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

The Clean Security Corporation

15 10 2009

This case is build upon a case example. The name of case organization has altered to avoid legal problems. The case will focus on how to identify various architectures and how Enterprise Architecture toolkits influenced the Coherency Management Maturity (CMM).
The case organization is build upon a service company that mainly provides other companies with cleaning services and security e.g., night guards and alarms to keep burglars out.
The service organization has had many forms since it was founded in the end of the 19th century. The organization has had various forms of services and divisions which have been sold or in other ways shutdown when the organization has discovered that they no longer profitable for the company operate. A few years ago the organization understood that it might be better to spin off divisions to become independent instead of selling them. This decision was backed by the stockholders and the top management.
This lead to that the organization had to go through the basic steps of articulating how their processes worked and how IT assisted the processes. For this the company hired an external consultancy which used an Enterprise Architecture toolkit.
For this the consultants understood became aware of that a lot of the processes in the organization weren’t build on assumptions which worked well while the organization was in the early phases in its life cycle and within the early phases of the marked maturity cycle.

The Outcome of the Report
The consultants articulated their findings in the final report to the management in the organization. The report came to the conclusion that it would be most efficient if the company went through a Business Process Re-Engineering effort. That meant that each of the high impact processes had to be identified and all subprocesses had to be aligned to them. Each of the processes had to be enabled by IT so as many of the processes could be automated and the employees could use their time and energy to work with more profitable (π) processes or projects. That meant that the structure of the organization had to be altered as well and eventually also the tasks the people of the organization had to take care of.
The first EA project was commissioned to the Chief Information Officer who was in charge of IT maintenance and IT development in the organization. Besides that then the CIO had the overall responsibility for the IT Organization.
The IT organization started with a consolidation of the fragmented systems that supported the cleaning division and the security division. The IT department came to the obvious conclusion that the security division and the cleaning division had  very different processes and vary different ways to handle various was of 1) administration, 2) deployment and 3) Contract negotiation. Besides that the organization had a lot of different ways to communicate. The cleaning division had regional and local offices where the employees gathered and where coordinated where the security department had two offices located in the business areas and most of the information was communicated by telephone to the teams who handled the various clients.
The CIO and the IT department came to conclusion that the organization needed to be reformed and yet the IT systems had to be designed on the same platform (ERP system) but the processes of each of the divisions had to be configured for the particular usage.
The CIO presented his proposal to the board directors and the Chief Executive Officer. The CEO supported the idea and the project was officially initiated by the CEO and the top management. The top management wanted quick victories to show the stockholders that they did their duty to the organization and performed above expectations.

The Transformation
The processes started with the various IT systems where analyzed and all data was backed up and moved to a prototype area which would be used to convert the data so the data could be inserted into the new information systems. The prototype systems proved to be sufficient for the first tests of the ERP systems. The first tests proved to be satisfying. However the users who where invited to take place while the systems had to be designed where of many different user levels and none of them could easily picture the deployment of the new processes and how to interact with the new information system.
Thereto it proved that the language used in the user interface was too complex and often it didn’t cover what the users thought they should insert into the interface. This lead to that the final time plan for the project had to be postponed until the prototype proved to be successful. The issues with the user interface lead to a redesign so the interface was designed to be different with a different language for the two major divisions (cleaning and security).
The second prototype proved to be more understandable for the users and the processes was in some way represented as the employees and middle managers understood them. However the employees and the managers were of the opinion that the system could be better if the workflow of the ERP system worked with the various under accounts and the workflow of the subprocesses and task descriptions could be defined better.
The prototype period became a fundamental architecture for the organization since the members of the organization and the IT department made use of tools to articulate the processes, structure and IT used in the organization.

The Deployment of IT and Processes
After the modifications of the standard ‘off the shelves’ system so it supported the underlying architecture the system was rapidly deployed in the organization. This meant that the organization had to apply training for the employees and managers of the organization. This meant that the new systems had to go through an education period and extensive testing. The knowledge about the system was originally implicit in the persons. These persons spread the knowledge to other persons  by showing, talking and train them. The persons who started to test and work the system articulate then it was articulated into books, reports and manuals which was read and professionalized by other testers and persons who worked with the system in practice out in the two primary divisions. The persons who worked was about to work with the system read the manuals and reports etc. which gained knowledge from the reports and manuals and diffused the knowledge  to other persons to the organization.
Besides the knowledge process in the organization then the company had to organize its processes in a new way so the processes all in all where designed smarter and resulted in better agility and more resources to gain competitive advantage. The organization of processes led to a slightly decrease in productivity in the first two quarters after day zero. This led to some criticism from the press which influenced the stock price and by that the equity of the company. The top management chose to stand firm on the project since they realized that the organization had invested heavily in the project and therefore there would be “no going back” especially after the processes had been aligned with the new information systems. Some other organizations had tried similar projects but they had not realized the great potential of recycle the components of the system to enhance the spin off organizations.

The Outcome
The first EA / business IT – alignment project led to that the organization had their first approach to how improve the processes and how to work smarter it also led to that the organization became aware of their architecture. The project led to the organization reached its foundation architecture (the basic step of maturity). The project led to the management and stockholders understood the need to become more mature to go for the extended architecture where the business managers make use of EA tools to redesign their business.


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Categories : Alignment, Business, Organization

How to Identify Architectures?

8 10 2009

Every organization has an architecture otherwise it wouldn’t be possible for the organization to do business or transform raw materials into products or labour power into services.

However the Coherency Architect has to focus on how to identify the architecture in a methodical way so the Coherency Architect can make develop a functional approach on how to define potential coherence related problems and how to mature the architecture so the organization will make progress and work in a smarter way to reach the goals of the organization (those defined in the official strategy).

To identify the various problems then the Soft Systems Methodology or the Work System Method which can be used to collect data about the architecture in a systematic way. If the Coherency Architect doesn’t make use of a systematic approach then it is likely that he or she will miss potential flaws, errors, dangers etc. that might have a great impact on how good the coherence of the organization is.

There are two general approaches the Coherency Architect can make use of to identify the processes in the organization. The first one is the so called exhaustive approach that deals with the Coherency Architect identify all the processes in the organization and create plans for them. The second one is called the “high – impact” approach that deals with that the Coherency Architect deals with identifying the core processes in the architecture (organization). To start with then it might be preferable for the Coherency Architect to deal with the core processes and then adapt the Coherency Program to alter them.

Besides the two above mentioned methodologies then the organization can make use of various techniques such as the rich picture and flowcharts to analyze how the various elements in the organization impact the general outcome of the organization.

An example of a functional approach to analyze an architecture could be that the Coherency Architect made use of a qualitative data collection method which means that the Coherency Architect would go an observe and interview potential members of the organization. The members have to be put located various places in the organization so the Coherency Architect can create the best overview of the organization as possible. When the first round of interviews have been collected and processed then Coherency Architect should go observe the members of the organization perform their daily tasks and identify how the raw materials are transformed into products or services. The Coherency Architect should especially focus on how the various linked processes interact use this view to identify potential problems with the coherency of the processes. When these problems have been identified then it is likely that the Coherency Architect should make use of either the SSM or the WSM methodologies. These methodologies are used to create an understanding of what is happening within the system. However it is notable that the two methodologies belongs to two different paradigms which view the world very differently.

The Work System Method belongs to the “functional paradigm” where the Soft Systems Methodology belongs to the “interpretive paradigm”. The two paradigms are defined by Burrell and Morgan (1979) in their article dealing with sociological paradigms and organizational analysis.
The functionalist paradigm works with the idea that the architect will collect the needed data and then come to a conclusion based on his or her own world view. The interpreting paradigm works with the idea that the architect has to facilitate the different world views in the organization and thereby assist the members of the organization with developing a solution e.g., a new work system, information system or a third solution.

The two paradigms will lead to various kinds of conclusions and of which there might be opposing. It is therefore vital that the Coherency Architect is able to identify the limits of his or her own world view and identify how the members of the organization thinks and acts according to their world views. If the Coherency Architect makes use of the wrong approach then his or her suggested solutions might turn out to be out of touch with how the organization assume its business works and the solution will be turned down.

When the Coherency Architect has gone through this process then he or she will be able to identify one of the three different forms of architecture an organization might have. As mentioned earlier then every organization has an architecture.

Doucet et al. (2009) identifies three possible architectures. The first one is the architecture of an organization before an EA (enterprise architecture) toolkits have been applied. The architecture is called the articulated architecture.

The more mature architecture is called extended architecture where the EA toolkits has been applied for the IT side and some of the processes at the business side has been identified and is making use of EA principles.

The most mature architecture is called the embedded architecture where the EA principles are embedded into every business and IT project. Doucet et al (2009) defines this state as where the EA grid is put into practice and where all project, processes and sides of the business work with practices from EA and therefore have achieved the goal of Coherency Management.

To summarize then the Coherency Architect has to focus on:

  1. The methodology used to collect data.
  2. The paradigm the Coherency Architect make use of to identify issues with the Coherency of the processes, structure, people, tasks and technology within the organization.
  3. The world view the Coherency Architect make use of when he or she develops his or her coherent solutions for the organization.
  4. The states of the architectures in the organization and how to reach them.

Sources

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

* Burrell, G., & Morgan, G. Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis (1979).


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Categories : Business, Discipline, Organization, Up in Time

How Coherency Management Impacts Knowledge Management

1 10 2009

The Coherency Architect has to take knowledge into account when the architecture of the organization is to be upgraded. The reason for this is that the key to develop the architecture of any organization is the members (Managers and Employees) of the organization. Most knowledge is implicit meaning that the knowledge is embedded in the brains of the members of the organization. This means that if the members choose to leave the organization then the knowledge will follow them. Knowledge can be diffused from individual to individual, from written sources to an individual and by members who modify and enrich the written sources to others who enrich them.
To represent this point of view then it is feasible to make use of Nonaka’s framework (see illustration 1).

Nonaka's Framework

Nonaka's Framework

The SECI model deals with that all knowledge is made by individuals, the individual share his or her knowledge with other individuals (first quadrant) in order to diffuse knowledge then it has to be articulated e.g., in papers, reports, books, blogs, videos or podcasts or other media (second quadrant). When knowledge is diffused then there are individuals who can enrich it by adding to the articulated knowledge (third quadrant). Individuals then read the papers, reports, books, blogs or watch the videos or listen to the audio and then by that learns how to make use of the knowledge and by that makes the knowledge implicit (fourth quadrant).

As before mentioned then the members of the organization are key in relation to the development of the organization architecture. Which means that the members of the organization have to be enabled to share their knowledge with one another and they would need some incentives to do so.
It is notable that economic incentives for sharing knowledge almost certainly will lead to that the cost for knowledge will increase and yet it will lead to that at some point then the members will stop sharing their knowledge and eventually when they have received all the incentives the organization can provide them with then will stop sharing knowledge.
E.g., who might want four company cellphones that are exactly a like or two company cars or multiple company paid DSL connections etc.?
To avoid this situation then the Coherency Architect has to understand the organization culture and thereto the Coherency Architect has to influence the organization culture so it becomes a necessity to motivate the members of the organization to make use of the IT tools (web 2.0) and to share their knowledge with the rest of the organization.
To enable the members of the organization to share their knowledge then the Coherency Architect has to empower the members and by that focus on moving the organization typology towards the adhocracy (Primary coordination is mutual adjustment) or towards the professional bureaucracy (primary coordination form is the skills the individual member has). Thereto should the organization should give the employees the resources to form communities of practice where they can go and communicate, work with and share the knowledge. It is notable that Coherency Architect or for that matter the organization can’t go in and interfere in the process which will lead to the members of the communities will lose their interest in working in the communities.
To make knowledge management coherent with other processes in the organization then the Coherency Architect should work with how the business processes can be supported by 1) decentralization and empowerment, 2) how IT can enable the members to break down the barriers in the organization (so the knowledge can flow freely), 3) how a functional compensation system should be designed (cultural based) so it enforces the urge to share knowledge and 4) deployment of communities of practice (winning trust among the members of the organization and providing the necessary support) and continuously align the primary business processes to the knowledge sharing processes.
The Coherency Architect has to think in new terms to ensure that the organization achives its goal in a smarter way which means that the work processes have to be obliterated and designed to interact with the technology new and smarter processes; however it is notable that the Coherency Architect has to understand that if the members of the organization finds the changes undesirable then they will reject the processes and work against them and key employees will eventually grow discontent and leave the organization taking the knowledge with them.


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Categories : Alignment, Business, Knowledge Management, Organization

The Impact of IT

28 09 2009

When an organization implements new IT based solutions e.g., Information Systems then it is likely that the organization has to adapt the technology before the system can be made use of.
The adaption process of the innovation includes how the people in the organization relates to the innovation (in this case the information system or IT based solution). This means that the organization has to alter its business processes so they align with technology to gain an advantage by using the technology.
Leavitt’s diamond is a model which can identify how the organizational systems will be influenced by the implementation.
The model make use of four different perspectives:

  1. People: These are the employees of the organization. They are usually organized in teams/groups, departments or divisions.
  2. Tasks: These are the problems or situations of which the processes are designed to handle.
  3. Technology: This deals with IT (hardware, software, network) and machinery.
  4. Structure: This deals with the organization structure.

The above mentioned perspectives are interlinked (see the illustration) which means when e.g., a new software based information system is implemented then it will effect the structure, the employees (people) and the tasks (processes).
If we assume that an information system is implemented then it is possible it was implemented to cope with a problem the organization has encountered.

Business/Technology

Business/Technology

This problem might be that the organization wants to become more flexible when it comes to cost reduction or production. We can therefore assume that the Coherency Architect has collaborated with the CIO (and in mature organizations also a governance committee) and has articulated a business case which support the “purchase” of the software or the hardware and the Coherency Architect should therefore be able to articulate a strategy for how the organization structure (and which is supposed to aid the architecture) is supposed to be implemented. This would include the process design to support the new and smarter way the organization will work.
Likewise is it assumable that the organization wants to achieve its goal in a smarter way and that leads to the change in organization. As mentioned in “Coherency Management and Organizations” then the managers and the employees have a great impact on if they adapt the information system (the change) or if they choose to fight it. A key method to avoid the management and employee confrontations is to involve both parties in the development process which needs to be a part of the Systems Development Life Cycle and System Life Cycle.
When the structure of the organization is changed, then the constellation of the employees will change, then the tasks would change as well.  The changes will lead to a need to change the technology in the organization it supports the new processes if not obliterate them and forces the managers and employees to work smarter.
As you might have noted then the processes have to be altered significantly to make the organization gain any advantages. This can be done by automizing of highly manual processes and thereby free the managers and the employees to work on more profitable tasks and thereby make them use their skills to achieve the goals of the organization in a smarter way. This will in the long run enable a competitive advantage.
It is therefore a necessity to take care of the processes, structure and tasks when technology is about to be implemented in the organization.


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Categories : Alignment, Business

Coherency Initiation Plan

25 09 2009

Coherency Management has its focus on how to make the organizations work smarter. By that the business processes have to be altered which will leads to changes in the Information Systems and changes in the organization hierarchy.

When such changes occur then the employees and the managers have to work together in a different way which means that the organization culture and the organization subcultures will be challenged. Thereto such projects needs support from the top and middle management and various other stakeholders to succeed.

Since Coherency Management can’t be achieved in one single project and the organization has to develop its architecture (and coherency) over time then the program has to be continuous where various projects are defined and implemented over time.

To be able to win over the guiding coalitions then a Coherency Initiation Plan has to articulated. The Coherency Initiation Plan has to consist of these elements:

  1. A Stakeholder Analysis and Plan.

  2. A Plan for coping with the political struggles within the organization (the opposing factions)

  3. A Communication Plan.

  4. Lobbying for further change e.g., to the management, stock owners or other internal as well as external stakeholders e.g., via the press.

When the “Coherency Initiation Plan” has been articulated then it is necessary to work with how the organization is designed in the way culture, technology, processes, structure and management interact and how they create value for the organization.

The Coherency Architect has to take this into account and therefore should the “owners” of the processes be won over to believe that they can and will gain by the process changes. As mentioned in Coherency and Organizations then the employees and the managers are key to success. This means that the Coherency Architect has to make sure that he or she understands how the various departments, employees and managers influence the processes in the organization. This can be achieved by the Coherency Architect map the processes in the organization and identifies which departments that handles the various subprocesses and then investigate who are in charge of the processes. The processes can be identified by using a flowchart diagram. The persons who are in charge needs to be involved in the process change e.g., by applying the Soft Systems Methodology or the Coherency Architect use extensive interviews to form a qualified opinion.

It is important that the Coherency Architect continues to communicate to the stakeholders so the funding and the support in form of goodwill towards the Coherency Program are kept intact.

To investigate how the organization can create value then it is necessary for the Coherency Architect to investigate how the architecture of the company is designed. Remember that the point of Coherency Management is to make the organization reach its goals in a smarter way and therefore should the Coherency Architect work with several different tools to investigate the processes, organization culture, organization structure, management and technology (some proposals for how to do so will be handled in a future blog post).


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Categories : Innovation, Organization

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