Innovation in an Enterprise Architecture Context: Innovating the Business Processes, Technological Services and Corporate Strategies.

Posted on June 13, 2011

Innovation

This blog post deals with innovation in regards to the Enterprise Architecture program. I’ve been able to identify two different approaches to innovation. The first approach to innovation is what I define as incremental innovation. The second approach to innovation is radical innovation. In most cases incremental innovation is innovation in social systems where small improvements have been introduced to the social systems.

Likewise is radical innovations forms of innovations that fundamentally changes the social systems e.g. how they work or how they interact with one another.

Likewise is the concept of innovation extremely context dependable. For one social system a particular approach could be considered an innovation where the same concept could be considered old news. Innovation, could as before mentioned, be incremental saying that a new way to deal with the piece of technology or business activity. Likewise could the same situation be radical if the technology never had been used before.

When it comes to innovation and applying it in the context of the enterprise the question of adaption would have to be dealt with.

Adaption

Rogers speaks of how the innovations spreads to the various organizations, parts of the organizations and people. In this process there are five stages before the people of the enterprise would be able to fully apply any given form of innovation.

Innovation defused by that people observer other people who have success by applying the particular innovation in order to solve problems or to certain things in a new way that benefits them and their social structures.

Social systems shares a culture that is shared among the individuals who interact with the social systems. The purpose of the culture is to give the members of the enterprise a sense of security against the ever changing environment that the members of the enterprise is situated in. Culture is usually against changes and thereby against innovations. However there are also cases that suggests that culture can be used to enable the enterprise with innovation if the executives and middle management gives the employes the proper amount of trust.

In other words Enterprise Architecture has to be adapted to the enterprise that is about to invest in the program and as such the Enterprise Architecture program can be seen as an incremental innovation and a radical innovation depending on how the decision makers and the stakeholders sees the implementation process.

Innovation and EA

In regards to enterprise innovation the focus of Enterprise Architecture would be to deal with the processes in the enterprise. For enterprises the idea of incremental innovation would be dealing with the processes in small steps while radical innovations would be innovations that are “game changing” for the enterprise. In this particular light it is a necessity to see Enterprise Architecture as a form of continuous innovation for the enterprise and as such a container for future innovations and as such can the Enterprise Architecture program become a barrier for the innovativeness of the enterprise.

It easily become a fine act of balancing between the rules, standards and principles and the necessity to crystalize solutions for the various unplanned situations that the enterprise experience. Ciborra named this the concept of bricolage (or organizational hacking). In order to facilitate bricolage it is a necessity for the decision takers to empower the employees of the enterprise by allocating power and accountability to the middle managers or the employees. As such this should give the enterprise the necessary platform in order to make bricolage works.

Innovation in this context could be facilitated by the various stakeholders of the enterprise and through the Enterprise Architecture program the concept of innovation could empower the alignment and the agility of the enterprise.

Enterprise Architecture

So what is Enterprise Architecture all about? I’ve chosen to define Enterprise Architecture as a program that deals with the various projects that the enterprise works with in order to change its architecture. However this can not serve as a definition since it doesn’t include some of the most important elements of Enterprise Architecture. Enterprise Architecture as a concept includes an element of documentation of the current architecture of the enterprise (known as the AS – IS situation) and an element that deals with how the future architecture of the enterprise should be like (the To – Be situation). Different communities of practice within the ecosystem of Enterprise Architecture practitioners sees the concept of Enterprise Architecture differently e.g. some sees Enterprise Architecture as a set of processes that constantly ensures some alignment through the implementation of processes and others who sees Enterprise Architecture as a form of blueprinting that ensures that the enterprise develops in to a coherent entity. There are most likely different views of what Enterprise Architecture is all about in the various communities in the ecosystem, and it is almost certain that each book that have been published on Enterprise Architecture works with its own definition of the concept.

My definition of Enterprise Architecture is in this context that Enterprise Architecture (as a concept) consists of a program for documentation of the enterprise’s architecture, a program for identification, specification and development of projects that enable the enterprise to achieve its goals. Likewise does the concept of Enterprise Architecture include the development of standards and principles that are used to govern the enterprise on all levels. When this is said the last component that add to the definition of what Enterprise Architecture is all about is the concept of enterprise governance.

Enterprise governance has to ensure that the enterprise achieves its goals and the goals can only be achieved if there is some kind of innovation in the enterprise. Innovation should in this context be understood as an ability to alter the various parameters of the enterprise.

The Synthesis

I’ve with some inspiration from Leavitt (1965) and his diamond model defined my own model that shows what Enterprise Architecture is all about. Enterprise Architecture is the platform for how the organization executes the business objectives, business processes and technology services. As such the holistic approach to deal with the elements of tasks, business objectives and technology services will have an impact on what kind of employees that would be needed in order to ensure that the enterprise can produce products and services to its customers. Each of the elements impacts the other elements and as such the decision makers (executives, middle managers, team leaders or anarchies) have to deal with the problems through the Enterprise Architecture platform and program.

People are the key when it comes to the breakdown of the classical barriers in the organizational hierarchy and as such it becomes a necessity to deal with people in order to achieve a better and more mature enterprise architecture. It becomes a necessity to deal with the focus of who the enterprise have access to and how the various stakeholders of the enterprise can add to the innovativeness of the enterprise.

While the enterprise adds value through producing products and services to its customers. The various stakeholders in the enterprise do some kind of bricolage or organizational hacking. The concept of organizational hacking can’t be dealt with in any other way and as such most of this “hacking” helps the organization deal with the everyday crisis and as such the Enterprise Architecture program (principles, standards and security) has to take this into consideration and find the balance between hacking and standardization.

While implementing an Enterprise Architecture program the decision makers would have to ensure that incremental innovation isn’t neglected or for that matter locked due to the approach to standards and principles. Likewise should the decision makers work with the concept of bricolage in their assumptions of planning, and as such they should embrace that two, three or five year plans can’t lead to competitive advantages.

Week 22 Enterprise Architecture Summer Camp (Day 2)

Posted on June 1, 2011

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

Posted on May 31, 2011

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.

Holistic Management in a Context of Enterprise IT Management and Organizational Leadership

Posted on May 19, 2011

An Approach to Sense Making and Intelligent Business

There are probably many different ways to gain sense in each of the many different enterprises and organizations across the planet. This particular paper investigates one particular approach question the validity of the data and the selected approaches to articulate strategies and plans. This should give you (the reader) an idea on how to develop better plans that in turn would give the enterprise a better system.

In order to make proper decisions on how to develop the enterprise it becomes a necessity for the enterprise to deal with the question of sense making. How does the specialists and systems that have been applied in order to analyze data from the enterprise’s environment? How does the systems adapt to the trends the data indicates might be developing? How do the specialists question and tests the data they have collected and analyzed?

The three step approach to organizational learning and data collection is in its origin based on Weick’s approach, though I’ve taken some liberty in order to create a synthesis in order to specify the ideas that Weick presented in his book (Making Sense of the Organization, 2000) to an Enterprise Architecture approach in order to enable enterprises with crystallizing competitive advantages. By crystallizing competitive advantages the enterprises could avoid situations that in other cases would have forced out of business. This leads to the first part of the process that Karl Weick introduced in his book.

Scanning for Data

It is of importance of all enterprises to scan its environment in order to gain an understanding of how the stakeholders (competitors, suppliers, government etc.) will be acting in potential future scenario. This is usually a rather good component in articulating a corporate strategy and all of the subsequent strategies like the IT strategy, financial strategy, organization planning etc.

The scanning process includes the situation for the internal environment and for the external environment. The internal environment consists of an other set of stakeholders than with the external environment, but these are just as important. Likewise is the internal environment connected to the the external environment.

The data is usually based on several different sources and as such the data that the specialists and systems collects are of different qualities and as such the data and their sources have to be questioned. The questioning is in a way a process to ensure that the specialists who collects the data should question the ways they identify the data and how to be able to deal with the way the data is analyzed. This is discussed in detail in the interpretation.

Interpretation

While analyzing the data the specialists works with a validation technique that in turn tries to investigate how or if the enterprise can make use of the data. The interpretation is likewise a fundamental element in the way the data is applied in the strategy development process.

The interpretation can be used to ensure that the strategies could be easier to implement, and as such the strategies could lead to the desired state of the enterprise. As such the focus of the planning would have to avoid what Mintzberg (Mintzbegr 2009) defines as the planning school, that is characterized by applying a lot of resources to the articulation of planning but as such it usually emphasize planning too much and implementation too little.

Learning

The specialists and the systems would have to learn from the articulated strategies, otherwise will they fail in adapting to the new situations of the environment that they analyze.

The learning process is likely the most important step of the entire process since the enterprise’s specialists would have to adapt their analytical models to understand how the environment.

The result of the learning phase is in itself a form of knowledge sharing and it impacts the framework of how the enterprise operates.

Learning and knowledge sharing are two sides of the same issue and as such the specialists and decision makers have to think in how to transfer the knowledge to one another. For this a specialized repository can be applied. In order to share knowledge across the enterprise the individuals would have to a common understanding of what knowledge is about and who to interact within in order to gain access to the information and knowledge that they assume they would need in order to make better decisions and better plans for how the enterprise can gain competitive advantages.

In order to gan a further understanding of how the enterprise can create value through planning it becomes a necessity that the cycle is documented and the cycle is transparent for all of the stakeholders that interacts with top level planning.

The Cycle

The process is cyclic and that is essential that it is build upon a cyclic structure in order to the specialists to make their predictions more reliable. More reliable plans can be used by the decision makers to enable the enterprise to achieve its goals.

Furthermore can cycle be enhanced with the enterprise, if an Enterprise Architecture Program is established and that the decision makers makes use of the data that the Enterprise Architecture program has been able to produce.

The illustration below shows how the enterprises can make use of the sense making process to achieve a more coherent, better aligned and more agile enterprise. As it is illustrated the Enterprise Architecture Program is used to enable the decision makers to align the various conceptual sections of the enterprise. In the diagram below there are three conceptual sections of the enterprise. The decision makers articulate a strategy.

The experienced reader would note that the definition of what Enterprise Architecture impacts is derived form the EA3 Cube framework that Bernard (2005) proposed. The approach is based on the concept of Enterprise Engineering (Sjoelin 2011a) and as such it is the opinion of the author that the focus of the .

Assessing the Business Processes

The chief architect should evaluate the business processes, and it is a necessity to evaluate the primary business processes, business model/operating model (Ross & Weil 2009, Ross et al. 2006, Ross & Weill 2004, Finkelstein 2006) and support processes (Porter 1985).

In this particular paper the concept of primary processes is defined on what processes that are essential in order for the enterprise to deliver value to its customers. The chief architect should naturally apply a multi perspective analysis method to understand the underlying principles of the enterprise and its social systems. For this the chief architect and his associates (the enterprise architects, solution architects, business architects) should investigate the operating model and business model of the enterprise in order to gain an understanding of how the enterprise’s internal environment will change in the near future. The scanning of the internal environment should uncover the processes that aren’t fully supported by IT and the processes of which the enterprise would be able to identify a series of projects that could change the enterprise to a desired and more competitive enterprise.

The chief architect or one of his or her associates have identified which of the business processes that do support the business in achieving its goals. He or she would have to go into a process of identifying those processes that would have to be obliterated (Hammer 2000) (re-designed completely). In the process the chief architect and associates would have to re-thing the support processes in order to avoid the pitfalls of an unstructured and incoherent enterprise architecture.

The chief architect and his associates would have investigate how the various processes could be grouped and how the various projects can be implemented in order for the enterprise to harvest synergy. The primary business processes should be organized into “clusters” along side the support processes that clearly can be associated with each of the primary processes and as it has been mentioned earlier in this paper it is a necessity to organize the various business relates activities and processes in order to maximize the potential synergies. However there are some pitfalls that the chief architect and his associates might fall into for example is complexity a factor that can’t be ignored. The more complex a particular segment or domain of the enterprise is the more likely it is that the particular system in the enterprise can’t be generalized into an “Enterprise-Wide” platform, or rather the meaning of doing so is lesser relevant in the sense of information systems design.

Connect the Business Processes and the Information Systems

The chief architect and his associated would have to apply a structured methodology in order to ensure that the enterprise is able to establish and understand how the enterprise and its underlying architecture works. In this paper the author assume that this can be done through the establishment of a formal group that is in charge of investigating and defining the enterprise’s architecture. The method can be based on formal Enterprise Architecture framework and as such be a part of the structured methodology that the decision takers decides to apply.

The author’s definition of Enterprise Architecture is:

“Enterprise Architecture is a set of principles, standards and methods for achieving informed governance. The models derived from the standards and methods have an impact on how the enterprise is able to align each of the elements of the enterprise with one another. The alignment will enable enterprise governance and agility for adaption and assurance.” – Peter F. T. Sjoelin (2011a)

It is the author’s opinion that the framework is the set of standards that dictates how the various artifacts that would be documented and stored in the repository are to be defined. In other words the framework is alpha – omega in order lay the foundation for an enterprise ontology (Dietz 2006, Bernard 2005, Hoogervorst 2009).

The framework could eventually give the chief architect the advantage of winning over stakeholders that are skeptical towards the concept of Enterprise Architecture, and likewise does the author assume that the framework would have a significant impact on the value of the repository that contains the descriptions of the artifacts. The value is derived from how well the various stakeholders in the enterprise are able to connect to the repository and understand the value of these.

As earlier mentioned the author expressed his views on that business processes and IT rarely generates synergies due to the lack of obliteration of processes that were designed for the pre-computer and Internet age. It is necessity for the chief architect and his associates to investigate the enterprise’s current usage of information technology and information systems. The chief architect and his associates should be working with a methodology that documents the various information systems, platforms, applications, devices that the enterprise applies in order to provide the various stakeholders (executives, middle managers and employees) the proper information in order to make them understand how the social system works. The chief architect would have to make sure that the business processes and the information systems are evaluated before and after the change process has been initiated in order to give the decision makers the best possible overview of how the enterprise has changed after the implementation of the new approach to business processes and information systems.

It is the opinion of the author that in order to ensure that the enterprise would be able to gain an advantage in governance by focusing on the enterprise’s approach to investing in its technology, assets, people and systems (Potts 2008). The investment process is essentially the embodiment of both the corporate strategy, the IT strategy, the financial strategy etc. After the chief architect and his associates have worked with their analysis of the enterprise’s corporate strategy it is almost certain that a road map should be articulated so the focus could be shared among the members of the Enterprise Architecture group and later on among the various decision makers in the particular enterprise.

It is the author’s opinion that the investment approach would have to be connected with the the enterprise’s program management. It will become a necessity for the enterprise to deal with its approach to enterprise investments and program management since it is the decision makers who are responsible for the allocation of resources to the projects and systems that the enterprise are able to invest in the projects that will change the enterprise. According to Bernard the the enterprise would have to change by the many different projects alter and mature the architecture of the enterprise.

The author is of the opinion that the desired architecture (TO – BE) should be described in a transition plan that should be used as a document to communicate with the stakeholders and the decision makers in order to communicate and evaluate the each of the projects that would have to be allocated resources to and implementation of projects. Likewise is it the author’s opinion that the transition itself has to be guided by the principles that the chief architect and the decision makers have articulated.

As the author has mentioned earlier in this paper the complexity is a barrier that can’t be ignored if the synergies of enterprise architecture and enterprise governance should be harvested.

Group the Business Processes and the Information Systems

The social systems have to be identified and as such it becomes a necessity to group the systems into various domains of specialisms. Each of these domains would have to generate synergy among the social systems and the information systems in order to justify their existence. The domains are a necessity in order to cope with the question of complexity.

Complex organizations can very well own processes and departments that are specialized to the degree that it constitutes a silo. In those cases, the silos can’t be viewed as negative issue, as long as the employees, middle managers and executives in charge of the various processes communicate and interact with one another on regular basis.

In order to ensure that the changes by grouping the various information systems and social systems, the managers would have to allocated resources in order to facilitate communities of practices that would enable the stakeholders in the enterprise with understanding and adapting to the new situation in the enterprise. It is pivotal that the decision makers allows the various members of the enterprise to make use of their time at work and in the change process to form such social networks.

A community of practice is defined by Wenger (1999, p. 47) as “Such a concept of practice includes both the explicit and the tacit. It includes what is said and what is left unsaid; what is represented and what is assumed. It includes the language, tools, documents, images, symbols well-defined roles, specified criteria, codified procedures, regulations, and contracts that various practices make explicit for a variety of purposes”.

It is likewise a necessity to make use of the social networks to create an understanding of how the enterprise works since that would add value to the ontology of the enterprise.

The social networks are likewise pivotal in order to enable the change process that occurs within the enterprise, and as such the chief architect and the decision takers who are in charge of the enterprise have to identify change agents and motivate the various social networks to adapt to the changes and work alongside the goals that the decision takers have articulated for the enterprise. In this light the decision takers would have to trust that the members of the enterprise works for the best of the enterprise and to some extend allow the employees to self-organize and prioritize the various tasks at hand.

I would recommend a form of hybrid of a top down (Kotter 1995) and bottom up approach (Hamel 2007) to solve the problems with anchoring the changes in the enterprise. The approach is dealt with in detail in table 1: The suggested approach to change management.

Step	Description	Impact
1	Establishment of the an active network within the executive group.	The executive group and middle managers (who aspire to become executives).
2	Identification of change agents in the enterprise that would stay among middle managers and employees.	The entire enterprise and on all levels of the enterprise. There should be found agents as many places as possible.
3	Establishment of an office or department for internal communication in the enterprise. This office has to be located close to the change leader and his position so it is clear that what is sent to the employees in the organization is the words and intentions of the leading coalition.	The upper end of the middle management. Eventually it will impact the rest of the enterprise since the communication from this office should be directed to all parts of the enterprise.
4	Establishment of scope, goals and mission clearance. Stakeholder alignment is a necessity to create the proper dynamics.	The change coalition (all agents on all levels of the enterprise should be involved in this).
5	The change leader should make sure to attend meetings and conferences with the other managers on how the change effort is planned to impact the enterprise.	Executive group and middle management.
6	Plan workshops with employees that focus on identifying issues that needs to be dealt with in the particular devisions, departments, processes and projects.	All members of the enterprise.
7	Enable feedback channels where the executives, managers, and employees can report if departments or processes don’t work as intended. In this case IT / IS is a part of the concept of processes.	It will impact all levels of the enterprise in order to achieve that all members of the enterprise are able to add information to what needs to be re-configured.
9	Initiate the implementation process.	All members of the enterprise will be impacted as a result of the change program.
10	Keep on changing the architecture in order to achieve agility and adaption the changing environment of the enterprise.	In the long run it will impact all members of the enterprise on all levels. In the short run small sections of the enterprise will be changed.

Table 1: The suggested approach to change management.

The managers needs the information that they can gain access to in the social networks through their insight to the networks. When it comes to the diffusion of knowledge it is very likely that the segments of the enterprise that are too complex. If the knowledge is too complex it is evident to investigate if the particular domain can be handled by enterprise-wide systems or for that matter enterprise-wide business approaches. Nonetheless the most important thing is that the any new employees, managers or executives can be introduced to the persons who have some idea on how to deal with the problems, tasks, activities and processes in each of the domains that are likely to be too complex. What is important for the enterprise is that the executives, middle managers and not to forget the employees support a culture of knowledge and information sharing. The IT systems should be developed to support their particular processes. These information systems could eventually be connected, but there is as such no need for enterprise-wide information systems that standardize the workflows. Knowledge can be hard to standardize and as such the various stakeholders of the enterprise can’t be expected to know everything about the same topic. In other words it is very likely that the chief architect and the decision takers would have to challenge their assumption on process standardization.

Create Value Through Grouping of IS and Business Processes

The chief architect and his associates would have to investigate how the enterprise can generate value through grouping the social systems and information systems.

The approach that the chief architect and his associates should work with a projects that will enable change for the various projects that would change the enterprise.

The progress for each of the projects will be impacting the enterprise’s architecture and thereby transform the architecture from the AS – IS situation (Bernard 2005)which is the current state for the enterprise’s architecture to the desired state which Bernard names the “TO-BE” state. The transition plan is the document that communicates what kind of projects that would have to be initiated and implemented in order to mature the enterprise’s architecture and through that enable the enterprise to reach its goals. The transition plan also works as a kind of plan that can be communicated to the various stakeholders who would have to back the enterprise in the maturation of the particular situation. The maturation process has to be evaluated before the chief architect and his followers initiates the change program. It is very likely that the stakeholders will be easier won over if they can see a logical plans that includes economical estimation of how the plan impact the enterprise’s economical situation. It is needless to say that the enterprise’s decision makers would have to have an insight on how well the enterprise can process the various resources it has at hand and thereby produce the products and services that its customers want to purchase.

The evaluation process is likewise a part of how the enterprise scans its internal and external environment and as such the Enterprise Architecture program should work as the platform for the construction of a shared ontology across the enterprise. The chief architect should keep in mind that in departments or segments that can be characterized as being characterized as complex it is rather likely that their particular views can’t be generalized into an enterprise ontology if such can be formulated.

In order to get the information that the chief architect and the decision makers need in order to plan and allocate resources to the transformation the enterprise would have to go through. They would have to go into detail with how the various social networks and communities of practices and search for the information and knowledge in order to gain a firm understanding of how the enterprise works and thereby how it can be changed. In this light the chief architect and his associates would have to decide if they should apply a top-down or a bottom-up approach. The approach chosen would eventually become a part of the debate that the members of the enterprise on what has to be done. Will the decision makers tolerate increased autonomy or if they would prefer increased centralization. As earlier mentioned it seems like that the tendencies for the development organizations.

Change the Enterprise

The chief architect and the decision makers would have to go further with the change of the enterprise. The change process would have to be a part of the overall Enterprise Architecture program and it will certainly impact the enterprise and how it works. In order to do so the chief architect would have to influence the stakeholders (decision makers, the middle managers and for that matter the employees). The changes are caused by the the questioning of the how the enterprise is able to collect the data needed in order to take the decisions needed to achieve the goals that was set for the enterprise. The author is of the opinion that the grouping of information systems and social systems in order to harvest the synergies with each one of them and among each of the clusters The clusters can most likely produce synergies for each of the areas that shows the amount of gravity that produce a barrier of complexity.

Before the chief architect and the executives commit themselves to changing the enterprise they would have to understand how the enterprise and its architecture works. In order to achieve this the chief architect would have to choose an Enterprise Architecture framework, adapting the framework to the particular enterprise and implement the framework. Thereafter should the chief architect and the enterprise architects work with identifying the various artifacts, and organizing them in an Enterprise Architecture repository. While working with the identification of artifacts and organization of artifacts in the EA repository it is important that the chief architects understands that there might be barriers to create define an unified ontology and as a result of that there might be a necessity to create several different sub-units of the EA repository. The chief architect work with an assumption that each of the specialized operations of the enterprise should be mapped as a separated entity and as a separate mini architecture of the enterprise.

The author is of the opinion that it is possible to convert extremely specialized knowledge for each of the specialized processes to other parts of the enterprise without a lot of the meaning of each of the artifacts is lost. It is better that there is a platform for informed governance for each of the segments than a system that doesn’t adapt to the entire enterprise. The managers of each of these segments should in the long run participate in the community of practice that shares knowledge and know how with one another. The chief architect can at some extent work as the change manager would would have to convince the various stakeholders in the enterprise to support the changes and in the same time enable them to take the changes even further.

The change manager would have to ensure that the office of internal communication is located and positioned as a part of management and it symbolizes the foundation of management for all other segments of the enterprise. It is pivotal that the change efforts are supported by the middle managers since they act as the approvers of each of the employees time and effort to commit to the particular change system. If the middle managers ignore the call for change and disapprove of the changes that the employees suggests then it is very likely that the changes will come to a still and eventually fail. Likewise would the commitment of the employee be of great importance since it is likely that each of the employees have specialized knowledge of how the work processes interacts.

Conclusions

The author is of the opinion that the organization have to work with several different approaches to challenge their particular views on how the enterprise collects the data that are used by the decision makers. Likewise is it likely that the various decision makers of the enterprise would have to deal with identifying segments of the enterprise that are too complex to be adapted to generalized business processes. The author is of the opinion that the chief architect and his associates would have to deal with the challenges of adding value to the enterprise by applying the standardized business activities and business processes, but in the same time be able to identify where it wouldn’t make sense to apply standardized systems since that wouldn’t provide the enterprise with any kind of advantages.

The focus of the members of the Enterprise Architecture team would have to include the concept of complexity to the concept of enterprise ontology and as such should the repositories that would be able to connect the various sections of the enterprise and communicate the meaning meaning of how the enterprise works to the decision makers and other stakeholders who would have to make use of the knowledge that is represented in the repositories.

Likewise is it a necessity for the decision makers and the chief architect would have to investigate the various elements of the enterprise in order to achieve better insight into how the enterprise works and from that enable better decision making in order to achieve the objectives for the enterprise.

Bibliography

Bernard, S., A., 2005. An Introduction To Enterprise Architecture: Second Edition 2nd ed., AuthorHouse.

Dietz, J.L.G., 2006. Enterprise Ontology: Theory and Methodology, Springer.

Hamel, G., 2007. The Future of Management, Harvard Business School Press.

Hammer, M., 1990. Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate. , Harvard Business Review no. 68.

Hoogervorst, J.A.P., 2009. Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering, Springer.

Kotter, J.P., 1995. Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review, (March – April 1995), p.9.

Wenger, E., 1999. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity New Ed., Cambridge University Press.

Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, P.B. & Lampel, J.B., 2008. Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management 2nd ed., Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.

Porter, M.E., 1985. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, New York: Free Press.

Potts, C., 2008. fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology illustrated edition., Technics Publications, LLC.

Ross, J.W., Weill, P. & Robertson, D.C., 2006. Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution illustrated edition., Harvard Business School Press.

Weill, P. & Ross, J., 2009. IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain, Harvard Business School Press.

Weill, P. & Ross, J.W., 2004. IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results, Harvard Business School Press.

Weick, K.E., 2000. Making Sense of the Organization, WileyBlackwell.

The paper can be downloaded here or read at ISSUU.

The Enterprise Architect: The Abilities of the Enterprise Architect, and what Should be Expected of Him.

Posted on April 11, 2011

The Enterprise Architect

There is no real definition of what an enterprise architect is or what he or she does. There is no exact definition of what the enterprise architect does and where he can be found in the enterprise. There are many different disciplines within the sphere for the enterprise that has something to do with Enterprise Architecture.

According to Doucet et al (2009) there are both explicits and implicit roles dealing with enterprise architecture, especially if the architecture is mature. The roles all have something to do with being enterprise architects, and there are different ways how they interact with the architecture.

The Chief Architect is according to Bernard (2005) the person who is in charge of establishing an Enterprise Architecture group in the enterprise, and likewise is it the Chief Architect who choses or creates a synthesis for a framework that can be made use of in the particular enterprise. It is Chief Architect who selects who are to take part of the particular enterprise architecture group and what each individual is supposed to do.

The definition that Bernard proposes is that the enterprise architect is a kind of liaison among other forms of architects like solution architects, technology architects, business architects. The enterprise architect the person who works as liaison but also the person who translate, codify and organize the various artifacts.

At the conference on Enterprise Architecture in Copenhagen 2010 the representative for The Open Group said “that The Open Group Architecture Framework has to be adapted to the individual enterprise otherwise wouldn’t give the enterprise any value to make use of it” this particular statement from the largest provider of frameworks illustrates the importance of the Chief Architect and the synthesis process. It does also stress the importance of the highly adaptable enterprise architect who can see possibilities and act upon them.

Op’t Land et al (2009) presented in the book “Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance” different roles that characterize the enterprise architect. They define the roles as follows:

The Change Agent. The change agent has to encourage both the management and the employees to change their views on what Enterprise Architecture is, and adapt the policies and programs that the Enterprise Architecture can generate for them.
The Leader as having a vision for the Enterprise Architecture program. This includes a visionary focus on the various strategies and how they influence the Enterprise Architecture program.
The Manager has to make sure that the Enterprise Architecture Program is dealt with and updated so it entails the proper way to do practices, projects and principles are kept alive and these are meaningful for “the business” of the enterprise.
The Communicator is one of the roles that the chief architect and the team of enterprise architects have to master to achieve that the various stakeholders collaborate.
The Modeler is a role that is necessary to master for any given enterprise architect, otherwise wouldn’t he or she not be able to create the META-models needed to show how the enterprise works and should be working.

Furthermore did Op’t Land et al (2009. p 119) argue that the Enterprise Architect has five different ways of thinking within the perspective of working and changing the enterprise. These ways of thinking are dealt with below.

Yellowprint – thinking that deals with brings interests together, the approach includes stimulating stakeholders, formulating opinions, creating a “win – win” situation and forming coalitions.
Blueprint – thinking that deals with formulation of unambiguous objectives, development of an action plan, that includes monitoring and adjusting the change process accordingly.
Redprint – thinking deals with ensuring people are aware of new perspectives, ensuring that they (people) are aware of their personal shortcomings. Last but not least does it deal with motivation of the people to see, learn and do things. The focus is the learning process.
Whiteprint – thinking deals with articulation of plans that includes people’s processes, interests and energies. The focus deals with the removal of blockades and barriers.

All of the above mentioned ways of thinking are necessary for the enterprise architects to be able to operate with the Enterprise Architecture approach. It depends on the situation and the the maturity of the enterprise’s architecture.

In conclusion it is important that the enterprise architect can see possibilities and he or she is able to act upon his justified instinct and deal with various people who work and thinks in silos or sees the world very differently from the Enterprise Architects. The Enterprise Architects would have to be able to sell the idea of Enterprise Architecture to people who resent holistic approaches and systems thinking and in the same way be able to be diplomatic.

All of the above mentioned characteristics are to be operationalized in the enterprises regardless of how mature their Enterprise Architecture programs are. Furthermore does the views that Hoogervorst et al (2009) presents and the views that I present in this blog post indicate that the enterprises would have to test the enterprise architects in order to investigate what kind of architects they need and define what roles they would have.

The Chief Architect and the Roles in the Enterprise

Doucet et al (2009) argues that in order to mature the enterprise’s architecture it is a necessity to change a few roles within the management group and for that matter within the IT group. Doucet et al. argues for the changes in the IT – organization is because the concept of Enterprise Architecture originates from the IT department and the world of Information Systems it is a necessity to force the management of the IT department (and this usually includes the management of the Enterprise Architecture group) to think in new ways.

Doucet et al argues that in the perfect world the ownership of the Enterprise Architecture program has to change from the IT department (the CIO) to a leader within the organization who works with the operations or other executive.

In my opinion the change of focus is needed as long it doesn’t mean that IT and the enablement of new and old business processes aren’t neglected. Likewise does Potts (corporate strategist, speaker and author) advocate for a new and slightly different approach to IT management and IT investment. His approach that entails that the CIO role should be abolished and replaced with the role of chief internal investments officer (CIIO).

The CIO or his successor CIIO should deal with corporate transformation through investment planning and corporate program management that would have to entail all strategically important projects. Strategy is according to Potts the implicit and it is defined by the embodiment of actions taken by the executive group. This is in its way a perfect situation for the chief architects and for that matter the enterprise architects since they would be able to identify how the enterprise has invested its resources and how they in the future would be able to invest.

The Elite Architecture

According to Doucet et al (2009) the focus of working with the Enterprise Architecture program is to go beyond the IT – centric approach that usually is applied in the IT department. In this approach it becomes a necessity to work with the maturation of the Enterprise Architecture program and by that establishing a group of elite architects who in term work withs the focus of developing and adapting the Enterprise Architecture approach to solve the problems that the enterprise experience. The focus of the elite architecture is to aid those enterprise architects that are involved in the various business units. In other words the focus is to facilitate a community of practice.

The establishment and later on the facilitation of communities of practice seems to be the greatest difficulty for the enterprise.

In my opinion it isn’t possible to establish communities of practice, they are simply a social phenomena that happens if the right people are present at the right time. However it is a possibility to facilitate the communities of practice after the enterprise has identified what they are and who participate; however this is only possible to a certain degree.

If the management or other element within the enterprise begin to interfere with the community of practice it will eventually become irrelevant and dissolve itself.

Communities of practice are too specialized in their ability to deal with their tasks, and impact of the behavior of the people who participate in them are to random to any kind of generic rule for dealing with facilitation of communities of practice can be established.

Focus has to be on the enterprise allows people from different parts of the enterprise to meet in areas suited for meetings and informal talks.

The community of practice would enable the enterprise with achieving an elite architecture team and as a result an elite architecture program.

The architects would have to interact with one another in different ways and tasks where they can take advantage on the expertise that they posses and the understanding of these expertise and the registration of knowledge abilities they posses.

In order to achieve elite architecture the enterprise would have to establish an incentives program that ensures that the enterprise architects who evolve with the Enterprise Architecture program can handle tasks that are suitable for their personal development and as such could this enable the enterprises to retain knowledge on how to innovate, develop, deploy and mature its enterprise architecture. It is needless to say that the hypothesis of this blog post is that the more mature the enterprise’s architecture is, the better the enterprise would be able to assure alignment, assurance and agility and through that would the enterprise be able to crystallize competitive potential into competitive advantages.

Bibliography

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

Land, M.O. et al., 2008. Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance, Springer.

Potts, C., 2008. fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology illustrated edition., Technics Publications, LLC.

Schools of Enterprise Architecture: Ideas of Architecting the Business, the Organization and the Technology

Posted on March 24, 2011

Introduction

Enterprise Architecture as a concept can be defined as many different things, shapes and practices. Through my studies of the concept of Enterprise Architecture, I have discovered that there are as many definitions of Enterprise Architecture as there are frameworks, books and articles on the matter.

Most frameworks agrees on that the concept deals with developing a set of standards, principles and documentation. These three elements are used in context of documenting and dealing with the usage of information technology in the organization.

From that on there are differences among the definitions of Enterprise Architecture like how to implement Enterprise Architecture program. A rather simple estimation there can be defined three different schools for Enterprise Architecture practice.

Schools of Enterprise Architecture Practitioners

The first school this blog post will address is the process school. The second school is the enterprise engineering school. The third school is a school in between the two former, which I will name the hybrid school. The practitioners works with an ideal that Enterprise Architecture isn’t solely a project / program process or a blue printing process.

The Process School

The process school and its practitioners are usually working with TOGAF, OIO EA or other framework (approach) that emphasize a program management and a project management methodology on adapting projects to support the Enterprise Architecture program.

It is needless to say that the process of adapting the projects to align with the principles of the Enterprise Architecture program is based on a set of continuous processes. These usually contains a set of strategy development, communication and execution. Likewise does most frameworks have an implicit form of evaluation before the process starts again.

The Enterprise Engineering School

The enterprise engineering school and its practitioners work with an idea that the enterprise can be build upon models or what can be defined as blue prints. The focus is to develop blueprints that can ensure the enterprise’s abilities to obtain models of governance, social systems and technology. The focus is to enforce a change program through a program management approach, but opposite the process school the enterprise engineering school doesn’t go into detail with the program or project management methodology.

In this case blueprinting is dealing with developing meta-models that interconnect the various approaches to governance.

The school of enterprise engineering and the process school are in contrast and in somehow conflict with one another in their approaches to Enterprise Architecture. In my opinion both schools can be of interest since both schools have some advantages that can be used in context of the enterprise.

With this in mind I will discuss the hybrid school.

Enterprise Architecture for the Hybrid School

In lack of better words I have chosen to name this school for hybrid school since the practitioners within this school don’t see the two former schools as pragmatic in their quests for practicing Enterprise Architecture and they combine both the process oriented methodology and the benefits of blueprinting.

As earlier mentioned the focus of the blueprinting is to create valid meta-models that can be used to communicate the current situation and the desired situation for the enterprise. The models are usually developed through a process of communication with the stakeholders and through the expertise of the chief architect and the enterprise architects. The enterprise architects applies a framework of which they identifies through a framework that has been selected or developed by the chief architect.

The process school deals with applying a program and project management methodology in order to establish a continuous process that enables that the enterprise’s corporate strategy can be crystallized.

The practitioners and the academics working with Enterprise Architecture establish a process for implementing the blue prints of the enterprise architecture.

The Hybrid school is of my opinion a suitable foundation for establishing an Enterprise Architecture program in almost any enterprises due to any Enterprise Architecture program have to be modified to deal with the individual situation for the individual enterprise. I believe that all enterprises are unique due to their employees, managers, executives and the story for how the enterprise has developed, and all of these elements have an impact on how the enterprise is able to deal with the competition. The degree of competition has a intern a significant impact on how many resources that the enterprise is able to adapt new technologies, processes and people in order to gain advantages that might or might not lead to competitive advantages.

The stakeholders in each of the enterprises sees the world differently and it can’t be an advantage to lock the Enterprise Architecture approach to one particular approach if what is needed is an approach that can deal with both project methodology and blueprinting.

Drifting the Enterprise: Ensuring Solutions for the Enterprise.

Posted on February 28, 2011

Markets and Drifting

Most organizations operates within an environment that develops constant changes, that enforce the need for innovation and change within the enterprise. The market usually ensures that the enterprise has to re-structure, re-organize and adapt to the situation at hand.

Drifting is the industry paradigm, and there is nothing to do about it if the enterprise wants to develop and keep innovating.

The organization has to adapt, and that leads to the situation where the organization should have to be able to adjust to its enterprise architecture and its information systems in order to ensure that the problems at hand are solved. Since globalization has increased the degree of competition from easy to intense from competitors that can mobilize resources from various countries (markets) and transfer the resources to the markets that they want to gain a market share in.

Many small and medium sized enterprises would have to “hack” their enterprise in order to find processes, technology and organizational structures that can lead to synergies that in turn can lead to a competitive advantage. By acknowledging this the chief architect has to recognize that the Enterprise Architect program can’t be designed for a stabile environment or for idealistic conditions. The Enterprise Architecture program has to be designed upon an idea that the entire model and process has to be easy to change in order to achieve the crystallization of short term wins.

Competitive Advantages

In order to gain competitive advantages the enterprise has to organize and enable as many processes as possible to empower the organization to do something that it can provide better, cheaper or faster than any of its competitors.

These processes would have to be enabled through planning, skills and the ability adapt to the situation at hand. Drifting within the enterprise is in other words an imperative that the executives, the chief architect and the enterprise architects would have to deal with in their establishment of the enterprise architecture program.

The competitive advantages are realized through the members of the enterprise are able to identify solutions that can overcome the problems that they face in their own segment of the enterprise and this first hand knowledge can lead to a greater understanding of how they can optimize their ability to produce. However the ad hoc solutions that Ciborra’s idea of bricolage and hacking can lead to sub-optimization of the enterprise and eventually it would lead to silos.

In order to cope with the problems of the drifting and in the same time enabling the benefits of drifting for the enterprise.

The Enterprise Architecture Program

I define the concept of Enterprise Architecture as a process of adapting the standards, principles and objectives for the enterprise. This process is also a form of blue printing for how the enterprise’s architecture should develop and that enables a form of enterprise engineering as well.

Enterprise Architecture is both a form of enterprise engineering and a project-governance process. Enterprise Architecture is a program since EA is a continuous process that consist of a portfolio of projects that step by step alters and develops the enterprise from its current situation (AS-IS) to a future desired state. This is known as the to-be situation.

The principal idea with the program is that the change will take place over time in small steps and that would in principle ensure that the big bang changes wouldn’t allocate too many resources and it would in the same time ensure that the changes would alter too much at the same time and thereby make the changes manageable. The manageable size minimizes the risks for the enormous project will fail to realize the benefits promised before the project was initiated.

Drifting leads to a need to deal with the problem of inconsistent technologies and solutions, that in turn would make it very expensive and difficult to manage. In order to deal with the negative impact of the tendencies of bricolage and hacking, it becomes clear that the enforcement of certain principles, standards, methodologies and approaches should be enforced and that the concept of Enterprise Architecture is capable to deal with. Enterprise Architecture has to be enforced through the culture of the various segments of the enterprise. However a too tough enforcement of the principles dealt with in the Enterprise Architecture program will eventually lead to a problem with enablement of innovation (process innovation and product innovation) for the enterprise.

The chief architect has to try to deal with informing the various creative elements within the enterprise in order to make them understand how they can apply the various applications and solutions to deal with the problems that their segment faces, but they would have to deal with the standards and principles defined in the Enterprise Architecture program in order to ensure alignment, agility and assurance.

The chief architect has to deal with this delicate issue, and it can only be dealt with in a continuous process from the day that the Enterprise Architecture program is initiated until the end of the enterprise.

The Coherency Architect

The Coherency Management Blog

Innovation in an Enterprise Architecture Context: Innovating the Business Processes, Technological Services and Corporate Strategies.

Innovation

Adaption

Innovation and EA

Enterprise Architecture

The Synthesis

Holistic Management in a Context of Enterprise IT Management and Organizational Leadership

An Approach to Sense Making and Intelligent Business

Scanning for Data

Interpretation

Learning

The Cycle

Assessing the Business Processes

Connect the Business Processes and the Information Systems

Group the Business Processes and the Information Systems

Create Value Through Grouping of IS and Business Processes

Change the Enterprise

Conclusions

Bibliography

The Enterprise Architect: The Abilities of the Enterprise Architect, and what Should be Expected of Him.

The Chief Architect and the Roles in the Enterprise

The Elite Architecture

Bibliography

Schools of Enterprise Architecture: Ideas of Architecting the Business, the Organization and the Technology

Introduction

Schools of Enterprise Architecture Practitioners

The Process School

The Enterprise Engineering School

Enterprise Architecture for the Hybrid School

Drifting the Enterprise: Ensuring Solutions for the Enterprise.

Competitive Advantages

The Enterprise Architecture Program

Follow “The Coherency Architect”