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

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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.

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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 Fractal Organization: From an Enterprise Architecture Point of View.

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Enterprise Architecture

Patrick Hoverstadt started the lecture by saying that he had never heard of Enterprise Architecture before he ran into John Gotze but of what he has learned it is about making sense of the organization and creating a conceptual model for the enterprise.

Build Models

In Enterprise Architecture modeling is a corner stone and the models serve to create an idea on what we are trying to manage and how well to understand the model. The model has to be based on real life data and it has to represent reality in the best way possible. The models provide both a simplified version of reality but it does also provide a usable representation of reality. This representation gives the members of the enterprise an ability make decisions on how to design the various business processes.

“our ability to manage an organization is based on how well we understand it, and our understanding depends on how useful & appropriate are the models we use” - Patrick Hoverstadt (2010)

When working with this approach it becomes clear that the Viable Systems Model in some form can be identified as a part of the school of enterprise engineering. The school of enterprise engineering is characterized by the idea that enterprises can be defined and designed by models and meta-models.

The Viable Systems Model

Usually the organization diagram has been the model that most enterprises relate two when they delegate blame and responsibility. However the viable systems model is slightly more complicated.

In the viable systems model operations and environment is linked. The first part that needs to be done is separating the primary activities. Through this process then the focus should be what activities provides value to the customers. The reason for this is that it is the customers who finance the activities of the enterprise (at least from cash flow perspective. For the public sector it is the tax payers who pay for the particular services through the tax bill).

 

When the first two processes have been taken into consideration then you would have to go up through the model. The primary assumption is that the various primary activities can be broken down into smaller steps in the process. This means that the enterprise works with an assumption that the sup processes can be reconstructed and create synergy.

 

The same approach can be used for the enterprise e.g., the operations that are organized around the concept of the co-ordination and the lines of co-ordination. However it is clear that most enterprises are products of randomly available components that likewise have been deployed randomly and one of these components is the management component. The management component is according to Patrick Hoverstadt that component that undermines the core of the enterprise, and that in some way undermines the enterprise’s ability to adapt, adopt and act according to the changes in its envirornment.

 

“Most organizations are rubbish since most managers are promoted by putting fires out” – Patrick Hoverstadt (2010).

 

Management and especially delivery is an important task for the executives and the middle management to deal with. They work in particular to ensure that operations delivers what the management has specified what they should have done.

 

Likewise does it include decisions of what the management has been located in the delivery service. “This is the spine of the hierarchical organization” – Patrick Hoverstadt (2010).

 

The spine is building the conversational loops. The conversational loops deals with creating this focus on working with building the conversations on what we need to produce and when we should deliver it.

According to Hoverstadt this deals with specific (specifying), agreeing on performance, measuring performance, resource bargaining and fragmentation. In other words should the managers (including the executives) work with understanding on how the employees and the managers under them interact with the everyday demands and processes. In most cases will the various levels in the enterprise contribute to both a positive development and the negative cycle.

If management is aware of the problems in the hierarchy it can be assumed at least some of them will do something about it in order to optimize the enterprise or at least do an attempt to enable that the enterprise will survive both in the long and the short run. The usual problems with management and the subunits they manage are conflicts over resources, turf wars, conflicting orders and conflicting messages from the customers (internally and externally) of the enterprise and weak planning for the operational core of the enterprise.

A classic situation is that something changes in the operations section and that impacts the rest of the organization and in response to that is that the senior management demands more and more control over the operation. This is done through reporting (setting up a bureaucracy).

 

“… they try to micro manage the local managers, and that turns into a vicious cycle” – Patrick Hoverstadt (2010).

 

When the vicious cycle has started then it becomes a problem dealing with problem solving, and instead it becomes a show for managers to exercise control. This will eventually turn into a disastrous path.

The turf wars for managerial control leads to sub-optimization and it becomes an anti-thesis to efficiency and it will eventually lead to trouble and act as resilient barrier for accomplishing the goals of the enterprise.

 

Another factor that is of great importance for any enterprise is that its executives (executives, managers etc.) are well informed on the environment (customers, competitors and government), and the organization. If it happens that the executives aren’t informed about the environment, or for that matter they don’t understand the activities or the structure of the organization then the executives will start to develop an assumption of how the enterprise and the environment works. This assumption can very well be very far from what really happens in the enterprise and therefore it becomes dangerous develop this form of groupthink (a state of which the executives continuously will put pressure on one another in order to take more extreme) in the top of the enterprise.

The enterprise’s decision makers needs the right information at the right time and at the right place; however it doesn’t enforce sanity and a sense of reality.

To make some sense of reality basic systems of allocation of resources and responsibility e.g., a basic but functioning management accounting system that is build upon activity based costing.

The Monitoring Loop

In management situations proof and trust are the two most important factors. Can the manager trust the information, and can use the information to guide any form of guiding principle?

If the information isn’t valid then it is very likely that the decisions made will not be in alignment with the continuous change in the environment that the enterprise works in.

 

“The loop needs to bypass at least one level of management. It has to ensure performance reports are accurate and the monitoring loop should ensure the manager’s understanding of operations.” – Patrick Hoverstadt (2010)

 

The monitoring loops should be generating qualitative data that the managers (delivery) can trust. According to Hoverstadt the only way to measure the conflicts among the managers and the various units dealing with operations have to be qualitative due to you can’t measure the conflicts in a management group through quantitative data.

Usually do middle managers co-ordinate with one another in secrecy to avoid the micro-management-syndrome.

It becomes a necessity to link operations to decisions and agreeing and measuring performance, and agreeing to the resource allocation.

Intelligence

The intelligence section in the management framework is doing surveys for technical, competitive and market developments that occurs in the environment of which the organization (enterprise) operates. The intelligence section is one of the most important sections in the enterprise, if the enterprise hasn’t access to accurate and sufficient information then the enterprise will experience problems with qualified decision making. Nonetheless most enterprises are not particular good in dealing with this important segment of the enterprise.

“Usually organizations are catastrophically bad at this” – Patrick Hoverstadt (2010).

Thereto does the intelligence deals with identifying the R&D potentially and planning how the enterprise should overcome the obstacles in its way.

Governance

This is the section of the Viable Systems Model that handles the governance and makes the balance between the external and internal social systems in the enterprise and likewise does it handles the AS – IS and the TO – BE state of the enterprise.

According to Hoverstadt then the performance measures have to be designed as inputs to strategy not seen as outputs.

Likewise does the governance and decision making have to be articulated throughout the organization.

Decision making can’t really be set into a particular process and can’t be organized around a linear path since there would be a need to be able to adjust to changes over time.

Enterprise Architecture and VSM

Doucet et al (2009) argues that all enterprises have an enterprise architecture regardless of how the enterprise approach it. Enterprise Architecture has in reality three levels that depends on how the enterprise acts according to Enterprise Architecture and what it can gain from Enterprise Architecture. According to Bernard (2005) Enterprise Architecture deals with both the documentation of the enterprise but it also works as a form of management (what is later defined as integrated governance which Enterprise Architecture is an important part of).

Enterprise Architecture with bringing the information to the decision makers at the right time and the right place. Op’t Land et al (2009) argues that Enterprise Architecture is giving the decision makers the proper information to executive and adopt to the changes in the environment in the enterprise.

There are many different views on what Enterprise Architecture is and the various views have been crystallized into various different frameworks that tries to catch the complexity of the enterprise into a so called meta model that can be communicated to the individuals of the enterprise.

There are many communities that practice Enterprise Architecture sees the foundation for enterprise architecture differently e.g., is Enterprise Architecture as a process (or set of processes) or is it enterprise engineering or something in between. If Enterprise Architecture is seen as a set of processes then the viable systems model can be applied in order to achieve an understanding of how each of the teams, groups and devisions of the enterprise architecture works. If the chief architect sees the concept of enterprise architecture as enterprise engineering then it is likely that the viable systems model can be used as a blue print that the organization can be designed upon.

The ideals of the VSM is to create a resilient organization, and it can be enabled through the implementation of Enterprise Architecture since it enables the executives to audit how the enterprise operates. The Viable Systems model and the concept of Enterprise Architecture has something in common in addressing the problems that the enterprise faces and attempting to establish a resilient organization that should enable the enterprise with achieving competitive advantages. From this point of view should the chief architect at least think on applying the Viable Systems Model when he or she designs the Enterprise Architecture approach.

 

Bibliography

Bernard 2005, An Introduction To Enterprise Architecture, AuthorHouse

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

Patrick Hoverstadt, Fractal Organization: Creating Sustainable Organizations with the Viable System Model (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Martin Op’t Land et al., Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance (Springer, 2008).

Making Sense: One of the Components of Achieving Holistic Management.

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Can You Make Sense of the Enterprise

One of many reasons for why many enterprises experiences that organizational change projects fail and their respective leaders and managers only discovers that there are significant problems with the way the members of the enterprise activities.

The Sense Making Process

In the sense making process it is rather likely that the preferred departments of the enterprise would be the IT department since the IT department is properly that department that has a lot of contact with the rest of the enterprise, and the rest of the enterprise contacts and require that the IT department uncovers their needs to develop information systems that supports their business processes.

However in many enterprises a lot of the other departments have hostile feelings towards the IT department. This means that the IT department and its representatives will be viewed with skepticism, and the concept of sense making is therefore undermined.

In relation to the writings of Doucet et al (Doucet et al 2009) then the ideal situation would be when the enterprise when the Chief Operations Officer that is in charge of the sense making and Enterprise Architecture approach but usually it needs a maturation period where the knowledge and responsibility has been handed over from the Chief Information Officer. From this perspective then it is likely that Doucet et al argues for a paradigm shift within the enterprise. When addressing the view of the enterprise then the focus has to address the mechanistic and the organic perspective also. Is the enterprise a social system that functions like a machine that can be optimized or is a kind of organic entity that can be impacted through facilitation.

The thoughts that Doucet et al presents deals with how the enterprise will obtain a higher degree of assurance, alignment and agility when the enterprise goes through a process of uncovering and adapting the Enterprise Architecture program. When fully adapted then the enterprise will be able to reach out and re-design its enterprise. The only way to achieve this is by an enabling of sense making at all levels of the enterprise.

Karl Weick (Weick 2000, p. 244) works with a concept that deals with how the enterprise in one way or the other scans its environment and how this impacts how the enterprise creates an understanding for how the strategy process can be articulated.

In this perspective the focus of sense making is in an external context where there are three phases. 1) Scanning the environment, 2) Interpretation and 3) Learning. The learning phase is dealing with how the enterprise learns and that is done through practice. The interpretation deals with how the enterprise understands its environment and how it starts to acquire the model it needs to create an understanding of its environment and its options.

I am of the opinion that the scanning process can be used inside of the enterprise as well and especially the second step has to be investigated into detail by the chief architect and for that matter the coherency architect. If the enterprise doesn’t take reality into consideration when it articulates the corporate strategy then it is very likely that the rest of the strategies that have been articulated aren’t able to cope with the real life situations within the enterprise. When addressing this it is very important to understand that if the enterprise doesn’t base their plans on their contextual reality then it the plans will at best give hope to the members of the enterprise.

When I talk of contextual reality then it is the combination of feelings, experiences, observations and not to forget hard fact. Hard facts are usually numbers and for that matter artifacts that can be understood in a narrow way by the individuals who have to relate to it and not forget how the social system that receives the analysis sees the world e.g., it would be very likely if the receivers would reject the analysis if it contradicts their own behavioral pattern and for that matter world view.

An example could be that a chief architect delivers a plan for the enterprise that is based on the organic1 view of the organization and the receivers have a view that is predominately mechanistic2. In someways can this situation be compared to the changes that happens in science when a particular community of scientists have been challenged a different community of scientists who has another view on how a particular problem (world view or paradigm) has to be applied. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of resources in change effort of seeing validating and accepting the other point of view.

It is therefore very likely that the chief architect or for that matter the coherency architect who has to address the problems in the enterprise through a change program that would have to engage in a dialogue on what the enterprise is, how management should be working, how the various elements of the enterprise should interact and not to forget how the members of the enterprise produce value for the enterprise. When speaking of value then I address how the individual member of the enterprise contributes to the goals that have been articulated by the strategy team (usually the executives of the enterprise).

In this dialogue the coherency architect would have to think of it as a process where the various stakeholders would have to adapt to the new views of the enterprise, management, approaches and not to forget one another. The process might not be able to produce the desired results right away but it is a dialogue or struggle that the coherency architect would have to take in order to force the executives of the enterprise to facilitate change.

The Resilient Organization

The difference between the conventional approach to change and ideas, and the resilient organization is that the resilient organization is an organizational system that identifies the exceptions in the operations, and acts pro-actively to correct the changes before exceptions escalates to the extend of a burning platform.

However the members of a resilient organization by themselves understand that they have to inform the other members of the enterprise about how or what is about to happen in the various sections of the enterprise, and the members of the enterprise have been trained to act to adapt to the environment that the organizations interact with. In the same time the members of the enterprise adapts to one another by informing one another on the conditions of the enterprise’s work systems. It is the self-correcting attitude that the members of the enterprise show while they are working that enables them to make the enterprise resilient to the changes.

The members of the enterprise needs to be able to share information local, regional and for that matter on a global plan and for that the Enterprise Architecture program and repository be a great enabler.

With this in mind then the concept of holistic management will be dealt with in the next paragraph.

Holistic Management

Bernard and Doucet et al argues that the enterprise needs holistic management and through that they would be able to achieve competitive advantages when achieving holistic management. But what is holistic management? And is holistic management even achievable.

A holistic form of management is according to Hoogervorst achievable if the enterprise works with the organic way interpret and embody the actions of the enterprise.

Holistic Management deals that the enterprise can achieve some form of coherent and informed governance by applying Enterprise Architecture to uncover the entire enterprise and thereby its whole architecture.

Enterprise Architecture is a way to lay the foundation for Holistic Management. When speaking of Holistic Management the concept needs to be defined. The concept of Holistic Management is dealing with how the executives, managers, workers and other stakeholders (usually these are connected to the enterprise like banks, suppliers and increasingly advisors and consultants) gains an overview of how the various elements of the enterprise (and thereby its architecture) works. This overview can then be operationalized into a form governance where the various executives, managers and workers contribute to the decision process and by that the right actions can be taken for the right purposes.

When the foundation has been established then the focus has to be turned to trust and motivation among the various stakeholders to support and maintain the foundation for the Holistic Management. I am of the opinion that most enterprises are results of coincidence and as such the entire enterprise is somehow a product of randomly selected individuals, purposes, resources and work flow. Likewise are there many different reasons for why the enterprise has developed into what it is. By writing this I commit myself and my view on the enterprise holistic management through the eyes of the organismic approach to organizational management where the idea is that the enterprise isn’t a machine but a form of organism that can eventually be cultured and evolved into something smarter and better.

This leads to some of the reflections on what Enterprise Architecture and Holistic Management.

Reflections

When working with Enterprise Architecture is dealing with how the enterprise can achieve alignment among the various elements of the enterprise e.g., between the business units (lines of business) and the their usage of information technology. However is it possible to achieve a form of holistic management for enterprises? Is it possible to achieve a form of enterprise governance that is able to impact practices of the enterprise on all levels in order to enable the executives to tune or grow the enterprise into a desired state? In my opinion it is possible to either tune or grow the enterprise but it isn’t possible to achieve governance without friction in some form within the enterprise. But it is of great importance for the enterprise to undermine the barriers that in one way or the other limits the ability of the enterprise to adapt, innovate and align its various components in order to achieve competitive advantages.

The first step in achieving holistic management is through initiating a scanning process of the external environment as well as initiating a scanning of the internal environment. The scanning process can achieve some ideas on how the enterprise works. Given the information on how the environments that the enterprise operates with the executives can operationalize into better and more efficient decision making. In my opinion the scanning process is vital for achieving Holistic Management or something close too. Nonetheless Enterprise Architecture and for that matter Coherency Management is of great importance to enable Holistic Management and these programs needs to be taken seriously by the executives and middle management.

The resilient enterprise is in my opinion a result of an Enterprise Architecture program that goes beyond of the foundation architecture (going beyond the IT centric approach).

When Enterprise Architecture is applied in the right situation then it is possible that the enterprise can advance towards a resilient organization; however Enterprise Architecture is only one of the factors that will enable a resilient organization, but Enterprise Architecture can both become an enabler and a driver towards.

Conclusion

Sense making is a process of which the stakeholders can gain knowledge on how the enterprise is doing compared to its customers, suppliers and competitors. This has to be taken into consideration of how the enterprise works and how the system needs to be adapted to achieve competitive advantages.

Enterprise Architecture is a combination of a toolset, method and process that can give the stakeholders an overview of the enterprise works. In the same way the enterprise is able to initiate the processes needed to undermine barriers for agility, innovation and adaptability and establishing the platforms that are needed to achieve a continuous tuning or growth of the enterprise.

The resilient organization is probably the most likely candidate for achieving the ability of Holistic Management and only organizational knowledge and culture can enable the organization to achieve the change and the platforms.

Bibliography

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

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

Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty, 2nd ed. (Jossey Bass, 2007).

Karl E. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization (WileyBlackwell, 2000).

 

1As Hoogervorst articulated it in his book from 2009 (Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering),

2An older paradigm than the organic paradigm. The organization is seen as a kind of machine.

Download the paper here

 

Value of Enterprise Architecture

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One of the fundamental questions of Enterprise Architecture is how to measure the value of the enterprise architecture program. Then again is Enterprise Architecture a program or a business function, I my opinion it can be both.

I have investigated how Enterprise Architecture contribute to the enterprise with value but also how the value can be measured. The investigation took me through four different paradigms and through the triangulation of the theory for each of the paradigms. The four paradigms I ended up investigating were functionalist paradigm, the interpretive paradigm, the radical humanist paradigm and the radical structuralist paradigm (Burrell & Morgan 1979 and Hirchheim & Klein 1989).

I found out that the various philosophers that can be identified within each of the paradigms have different views on what value really is and that lead to that I chose to focus on four philosophers (one from each of the paradigms).

The focus of the paper then turned to how a Chief Architect for any given Enterprise Architecture program can apply ideas presented in each of the paradigms to investigate a systemic approach as the Enterprise Architecture program.

This lead to an idea that the Chief Architect has to see the enterprise from several different angles and each of the angles needs to be taken into consideration when the investigation of value is taken processed.

In the paper I have made some examples of how each of the paradigms can be applied in the investigation and what questions should be asked when the Chief Architect designs his or her approach to collect information and evidence that support his or her claims on how the enterprise architecture creates value.

The core concept of the paper is that systemic programs, processes or functions needs to be investigated through several perspectives before anything can be said or concluded about them and each enterprise is unique and therefore should each attempt to investigate the EA program be customized for the particular enterprise.

I am of the opinion that the paper shows how the Enterprise Architecture program adds value both through monetary issues like increased profit and competitiveness but also through that other elements in the enterprise is taken care of e.g., the work environment and the ability to improve the platform for innovation etc.

These factors have to be taken care of to ensure that the enterprise in the long run will be able to achieve a competitive advantage by using enterprise architecture and for that matter Coherency Management. If the enterprise isn’t seen as an holistic entity and the various elements of the enterprise architecture program isn’t dealt with through different perspectives that aides the Chief Architect and the other stakeholders in the enterprise with understanding why it is important that they commit their effort and resources to the Enterprise Architecture program.

To conclude the this blog post then I will make use of a quotation by Aristotle.

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts” – Aristotle

Download the paper here or read it online at issuu.com.

 

The IGIA-Framework

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During the summer of 2010 I worked with a literature review that basically dealt with how Enterprise Architecture (through Coherency Management) could be addressing the issue of rewiring the form of leadership which exists in the enterprise.

The IGIA-Framework is a form of synthesis of various theories within the field of corporate governance, IT strategy, IT governance, Workforce planning, Enterprise Architecture and Coherency Management.

The edition of the framework that is released with this blog post is advocating a big bang change approach which demands a lot of resources and a long term commitment. This will be altered with the next edition of the framework which I plan to release during 2011.

The IGIA-Framework needs to address the short turn achievements while using Enterprise Architecture and Coherency Management, and for that reason should the IGIA-Framework be evaluated and developed into a framework that can enable enterprises with gaining a better form of leadership, structure, architecture and not to forget a chance to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

With these words I publish “Integrated Governance: A Way to Achieve Competitive Advantage” the certified edition.

Download the literature review / IGIA – Framework here

Enterprise Architecture is more than IT

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This blog post is based on the guest lecture that Chris Potts performed at the course B30 Enterprise Strategy, Business and Technology at the IT University of Copenhagen the 25th of October 2010.
It is growing sense around the world that Enterprise Architecture is dealing with more than IT; however since the concept’s origin from the world of IT has often been portrayed as an IT concept, and implemented as a rather IT centric tool.
Chris Potts asked the class at the lecture: “Can you recognize this architecture (this building – showing a picture of the insides of the Sydney opera house). This is a picture from the inside of the architecture. It proved to be the Sydney opera house but it is often hard to identify buildings (architectures) from the inside but it is rather easy to identify it from the outside”.
According to Potts is the biggest difference between an Enterprise Architect and a building’s architect, and that is “a building cannot change its own architecture” but an enterprise can, and Potts views on the definition of architects in enterprises deals mainly with that all the members in the enterprise in some way are architects. When it came to the role of Enterprise Architect is to change the world. Potts made use of the quotation below.
“According to Potts then Enterprise Architecture is about changing the world into something it probably wouldn’t otherwise have been.” – Chris Potts (2010b).
The question then becomes how to challenge the status quo, and the approach doesn’t always tells people what to do. So you may have an architecture but it doesn’t tell people what it is. According to Potts then sometimes the Enterprise Architect need to risk a lot as strategist and you would need to be ruthless.
Potts is of the opinion (an opinion he shares with Mintzberg and Ross & Weill) that strategy has to be embedded into the behavior of the actors within the enterprise. When it comes to behavior then there are two different forms that needs to be dealt with. The de facto behavior and the formalized behavior. The formalized approach to behavior deals with articulating the desired behavior in work structures through formalized descriptions of what is desired into the various artifacts.
When working with Enterprise Architecture then it might be a focus to use an argument as “Enhancing Enterprise Performance With Structural Innovations”. The hard part of this is the structural innovations part. The Enterprise Architect has to force himself to become innovative in using Enterprise Architecture and innovative in ways to improve the enterprise, and to create value for the enterprise as a whole.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – Aristole
Structural performance of the enterprise architecture is a principle that needs to be dealt with. Chris Potts mentioned that many investors work with analyzing the profits and costs of the enterprise but they usually fail with understanding or investigating if the enterprise is about to collapse from within due to bad architectural design.
There are many fundamental truths according to Potts. The first one is that the structural performance of an enterprise depends on its architecture, and the second one deals with an enterprise has an architecture regardless it is formalized or not.
The third truth that any enterprise architect should adapt is that the actual shape and structure of an enterprise’s architecture is the aggregated output of all its invests in change.
The fourth principle deals with the value of the structural innovation depends on the wider architectural context and last the enterprise architecture is about scenarios not certainties.
In this context the work with the core tactics is that the chief architect should bring both the explicit and implicit enterprise architects and make them work together.
Chris Potts introduced a new framework for change called the double e, double a journey.
Establish and explorer. These two steps are private to the chief architect and the activate and apply are public to the chief architect. It simply deals with taken over the enterprise through a guiding coalition which in principle can be related to the change framework that John P. Kotter who made the famous eight steps for change program (dating back to 1995).

The Scope of Enterprise Architecture was discussed and the class reached the following conclusions:
1. Activities and Processes.
2. Boundaries.
3. People.
4. Capabilities.
5. Resources.
6. Data.
7. Information.
8. Government and governance.
9. Environment.
10. Technology.
According to Potts markets do also have architectures and this approach leads to a fundamental focus on business architecture since the business architecture can’t stand alone to the market architecture. The market architecture contains the customer experience and from this perspective the architectures needs to be aligned to the market architecture to provide what the customers want. The business architecture in the other hand deals with the virtual organization (or more or less the virtual organization) and it is directly connected to the partners and suppliers that delivers materials and services to the enterprise.
According to Potts then structural performance is the key for measuring how well the enterprise is doing Enterprise Architecture. For this a cash-flow analysis based on the annual reports from the enterprise can be applied; however it is greatly encouraged to make use of other forms of analysis to come to this particular approach e.g., activity based costing. This approach might not give a correct view of status quo of the various lines of business and therefore other key performance indicators and methods needs to be applied.
Therefore should an Enterprise Architect make use of context specific strategies for each line of business. The example that Chris Potts made use of was a bit simplified in relation to measuring the different initiatives the enterprise works with; however it is a needed technology.
Chris Potts emphasize that the politics of management and the politics of organization is of great importance when it comes to Enterprise Architecture, and if the chief architect doesn’t understand the dialectic struggle within the enterprise then it certainly will become a problem for implementing Enterprise Architecture, and according to Potts the political aspect of governance is rather often worse in the public sector than it the private sector.
The interesting part about the approach that Potts makes use of is that he actively tries to describe how a chief enterprise architect has to be able to play many roles and he has to be able to facilitate innovation and development issues within both the lines of business and enable the top management of the enterprise to govern the various lines of business. In other words he has to be able to facilitate innovation while tightening control which usually is a contradiction.