that the Coherency Architect has to put extra attention to:

  1. Construct Validity deals with identifying the right operational measures for the concepts that are being studied. In the case of science then case studies have been associated difficulty when it deals with operationalize the measure and the measure often are biased since the findings are based on personal judgement.

  2. Internal Validity deals with establishing casual relationships where certain conditions are believed to lead to other relationships than spurious1 relationships. Please note that this particular approach is only for explanatory and casual studies and can’t be applied for other kinds of case studies.

  3. External Validity deals with identifying how the domain (the findings of the case study) can be generalized. This means how can the findings be applied in other organizations than the case study.

  4. Reliability deals with how the findings can be replicated in other studies. The major concern is that the findings are airtight and aren’t flawed and the findings therefore are biased or non-scientific.

This leads us to the third step.

The Third Step

This step deals with the preparation of the data collection and what the Coherency Architect should do before he or she begins the data collection.

First of all should the Coherency Architect focus on developing the right contacts to those persons he or she needs to interview to get the right information on e.g., how the work systems functions. However the Coherency Architect might also make use of quantitative data such as statics or other data which can be collected this way.

The Coherency Architect should be aware of that the establishing the right contacts is more important than the theory establishing part when it comes to the data collection since if the Coherency Architect can’t collect the right data that support his or her’s hypothesis then the outcome of the case study might end up being biased and therefore not useable for any one.

The Coherency Architect should focus on establishing a case study protocol which consist of the data collection protocol which includes the questions the Coherency Architect will be asking the interviewee. The Coherency Architect should also include an outline of the report which should be the case study. The case study protocol is build upon the idea that the Coherency Architect can make use of it to stay on track.

It is notable that the Coherency Architect should create an evidence database. The database should contain the data the Coherency Architect has uncovered so a chain of evidence can be established.

The Fourth Step

This step deals with the data collection phase. It is notable that the Coherency Architect will have to work with all six data forms which Yin mention in his book (see sources).

Interviews, documentation, records from archives and physical artifacts.

It is important that the Coherency Architect has to choose the sources with a critical point of view since the collected data might lead to a biased analysis and therefore to a biased view. The Coherency Architect should therefore try to combine multiple sources to achieve something that can assist the Coherency Architect to establish an overview of the case organization and how to identify the various layers with out being in the situation that he or she will be focusing on problems that proves to have minimal impact on the various layers of the organization.

The Fifth Step

This step deals with analyzing the data (evidence) the Coherency Architect has collected. Yin is of the states that there are four general strategies:

The Theoretical Propositions Strategy

This is the most common used strategy. The strategy deals with using the techniques, tools and world view the theory the architect has made use of in design his or her questions of which were made use of while the architect collected his data

Developing a Case Description

If the architect experience problems with applying the first mentioned strategy then the development of a case description might be preferable. This strategy is an alternative to the theoretical propositions strategy and when applied it is often considered as evidence for that the initial case questions weren’t based on theory.

Applying Quantitative and Qualitative Data

This strategy can prove to become an advantage for the architect if he or she is experienced with the case study technique. Yin is of the opinion that the quantitative data if the quantitative data has to cover behavior or events that the case study is trying to explain and second the data has to cover an embedded unit that can be related to the analysis.

Examining Rival Explanations

The fourth and last strategy deals with examining other explanations or theories of how the evidence in the case is related and interlinked. When the rival explanations are examined then it can uncover flaws in the evidence or uncover new relations.

Then there are five different analytical tools that can be applied the case study evidence:

Pattern Matching

The pattern matching approach deals with identifying patterns in the evidence (data) the architect has collect through his study of a phenomenon, organization or other. Yin are pf the opinion that simple patterns can also be uncovered and applied.

Explanation Building

This form of analysis deals with creating causal links among the various forms of evidence and by that explaining what happened and why.

Time – Series Analysis

According to Yin there are there two different approaches to time series analysis. The simple time series analysis and the complex time series analysis.

The simple time share analysis is based how the case organization has developed over time. Normally the simple share analysis is like applying the pattern matching.

Logic Models

Establishing a logical model explaining how the evidence is linked (the chain of evidence). The logical model has to explain the evidence and create casual links.

Cross Case Synthesis

This form of data analysis is suitable for studies that contain more than one case organization.

Sources

Yin, R.K., 2008. Case Study Research: Design and Methods Fourth., SAGE Publications Inc.

1Defined as not to have a purpose.

Download:

Download this paper (The Case Study Method from a Coherency Architect’s Point of View).


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Categories : Frameworks, Methods, Organization

Architecture Maturity

21 12 2009

Coherency Management is about gaining agility, assurance and alignment and these gains are closely linked to the maturity state of the architecture of the organization. All organizations have an architecture the question is how matured it is.

It is therefore desirable for most organizations to one way or the other to identify, mature and monitor the process. Before the identification takes place then the various characteristics of the architectures have to be dealt with.

The Architectures

In this section I will shortly deal with the architectures that are presented by Doucet et al. (Doucet et al. 2009)

The architecture that hasn’t been exposed to Enterprise Architecture and as a result of this the management or other actors in the organization are not aware of how the organization, its processes and its various layers are designed and interacts. This includes that the organizations isn’t aware of how their IT is used to support the various business processes.

The Foundation Architecture is an architecture that has been exposed to Enterprise Architecture; however this has only been applied for the IT side of the organization to bridge the gap between business processes and IT. In this state the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the IT department has a great influence on how the Coherency Management tools are applied though this a downside and that is that the rest of the organization rarely understands the idea of Enterprise Architecture.

The Extended Architecture is bit more mature in the context of applying Enterprise Architecture. In context this means that other departments in the organization have identified that Enterprise Architecture tools can be made use of to improve the ability of the organization. In relation to who is in charge for the Coherency Management implementation then it is likely that this has passed from the CIO.

The Embedded Architecture is the so far the most mature level an organization can reach by applying Enterprise Architecture tools and change management. This means that the entire organization make use of Enterprise Architecture tools identify, initiate and implement new processes. This means that the organization has enforced a framework that has to be taken into consideration when new processes have been applied.

In addition to the above mentioned architectures the Balanced Architecture (Doucet et al 2009 p. 224) can be added. This is a future state within the Coherency Management concept.

I will therefore discuss the tools that can be applied.

Why Should Architectures be Matured?

When an architecture matures then the organizations that make use of them also become more agile and better in the sense that the organization easily can implement new processes, flows, systems etc.

This means that the organization can gain value for its stakeholders if the organization apply Enterprise Architecture tools to mature its architecture.

The Tools

There are several tools that can be applied to identify and monitor the state of the organization architecture. I have chosen to make use of Barnard & Grasso (Doucet et al. 2009) that have written a chapter which deals with how Enterprise Architecture can be matured.

According to Barnard & Grasso then these factors are useful to measure:

  • Enterprise Budget & Procurement Strategy.

  • Strategic Governance.

  • Extended Enterprise Architecture Architecture Results.

  • Extended Enterprise Architecture Developments.

  • Extended Architecture Program Office.

  • Business Units Involvement.

  • Executive Management Involvement.

  • Extended Enterprise Involvement.

  • Business & Technology Strategy Alignment.

The above mentioned indicators can be used to identify on what state the organization is on. If the organization is pre-dominantly in the un-mature part of the scale e.g., that the organization has an un-mature architecture. If the organization in any way has indicators that indicates that the organization is on a better level than the sublevel then the Coherency Architect should assume that the organization is maturing its architecture (perhaps implicitly).

There are methods that can be used to mature the architecture. For this the EAAM approach can made use of. The EAMM approach deals with how the Coherency Architect can measure and audit the architecture of the organization.

Control

As with all plans then it is a necessity to work with auditing and control which deals with controlling if the various goals used in the EA programs have been realized. This process is mandatory for every Enterprise Architecture project as it is for every strategic approach.

For this an Enterprise Architecture Audit Program should be established. According to Barnard & Grasso there are to forms for such a program. The first form is the light edition that consist of one to two persons who audit the EA programs in the organization. The analysis of the organization is build upon a superficial (high impact) analysis. The other is the advanced program where two to five persons go through a complete analysis of the EA program.

Coherency Maturity MindMap

Coherency Maturity MindMaps

Sources

Gary Doucet et al., Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance (International Enterprise Architecture Institute, 2009).

Further Reading

Extended Enterprise Architecture Model (E2AMM v.2.0) (www.enterprise-architecture.info)


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Categories : Alignment, Architecture Maturity, Audit, Frameworks

Coherency Management and Innovation

2 12 2009

When it comes to innovation then coherency management is an enabling tool. This means that the organization that is aware of the various processes, the various elements and various technologies enables the  apply radical innovation and evolutionary innovation.
Schumpeter was of the idea that the single most important function of the organization was to crystalize the innovation in to products that could be used on the market and therefore can innovation be viewed as specific competitive advantage.
When it comes to coherency management then innovation can both be radical innovation and it can be process innovation.
The difference between radical innovation and evolutionary innovation is that radical innovation is game changing e.g., by creating new business models or new ways to do business. Process innovation is different in the way that the issues e.g., the processes are improved over multiple steps.
Both forms of innovation have their impact on how the organization performs e.g., organizations that have a well developed culture based upon evolutionary innovation often have the ability to perform well within their industry they operate.
Organizations that are able to enable radical innovation are often good to define new products, business models and markets that all in all give them a competitive advantage and thereby they are often able to be the first movers at many markets.

Innovation and Coherency Management

Innovation

To sparkle innovation there is a need for using the right people for the right positions within the project organization.
Tom Kelley is of the opinion that these profiles should be combined to create HOT teams that truly creates innovations:
“

  1. The Visionary is the type of person who is able to identify future possibilities (visions) and he is able to recruit the project team.
  2. The Troubleshooter is a person who in way or the other who are able to identify problems internally in the organization and is able to handle all situations that might occur in the project organization while the project is being executed.
  3. The Iconoclast is a person who is able to challenge the current believes of what is right inside the project organization and is able to see possibilities in other paradigms.
  4. The Pulse Taker is a person who is able to work like a hearth does in a human. The person has to be versatile in his or her way of thinking and is able to channelize the “life blood” of the project on to other individuals in the project organization.
  5. The Craftsman is that kind of person who is able to construct prototypes and work around with them to make innovative designs. These competences are vital for any kind of radical innovation.
  6. The Technologist is what many people would call a geek. A person who is dedicated to work with technology and is able to handle complex tasks, uncover and create deeper meaning.
  7. The Entrepreneur is a person who is able to work out with brainstorms, innovation, prototypes and communicate these to other persons.
  8. The Cross-Dresser these kinds of persons who have studied or worked with a totally different form of field then he or she works with today. These individuals make use of their skills to envision new solutions.

”

This leads to the concept of the maturity of the architectures and thereby the concept of Coherency Management.

The Concept of Coherency Management

Coherency Management deals with the maturing process of the architecture within the organization. The architecture consist of the various layers of the organization which are:

  1. People.
  2. Organization culture.
  3. Organization structure.
  4. Bureaucratic structure.
  5. Process structure.
  6. Information structure.
  7. Technology structure.

The more matured the architecture of the organization is the better the organization will be come to understand the processes, people, information and technology needed to create both evolutionary innovation and radical innovation.
Every organization has an architecture otherwise they wouldn’t be able to operate but there are three forms of architectures. The first architecture is called an architecture before Enterprise Architecture tools were applied and the organization is not aware of how it operates.
The more mature form of the architecture is called the foundation architecture. The foundation architecture is characterized by that the organization has applied Enterprise Architecture tools to the IT side of the organization. The first level of maturity with in this mode of architecture is where the IT structure and information structure is articulated for the enterprise wide perspective.
The second level of the architecture is when the needs of the business is articulated in a methodical way.
The third level of maturity is known by that the business side of the organization makes use of EA tools to identify, analyze and engineer the processes and structures after a methodical approach and after the change process has ended then the CIO takes over and apply the IT perspective.
The fourth and last maturity level for any organization is called the embedded architecture. This form of architecture is characterized by that all processes are aligned and by that there is a great need for design leadership. The design leadership has to create a framework for how the documentation and plans are to be designed. The other elements of the organization such as the Human Resources, annual planning, strategic planning, public reporting makes use of the structured framework and tools of the EA not to mention the that the strategic goal of the business drives the business requirements a and by that  drive the technological solutions.

Sources

Gary Doucet et al., Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance (International Enterprise Architecture Institute, 2009).

Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm, 1st ed. (Broadway Business, 2001). 


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Categories : Alignment, Discipline, Innovation

A Coherent Architecture as a Strategy

22 11 2009

There are several issues that influence the competitiveness of any organization.  These factors are to be found in any domain (and are almost generic). This means that the organization will lead to the innovation, growth and decline of organizations.
Some organizations are privileged by owning a monopoly either backed by a government or by the fact that their products or services are superior to any of the competitors on the market. This makes the organization rather good to earn money since they often can set the price for the products and services as they want to; however this also leads to lack of agility since the pressure of the free market isn’t influencing the decision making of the management or the employees.
When organizations growth then they have a tendency to become more bureaucratic since there is a greater need for coordinating among the members of the organization, departments and management. This leads to a great degree of standardization but it also leads to a decline in agility compared to changes in the domain of the organization.
Therefore it becomes a question on how to cope with the need for coordination (bureaucracy) and the need for agility.
This can become an influence that impacts the organization and if it is used correctly then the organization can gain a competitive advantage.
Likewise can the way the organization make use of a technology become a competitive advantage for the organization. An example of this is that the organization might be superior to any competitors to utilize their information technology like software and hardware to support and develop their processes. These processes might in return prove to become easier to handle and create more value than the processes the competitors of the organization have.
Organization culture might also prove to become a competitive advantage since it indoctrinates the employees to act in a specific way. If the organization culture makes the members of the organization find and discover errors and eliminate the errors then the cost of repair and service fall and re-enforce the brand of the organization and re-enforce the good will the customers of the organization has to the organization.
Thereto will coherency management assist the host organization with creating a competitive advantage since it will assist the management and the various other stakeholders in the organization developing the necessary overview and consistent information that can be used to make the proper decisions.
Thereto if IT, business processes, organization culture, corporate strategy aren’t aligned then the organization will experience that the system is not able to fulfill the its potential and will therefore the organization will experience opportunity costs.
It is therefore in the interest of the management to work with the organization to achieve its goals and it is in the interest of the employees to assist making their work place better for them. It is the interest of them to feel productive and feel that their work matters for the organization. It is therefore a paradigm to involve them in the decision making but they too should be kept informed on how the organization develops.
Coherency Management is building on the principles on identifying the underlying architecture in the organization and enhancing the development of the architecture and by that the organization.
This is done by applying the tools from Enterprise Architecture to identify and evaluate the various processes and adding the technology needed to enhance the processes or re-think the processes to generate more organizational value.
It is therefore a strategical tool to evaluate and rebuild the architecture of the organization to match those tasks and challenges the organization will face in the future competition. A solid architecture which can be extended and reused will be a necessity in the future so the organization can grow and develop an architecture that can be used to connect the processes, people, departments and organizations to develop the right products and services to the right price.

Organizations will in the future be able to align them self to one or more syndicates to create products which are cheap enough to sell to the people in the third world. The organizations in these  syndicates have to know their architecture to understand and connect to these shifting syndicates and if these organizations either don’t know or understand their architecture then they will not be able to join the syndicates and gain the benefits from it.

Therefore is it of strategic importance that all organization work with and articulate their architecture to enable abilities of agility, knowledge and innovation and to that all the support functions and processes to enable interactions with so called networked organizations and syndicates.

To give the analyst some insight into how IT influences the an Architecture then it is advised that the analyst reads about critical issues in IT management.


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Categories : Alignment, Discipline, Knowledge Management, Up in Time

Critical Issues in IT Management

19 11 2009

IT is a fundament when it comes to Coherency Architecture and it is therefore necessity to be able to understand the critical issues in IT management.

Therefore have I chosen to publish my notes from the course “Critical Issues in IT management” which I attended at Copenhagen Business School in year 2008.

As with all other documents at this blog the license for the document is Creative Commons V3 U.S. Edition share alike (read more under the general license for this blog).

Link to document: issuu.com

 

Enjoy the notes.

 


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Categories : Alignment, Business, Up in Time

The Coherency Architect

15 11 2009

Since the start of the blog then I have mentioned the work of the Coherency Architect. In this blog post I will describe what abilities the Coherency Architect should posses to perform his or her job. This description could be considered a template for a job description for the Coherency Architect.
The Coherency Architect has to be a generalist that have to understand the basis and depth of organizational behavior and understand human psychology in how the organization works.
The organization consists of various contexts which the Coherency Architect has to be able adjust to and develop suitable solutions for.
For being agile then the Coherency Architect has to understand and work by a set of principles based on an academic study of Management Accounting, Project Management, IT strategy, Corporate Strategy, Organizational studies, knowledge Management and change Management.
Some of the above mentioned disciplines are of course logical for a Coherency Architect to understand and to make use of; however some of the courses like Management accounting has to be understood otherwise the Coherency Architect wouldn’t be able to understand the economic flow or the cost structure of producing the products or the services in the organization.
The costs have to be understood to identify the bottle heads in the organization and it enable the Coherency Architect with the the tools needed to solve major problems for the organization.
Coherency Management and Coherency Architectures derives from field of Enterprise Architecture which originally was an engineering discipline for developing technical solutions for organizations. These technical solutions were derived from the IT strategy and the IT strategy was again derived from the Corporate Strategy. In that way IT and business had to be some how aligned to achieve sufficient results. This could be called Coherency in a simple state.
For this the understanding of business models, strategies and corporate strategies is needed and therefore should the Coherency Architect develop an understanding of these disciplines to be able to add value by changing the processes and adapting coherent processes.
For this the Coherency Architect should understand people (their psychology and their organizational abilities). The Coherency Architect should not get all his or her knowledge from the academic world but also gain knowledge from experience e.g., by working with people and developing his or her people skill and the Coherency Architect should be able to lead people into the new situation meaning that he or she has to understand rhetoric and leadership to inspire the members of the organization to help change instead of fighting change.
However people are often not good to stay focused on a goal that is distant in a matter of time frame and therefore should the Coherency Architect work on his or her motivation skills and to be able to create short term goals and short term wins that are aligned with a vision.
Especially the short term wins are important to keep commitment from the stakeholders in the organization.
The Coherency Architect has to understand how to operationalize programs for changing the organization and the be able to keep stakeholder commitment which is a classic project Management discipline.
It is vital to understand that the Coherency Architect has to be able to gain knowledge from both the academia and by gaining knowledge from working in practice in the organization. In some ways the a practical approach can be the proposal to align the processes so they are coherent.

Nonaka's SECI Model

Nonaka's Framework

Therefore should the organization that is about to apply for a Coherency Architect work with several perspectives on knowledge and not just be working with the idea that a pure academic would be able to solve the problems better than a person who only have practical education; however the middle ground would in most conditions be preferable.
The Coherency Architect and the organization have to adapt to each other otherwise Coherency Management can’t be applied properly.
The Management and the stakeholders of the organization have to invest their trust into the Coherency Architect to show to the rest of the host organization that the Coherency Architect has the power, the initiative and the right to give them orders to change the way they work.
It is often the failure of the Management to show commitment to the Coherency program that blocks for coherent changes in the host organization.
Since organization consists of humans then all organizations are alike and yet they aren’t. Therefore should the Coherency Architect also adapt to the organization.

The Mind Map below deals with the primary issues of the Coherency Architecture.

The Skills of the Coherency Architect

The Coherency Architect


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Categories : Business, Up in Time

The Layers of the Enterprise

6 11 2009

Coherency Management is build upon the idea that the system based on the idea that there are several layers in an organization. Layers that can vary from one another and that has to be aligned to make the organization to gain more (or simply work smarter).

Zachman (2005) has traditionally made use of his framework for changing these layers and he among others have established the platform for Enterprise Architecture; However the problem with the Zachman framework is that it can be identified as a method within the functionalist paradigm.

The functionalist paradigm (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) is known for its un-nuanced view on how people and systsems interact and can therefore by a threat (or a source of explanation) for why many IT related and organization related projects fail.

Doucet et al (2009) uses a view on the layers of the process which is based on Zachman’s framework which indicates a functionalist view of the organization. However it is notable that every organization has an architecture (the EA point of view) which indicates that there are several layers which the Coherency Architect has to work with to be able to propose coherent plans.

The first layer is the technical architecture. The technical layer consists of the servers, the computers and the network infrastructure that enables the applications to perform their tasks.

The second layer is the application architecture and is build upon the technical architecture. This layer deals with the applications (software) the organization make use of to provide the various business processes with the useable software. It is also the application that supports the transformation of data into information.

The third layer is the information architecture and is build upon the application architecture. The information architecture deals with how the data is archived, handled and maintained in the enterprise. This means that the layer contains the nerve of the enterprise. If the enterprise is not able to handle the information within it then it is likely the organization will go out of business. Information is gold in the time of the information economy.

The fourth layer is the business process architecture and is build upon the information architecture. The business processes can only be executed if the members of the organization who work with the particular processes are able to understand how the system work.

The fifth layer is the business architecture and is build on top of business process architecture.
The Business Architecture consist mainly of how the organization is designed e.g., the organization chart, the description of responsibilities and thereby who are accountable for what processes and what outcome of the various systems. It is obvious that this layer is depending on the layers beneath it like a pyramid.

Analysis Part

How can the Coherency Architect make use of the layers to implement coherency in the organization? The Coherency Architect has to view the organization as a system which in a way is fragmented and in another way can work independent of the each other. To make the an organization coherent in its decision making then the Coherency Architect has to uncover the various layers to identify potential elements that creates bottlenecks or other negative influence on the total architecture of the system works. The organization can of not be autonomous of its surroundings and therefore should impacts from the market, customers, technologies developed and supplied by suppliers be analyzed.

Any bottlenecks that have been identified have to be analyzed and a solution including a plan for implementation should be articulated and put into “the pipeline” (the pipeline is innovation related and will be handled in a future blog post).

When the organization is changing then the layers of the organization will be changing to and that will lead a need for a new analysis of the architecture of the organization.

It is therefore not a single project to implement Coherency Management. It should be understood as a continuous program to identify and develop the the Business Architecture and the underlying architectures.

The first obstacle the Coherency Architect will face when he or she will start the work on identifying the current layers and the general architecture of the organization will be that the documentation the organization has developed for themselves is outdated and the Coherency Architect has to go through all the four layers to create his or her own view on how the organization architecture is.

The Coherency Architect should therefore be prepared to invest a lot of the time of the first Coherency Project on investigating the layers and the general architecture of the organization and then keep updating his or her view on the situation during the entire project period.

Sources:

* Gary Doucet et al., Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance (International Enterprise Architecture Institute, 2009).

* Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan, “Sociological Paradigms and

Organisational Analysis – Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life,” in (Heineman, 1979).


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The Architectures

24 10 2009

All organizations have an architecture otherwise they wouldn’t exist or be able to do their business. When Enterprise Architecture tools are applied to an organization then the organization can experience three levels of maturity in their organization. The first level is called the articulated architecture. In this particular level of maturity then the organization has discovered that the tools can be used to enable a greater level of IT and business alignment. If the organization progresses with the coherency projects it has initiated then the organization will eventually reach the extended architecture.
The organization has to articulate their architecture so they can become aware of how the organization is constructed (processes, knowledge, information, technology and people). This will lead to that management is able to take better decisions so the company can progress:

The foundation architecture is characterized by that Enterprise Architecture tools have been applied which has uncovered processes both within IT and the business which can be managed by using an EA framework. The foundation architecture is usually under control of the CIO in the organization. This means that the project is largely IT related. The foundation architecture is superior to the un- articulated architecture since it can assist the management in the organization realize that the enterprise architecture can be used strategically.

The extended architecture is defined by that the architecture is build upon the idea that the organization has realized that Enterprise Architecture tools can be used to understand processes and alter improve the outcome of the processes by using Enterprise Architecture tools. The primary difference between the extended architecture and the before mentioned foundation architecture is that the business side of the organization has discovered that the tools can be used to obtain superior results. Doucet et al (2009) describes this as a situation which means that:
The management of the business side of the organization make use of EA to rethink the processes (obliteration).
The Human Resources department makes use of EA tools to describe what particular needs the organization needs and what courses the current members of the organization needs to be qualified to use the tools.
The business line managers conceptualize ideas by using the EA tools.
The IT department make use of EA tools to identify and support the core processes of the organization.
But as before mentioned the primary reason between the foundation architecture and the extended architecture is that the business side has adopted the tools and the EA paradigm to develop the organization.

The embedded architecture is the evaluation of the extended architecture which means that the organization has adapted processes which adds to the architecture and in that way aid the architecture. Never the less when a lot of changes are implemented over time then there is a need for a framework which evaluates and implement the various changes to the architecture.
This means that the embedded architecture becomes ubiquitous in the way that the strategy and the processes enforces the strategy.
It is worth to mention that the organization is beyond the agenda setting, matching, redefining / restructuring and clarifying phases. The organization has or is close to be through the routinization phase which means that all employees in the organization understands the innovation is relates to it when they work.

* Gary Doucet et al., Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance (International Enterprise Architecture Institute, 2009). 


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Categories : Alignment, Business, Innovation, Organization

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