Category Archives: Roles of Enterprise Architecture

Architecture Capabilities through Business Models

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For some time I have been working with adapting the business model canvas for explaining how an enterprise architecture program delivers value to the it-department. The scope of the model has been on the foundation architecture where the outcome of the enterprise architecture program is mainly used by the IT department.

I am aware of that Tom Graves has done something similar, though he has made a completely different model, and as such his model is fine, but the audience that I intend to communicate with would be more likely that they will understand the value proposition of enterprise architecture through a model designed upon the business model canvas compared to a model based upon Graves’ model.

As you might have guessed then I had to adjust the business model canvas in order to expose the data on how the enterprise architecture program delivers value in the best way possible.

The first seven phases have been renamed in order to adapt the model for how a department or function within an IT department delivers values.

The first phase is about key partners needed in order to produce any form of value by the enterprise architecture program.

The second phase is about how the key activities that are needed in order to produce value. The needed activities would have to be organized around on handling the resources.

The third phase is about the key resources needed to produce the services or products needed by the segments of the it department.

The fourth phase is about the value proposition. In other words its about the initiatives at hand.

The fifth phase is about team relations and they are usually essential for both implementing and producing the services. Especially if we assume that enterprise architecture is about creating value through others.

The sixth phase is about channels. How does the enterprise architecture program deliver resources

The seventh phase is about the segments of the IT department that receives the services from the Enterprise Architecture program.

The eight phase is about the Enterprise IT Investment structure. This particular section of the business model deals with the identification of how the current situation of the IT Architecture the IT organization processes.

The ninth phase is about scenario planning, that deals with planning for a better IT Investments for the IT department.

The tenth phase is about the Improved Enterprise IT Investment Structure that deals with multiple actionable plans for changing and optimizing the total architecture.

All together these phases can present the necessary data to the decision-makers in order to give them an insight on how enterprise architecture delivers value to them. Value is key in situations where organization have limited access to resources.

The Architecture Business Model

The Architecture Business Model.


The foundation architecture is as earlier mentioned scoped on delivering value to the IT department and through to the IT department to the rest of the enterprise. The model is published under the Creative Commons license (share alike).

Dealing with Systemic Problems Through the Enterprise Architecture Program

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There are many problems the chief architect, enterprise architects, CIOs, executives and decision-makers on all levels will be facing while handling the day to day operations. Quite a few problems that they will be dealing with are symptoms of larger more complex problems or what I have chosen to define as “systemic problems”.

Systemic problems are the roots of why processes do not seem to connect resources, parts of the products that are to be delivered to the customers are bulked up or simply not arriving at the right place at the right time, information that isn’t shared across several different parts of the enterprise. Such symptoms can usually be dealt with rather easily e.g. a systems architect would say that an information system can be constructed in order to create an overview of the information and share the information among the stakeholders, and so the stakeholders believe the problem has been solved; however quite often will the problem not be solved e.g. the information that the system has to make use of in order to create forecast and delivery dates can’t produce any useful information if no one provides information to the system and likewise will the system not deliver any kind of value if those who are supposed to react upon the information delivered don’t do so.

So what can the chief architect and the enterprise architects do in order to find out if there is a systemic problem, and how to gain an overview of the problem(s) in order to find out more about the systemic problem and identify solutions for how to deal with the problems.

As I see it most systemic problems share similarities with “wicked problems”. Wicked problems are defined as problems that are defying logic, they includes various perspective, they are connected through different problems that occur and they can’t bet solved the regular linear way. All in all the chief architect would be in a problem where he and the other members of the enterprise architecture team would have to share their knowledge in order to find out how important the problems associated with the symptoms are, and how the enterprise architecture team can contribute to solving the problems.

One of the great problems applying resources to deal with systemic problems is that the problems involve many different segments of the enterprise and as such all the stakeholders that have something to say would have to be involved. The problems could potentially prove to be hard to solve due to the situation where the enterprise would have to allocated resources to deal with the problem, that is hard to define and where it is hard to identify which of the segments that would have to contribute what. Politics can’t be avoided in order to solve the problem and that means that the decision-makers on various levels in the enterprise would have to be involved and the scenarios for solving the systemic problem would have be changed in order to gain the trust of the important decision-makers.

Besides politics and the allocation of resources there several other barriers that the chief architect and the enterprise architecture group will be facing e.g.:

  • Furthermore does time means money.
  • Opportunity cost can be hard to estimate.
  • Mental models that are frozen.
  • Organization cultures that are notorious hard to change.
  • Power issues and accountability for changing the status quo.

Each of the barriers above would be hard to deal with in the short or for that matter in the long run; however the role of the enterprise architecture program would be to identify the capabilities that the enterprise possess and how they can be made use of in order to gain the insight.

The question becomes how can enterprise architecture program assist the enterprise with solving the systemic (wicked problems).

The way I see possibilities of using the enterprise architecture program is through combining the documentation process with the process of questioning the various stakeholders in the various segments and through that feedback the enterprise architects are able to define a view of the situation that can be used to facilitate workshops where the stakeholders can comment and ask for changes. When this process has been taken care of the enterprise architects would bring back the knowledge they have collected and draw a map dealing with the problems they have been able to identify and from that they would prioritize the problems. The map could be build upon the concept of a rich picture with more layers. This model could with some benefit be mapped in the modeling tool. The chief architect could present the findings to the various decision-makers in the enterprise in order to create a pattern for how the enterprise can get over the systemic problem.

The decision-makers can from that information get a significant better overview of the situation (in any case it is better than having no information what so ever) and decide what to do in order to improve the situation. As I have earlier mentioned then there are no quick fixes to wicked problems and likewise are there few, if none, of the solutions that can be proclaimed the right solution for the problems the enterprise faces. The solutions are to be defined only on if the solutions improve or demote the situation for the enterprise.

Week 22 Enterprise Architecture Summer Camp (Day 2)

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This blog post deals with the second and final day of the summer school dealing with Enterprise Architecture. The tagline for the summer school is “Scandinavian Design and Oblique Angles”.

The day was characterized as a setup that was dominated by companies and industry professionals who presented topics of a wide variety of topics.

A Next-Generation EA Approach to Modeling the Firm using Capability Sets

John Gotze has in cooperation with Pat Turner written a paper on how to use capability sets in order to make Enterprise Architecture to work, how to sell Enterprise Architecture and what the value of Enterprise Architecture is all about.

The primary problem that the paper is about to answer is what capabilities the enterprise can get and how it can enhance it through shared capabilities.

John Gotze emphasized that one of the problems with the model that Ross and Weill (2006) proposed for Enterprise Architecture is based on that they don’t give a clue on what is their platform for execution and what is a part of the foundation platform.

John Gotze defines a capability as “an Ability or Expertise upon which that the Enterprise relies to fulfill its core functions”. Likewise does Gotze and Turner define an enterprise capability as “A capability that pervades across the whole of the enterprise”.

According to John Gotze, one organization that applies enterprise capabilities, is the U.S. Army. An example could be the tagline “one army”. With this in mind John Gotze made a reference to David A. Clark’s book on world poverty that deals with how to ensure capabilities among other things.

John Gotze later said that a capability set is directly coupled to the execution of the various processes. The second case that John Gotze presented was the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. The agency should have one of the biggest Enterprise Architecture programs that John Gotze has ever seen and as such they have articulated a five year plan and roadmaps on how to achieve a better architecture.

In order to achieve enterprise capabilities for the enterprise John Gotze and Pat Turner has developed a rather comprehensive framework in order to achieve a better enterprise.

  • A big part of the value of enterprise architecture program can be traced to the capabilities that the program can aid the enterprise with.
  • The paper investigates case studies on how Enterprise Architecture could generate “enterprise capabilities”.
  • An academic investigation of Enterprise Architecture is all about and how “competitive advantages” can be achieved through the implementation of a Enterprise Architecture program.

Vestas Wind Systems – Windy Architectures

The keynote speaker is Troels Fleckenstein who is Vice President at Vestas Wind Systems.

According to the keynote speaker all windmills from Vestas are equipped with technology that enable the windmills to communicate through the Internet with Vestas. Each of the Windmills communicate with Vestas 512 times yearly. This has created a large quantity of data that the corporation has to deal with in order to ensure maintenance of the windmills. Vestas hasn’t an Enterprise Architecture program, or at least that is what the speaker from Vestas said.

The keynote included a video on what Vestas is all about and Ditlev Engel appeared. Apparently Vestas has a slogan that they apply internally that is known as “people before megawatt” that as such means that Vestas doesn’t have HR-department but a department for people and culture (which I presume is pretty much the same). Vestas’ strategy is based upon that they believe they should be number one in wind energy. As such Vestas claims that 1/3 of all windmills sold on a global scale is produced by Vestas.

For Vestas the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of India represents the key markets due to the development of the various enterprises. Most likely are other countries in the BRIC group also of interest to Vestas Wind Systems.

Vestas has 15 locations around the world that develops on new products. Vestas produce nacelles in 15 locations, blades in 7 locations and towers in 2 locations and as such Vestas is able to deliver “Wind Power Plants” in eight regions of the world, or at least that is what the keynote speaker proclaimed.

Vestas’ current strategy is named the triple 15. The current corporate strategy goes to 2015 and they want to achieve a yearly revenue on 15% (currently it is 8.5%) and an EBIT (Earnings before interest and taxes) on 15%.

The keynote speaker presented the Vestas business model as titled it the strategy for empower the corporate strategy. With this approach in mind I am sure that Vestas applies an idea that is compatible with “Cybernetics paradigm”. Furthermore Vestas applies an approach they have titled “The Vestas’ High Five” that entails that energy should be competitive, predictable, independent, fast and clean. According to the keynote speaker the most important partners for Vestas are their customers. In other words Vestas would like to own the means of production of “wind energy” and thereby be able to set the price(s) for producing Windmills.

Vestas’ enterprise architecture team is located within the department for strategy and innovation and this is located in Vestas’ group IT. Apparently Vestas apply a model that includes four perspectives: 1) Innovation, 2) Roadmap, 3) Projects and last but not least 4) System Portfolio.

The Vestas’ Enterprise Architecture program is about “business and value adding activities”, or that is the opinion of the keynote speaker.

When working with enterprise architecture the keynote speaker presented the Vestas’ value management square, that most of all looks like a strategy map or balanced scorecard as Kaplan and Norton would define it.

“The way I see, we add value to the business is to have insight into what systems that the business would need” – Troels Fleckenstein (Week 22, 2011).

Vestas applies a framework that is known as the BSG-model in architecture. BSG stands for Business Service Group that is a sheet of paper detailing how the enterprise works. The documents details how the processes works in the enterprise. The BSGs are linked to the various enterprises processes in Vestas and as such the enterprise architects are working with modeling the architecture a long side the BSGs.

Besides the enterprise architects Vestas applies the title “domain architects” for individuals who have a specific knowledge on how the enterprise applies.

Vestas have made use of IBM, Accenture and other consultancies in order to develop their framework. In other words Vestas Wind Systems have developed a synthesis that hey apply in order to enable the systems.

According to the keynote speaker there aren’t any off-the-shelves process frameworks that Vestas was able to make use of.

“We are not such a box” – Troels Fleckenstein (Week 22, 2011).

Vestas applies Aris as a tool for modeling, but the keynote speaker has a rather controversial view on how the tool works which is represented in the quotation below:

“When speaking of Aris it is quite clear it has been developed by German engineers. It is not made for white people” – Troels Fleckenstein (Week 22, 2011).

Vestas’ IT fundamentals deals with providing fast prototyping, innovation lab, enabling agility, “show me – do it”, safeguard end-to-end transparency of business processes, partnering with the business and providing enterprise architecture to guarantee reliability.

It seems like the approach to Enterprise Architecture that Vestas makes use of, is dealing with communication on how the enterprise can deal with the problems and how the enterprise is able to deal with the problem.

When it comes to the focus on governance and advice Vestas have applied boards for processes, BPS community, Vestas Government and SteerCo where a representative from Group IT (and thereby a representative for the Enterprise Architecture group) is represented. The boards usually handles investments, strategy and innovation, program and projects. One of the many interesting things that Vestas works with in their Enterprise Architecture program is “the line of sight”.

“I’m not a particular big fan of frameworks since they tend to distract us from the communication side of EA and the value adding part of EA” – Troels Fleckenstein (Week 22, 2011).

While educating the enterprise architects Vestas applies an approach where they send their architects to Gartner summits and certification modules. However they haven’t made use of TOGAF or other approaches to Enterprise Architecture.

When Vestas works with IT forecasts they usually take in consultants from Gartner and other consultancies to give the various stakeholders in Group IT ideas on what kind of IT the enterprise should invest in.

Obviously Vestas experiences situations of when and where to break away from their own Enterprise Architecture standards. The way the keynote speaker presented the issue it seemed like that it is based on “intuition” and what the “business” defines as a necessity to cope with. The keynote speaker used an example from the implementation of the windmills and how the various committees dealt with the particular problem.

  • Vestas’ is a rather complex enterprise that have developed its own framework to deal with its architecture.
  • The Enterprise Architecture program is owned by the IT department, or at least it appeared that way while the VP presented the situation.
  • The IT and EA agents are represented in various investment and governance boards in Vestas Wind Systems.

Qualiware Enabling Positive Change

The CEO of Qualiware, Kuno Brodersen, acted as keynote speaker on knowledge management and modeling.

The keynote speaker was of the opinion that the modeling of the change processes is a vital key to success, since the model can help the decision makers and individuals in the enterprise to focus on particular areas of attention.

The keynote speaker was of the opinion that many modern enterprises shares the same view on how the management model. In Denmark most enterprises agrees upon that the Scandinavian management model is the best way to achieve.

A fundamental part of the Scandinavian management model. According to Kuno Brodersen, social capital is what enterprises gains when the social systems solves problems.

There are several factors that impacts the concept of social capital e.g. the individual factors, job factors, group factors, company factors.

In reality these factors have to be included when you measure enterprises and their ability to deal go beyond the expected approach to achieve their individual goals.

“The point of modeling tools is that knowledge from the individual actors in the enterprise are modeling and archived in the model” – Kuno Brodersen (Week 22, 2011).

While implementing the modeling tools it becomes a necessity to involve all of the employees, understand knowledge sharing, we have to focus to create transparent management systems and the system has to facilitate distribution of decision making.

It seemed like that CEO Kuno Brodersen was a bit skeptical about the Gartner Group and their approach to information technology and Enterprise Architecture, though he chose to apply one of their models in order to define the “new way of thinking” in Enterprise IT and Enterprise Architecture.

In the future it becomes a necessity to know how the social networks and the way people interact in social networks in order to facilitate knowledge sharing.

Technology trends will have an even greater impact on how knowledge sharing can be facilitated. In the future modeling software trends like the “Like” feature or comments on the various artifacts. Likewise will the concept of rating most likely be implemented in modern modeling tools.

Features from the social networks will in time be incorporated in to the modeling tools, or this is perspective that Kuno Brodersen presented. The reason for this is that it can be used as a form for “information filtering” and “quality insurance”.

“One of the best qualities of an Enterprise Architecture program is that the various models can be viewed by various stakeholders in the enterprise, and as such this can be used to define the enterprise ontology” – Kuno Brodersen (Week 22, 2011).

The QualiWare EA Framework is an organization of artifacts, but according to Kuno Brodersen, graduate students who are about to start writing on their master thesis could or should think on how the Enterprise Architecture framework represents the “social capital”, social networks, and social knowledge.

Kuno Brodersen presented the QualiWare analytics approach to artifacts and modeling that was build like a balanced scorecard that could be used in order to define how KPIs are aligned with the various processes. As such the data that should be represented in the QualiWare models should be collected from the data warehouses and business intelligence systems, this should add value to the platform for enterprise ontology. His approach to business intelligence and knowledge sharing, Kuno Brodersen, applied a rather positivistic approach and as such this seemed slightly in contrast to his initial approach on the Scandinavian management school; however he did emphasize that the business intelligence approach should be used with caution.

Gamification is “the new black” and it will become part of the modeling tools, or at least this is the views that Kuno Brodersen presented. E.g. Qualiware as a modeling tool has a “treasure hunt” game embedded in the modeling tool in order to train or motivate people in order to make people learn about the new models, processes and activities.

  • New tools are needed to document and deal with knowledge.
  • Enterprise ontology is a part of knowledge management.
  • In engaging the various stakeholders in learning more about the enterprise’s architecture the concept of gamification should be introduced into new products.

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating

Olov Östberg was the keynote speaker. As such his presentation dealt with e-government and changing social and technological systems in Sweden.

In his presentation Olov Östberg showed dias that stated that only 18% of IT projects are delivered on time and that are succesfull and he put this in light of the Swedish approach to e-government.. Through time (about 300 years) the Swedish approach to government has resulted into very independent public agencies.

There have been different approaches in order to deal with the data that the Swedish government has collected over time. In the 90s and the early 2000s the focus was onto developing portals.

From his experience there are three levels of e-government that should be dealt with in the future. Government 1.0 is the classical approach, the second level is dealing with more communication and at some point slightly more openness and the third and last level deals with engaging the citizen as a co-creator.

The Swedish approach to e-government includes a rather liberal approach to how the local agencies handles its processes. As such it can become increasingly difficult to implement one approach to Enterprise Architecture. Likewise did the national authorities (the Swedish government) refused to install a national CIO, national roadmap or for that matter a national portal for data and information sharing.

Olov Östberg presented various initiatives on how the Swedish approach to e-government dealt with common problems like insufficient road maintenance, electricity etc.

“We have to realize that the foundation of Swedish society is changing.” – Olov Östberg.

Week 22 Enterprise Architecture Summer Camp

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This blog post deals with first day at the summer camp for Enterprise Architecture in Week 22 that was held in Denmark at the IT University of Copenhagen. The participants were mostly students. The tagline for this event is “Scandinavian Design and Oblique Angles”. The summer school had five keynotes that mainly dealt with how Enterprise Architecture could be applied under various conditions like everything from contract negotiations to Enterprise Architecture in the arctic circle to the concept of developing models for an Enterprise Architecture program.

The Agile Standard Contract

Kasper Hoegsberg, a student at the e-business line at the IT University of Copenhagen, presented his views on how the public standard contract for IT purchases could be updated.

His reasons to start investigating with standard contracts are based on that the new project models are with in the sphere agile development which is a change from the old approach to the contracts that emphasized the old waterfall model. While conducting his project he found out that the current approach for developing a contract was to fill out 10 documents before the contract could be considered value.

According to Kasper Hoegsberg the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency tried to combine the waterfall approach and the agile approach to develop a system that doesn’t seem that particular smart. Hoegsberg referred to the British DSDM – Aterm contract framework and the Norwegian agile standard contract PS-2000 as examples that in his opinion could outmatch the current approach that the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency has applied.

According to Hoegsberg the focus of the Norwegian contract doesn’t include a particular methodology and as such only includes an agile contract.

In his opinion further studies on how to make better contracts for development and delivery can be developed.

Complexity and Enterprise Architecture

Peter Flemming Teunissen Sjoelin presented some of observations he had made during the time he worked with his master thesis. The presentation had the tagline “Complexity in Development of Models for Enterprise Architecture”. In the presentation Peter Flemming Teunissen Sjoelin explained the concept of complexity, Enterprise Architecture, knowledge management and the mad scientist syndrome.

The focus that Peter Flemming Teunissen Sjoelin applied was that repositories, process models and a like are only representations of reality. The ideas presented in the presentation was based on the concept that the students and later on the future Enterprise Architects should thinking that social-constructivist paradigm might aid them with the investigation of how the various stakeholders in the enterprises thinks and acts.

  • Probe your view of the things.
  • Act upon the stakeholders suggestions.
  • Keep your models simple, you shouldn’t assume that your models or repositories can be understood by all of the stakeholders.
  • Models can’t contain reality. Models are just simplified representations of how the world works.

Value Estimation of Enterprise Architecture

Mikkel S. Holst and Tue W. Steensen works with their master thesis that deals with the value estimation of Enterprise Architecture. Their hypothesis is “How Enterprise Architecture becomes successful” and as such they base that further three hypothesis on how the Enterprise Architecture program can be aligned with the corporate strategy and corporate process.

Their theoretical approach to their master thesis has been based on Ross & Weill, Hoogervorst, Kaplan and Norton and many others.

Their master thesis includes three cases studies that the two students are conducting. Two of the case studies are within the public sector and one is the private sector.

In their approach to explore the value of Enterprise Architecture the students have made use of an article by Toomas Tamm et al. from 2011.

John Gotze advised the students to investigate how to “show the value” of the Enterprise Architecture program and how this impacts the organization. The two students plan to hand in their master thesis in August 2011.

Systems Thinking for Health – IT

The two students Linda Praestholm and Rasmus Frost have a loosely coupled approach to collaboration on the topic systems thinking in the public sector, or what is to be known as “Health – IT”.

The two students chose to work with the National Electronic Patient Journal systems and how these where implemented in the capital region of Denmark.

According to Linda Praestholm who have worked with Enterprise Architecture from a positivistic approach and she has come to conclusion that EA is a driver for making rational decisions, being more effective and effectiveness. As such these are the goals for the management and governance method for the enterprise.

Their investigation have included the Hilleroed Hospital, The Kingdom Hospital (Rigshospitalet) and Bisbebjerg Hospital. Their approach to Enterprise Architecture has mainly been based on that the various hospitals should have implemented new business processes in order to achieve some synergies with IT.

Soeren Duus advised the students to investigate what particular perspective to put onto their ideas of what Enterprise Architecture is all about and how it has been applied, or how it could be applied in order to achieve some of the goals that the regions have defined for the various hospitals.

Enterprise Architecture on Greenland (Arctic Architecture)

The three students Lars C. Meden, Soeren Tams and Fredrik Krog have visited Greenland in order to collect data on how to deal with the concept of Enterprise Architecture in a country that is significantly different from the industrialized part of the world. The focus of their thesis has been on how to improve the service the public sector provides to the population on Greenland.

The situation on Greenland includes the focus on few resources e.g., few employees and economy, a big diversity between the organizations and a big IT architecture related diversity.

According to the three students the autonomous government of Greenland should have the resources to implement a functional approach to Enterprise Architecture.

One of the challenges in governing Greenland is that it very expensive for the population to travel from one part of Greenland to the other, and likewise does it make communication among the various local authorities rather difficult. As a result of this the autonomous government of Greenland has started a process of implementing video conferencing.

The students focused on how to deal with the municipalities of Greenland and how their particular strategies could be dealt with through applying Enterprise Architecture.

Another barrier for implementation of Enterprise Architecture on Greenland is the lack of a competent local workforce. If the public sector on Greenland has to be able to identify how the various artifacts and as such it doesn’t seem like the local workforce have access to the particular education, or training in the moment. The three students questioned the suitability of implementing an Enterprise Architecture program across the various organizations in the Greenlandic public sector due to the resistance among the local organizations, that might feel that their independence is threatened by a centralized approach to Enterprise Architecture.