Tag Archives: Enterprise Architecture

The Technology Strategy

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Many organizations are to some extent dependent on using information technology to deliver products or services to its customers. This applies to organizations within the private as well within the public sector.

There is some form of hierarchy among strategies that relates to the enterprise information technology strategy (IT strategy) and there might be some need to divide the strategies in order to specialize them e.g. through different persons who have the responsibility for the strategies or ensuring that the relevant information is screened to the relevant stakeholders. I hereby assume that the chief executive officer wouldn’t be that interested in particular technological products e.g. which edition of JAVA should the company’s IT-department be using or which particular server platform would be preferable in order to keep track of smartphones and tablets?

The technology strategy deals with the “hard side” of the technology. Which products, programming languages, databases, hardware, operating systems, back end platforms, ERP systems should the organization make use of.

What is the Technology Strategy?

The technology strategy deals with articulation of plans, roadmaps and principles for which information technologies that the enterprise should make use of.

The technology strategy is all about giving the decision makers some guidance on how to ensure to get rid of systems that only adds risks to how the organization does its business.

Systems that potentially will not add any kind of value to the business and instead seems like a liability own and be a part of the application portfolio.

Relations to IT-strategy

The technology strategy is delimited to deal with information technology (abbreviated IT) and as such the technology strategy can be related to the usage of IT strategy.

The difference between the technology strategy and the IT strategy; is that the IT strategy usually makes use of a long term description of goals that ensures that the IT department will enable the “business” with achieving its goals and adding bits to the a platform that could be turned into competitive advantage if used correctly.

Who formulates the Technology Strategy?

In many medium and large sized organizations have usually two types of technically related chief executives. The first one is the Chief Information Officer. The second one is the Chief Technology Officer (abbreviated CTO) who is more focused on the application portfolio, platforms and hardware.

The two of them are responsible for different perspectives of the enterprise’s usage of information technology; however it is more likely that the CTO reports to the CIO than the other way around.

The two would have to collaborate on delivering plans that can improve the organization and its usage of information technology.

How do You Formulate a Technology Strategy?

There are many ways to formulate a technology strategy and the way I see it the most important thing is to deliver results through changes investments behavior.  In this regard I assume that a technology strategy would have to be dealt with through the articulation of principles.

Greefhorst & Proper (2011) have written a rather interesting book named “Architecture Principles” and as such their approach to formulating principles can be made use of in order to formulate proper principles that can be incorporated in the technology strategy.

Conclusions

A technology strategy is usually used for ensuring the organization’s ability to gain a return of value of the investments it has committed to the applications, systems, platforms and development can be gained and turned into an advantage.

In order to do so the CTO has to collaborate with other profiles like the CIO in order to develop coherent strategies for the organization’s it-architecture. In order to make a sustainable and resilient strategy it has to be build upon principles.

The next blog post that I plan to publish will deal with principles and how a good principle is formulated.

The Architecture Crystal Ball: Predictions for 2012

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I have had the opportunity to read several documents containing estimations on what the chief architects and CIOs should expect of the concept of Enterprise Architecture in 2012.

As a result I have made some thoughts of my own, and my thoughts have been delimited to what could happen in Scandinavia. There are reasons for when or where the organization should develop.

Most of the articles that I have read in order to identify the potential development of Enterprise Architecture in 2012 were developed by American organizations and my assumption is that American organizations usually apply an American approach to dealing with problems at hand, and as a result my view might differ quite a bit from the trend analysis that organizations like IBM, Gartner Incorporated, The Open Group, Microsoft or other organizations might have articulated.

Below I have defined four areas that organizations will invest their resources into.

Frameworks and Models

  • CIOs, it-management and the chief architect have discovered that it is unlikely that they will gain a total overview of all systems available in the enterprise and they will focus on developing a few key models.

  • The chief architects will continue investing time and effort into deployment of frameworks, but the chief architects would still have to mix “best of breed” from the frameworks in order to implement the enterprise architecture program.

Investments Planning and Governance

  • Medium and major organizations will begin to add their IT investments to their Enterprise Architecture models, since it is presumable that this would add value to the decision platforms.

  • The investment planning will still be focused on the IT-spending and only to some degree on how information technology takes part of add value to the business.

Technology Foresight

  • The Enterprise Architecture programs will still be IT-centric; however the structured methodology for collecting data about the enterprise architecture will provide the chief architects with the opportunity to impact the IT – strategy, and as such they could have a chance to evolve the enterprise architecture program.

  • The Enterprise Architecture programs will be used in order to define strategic approaches to what sort of technologies that make sense to invest in. As such the chief architect can gain a leading role in articulating the it-strategy. In order to do so the chief architect would enable a platform where realistic scenarios for implementing technology in order to give the decision-makers a realistic insight on what they would have to deal with.

  • The debt and credit crisis will in 2012 impact the organizations in a way that increases the demand for a smarter usage of the information systems and technology platforms available. The smarter usage of information systems demands an approach to information governance and reliable information.

Principles, Standards and Methodology

  • Organizations will find out that without principles for how to deal with different perspectives of developing their IT architecture, they will not be able to enforce the desired behavior. As a result organizations will invest more time in articulating principles.

  • EA assurance for the IT architecture will be a hot topic during 2012, and the organizations will eventually initiate projects that will focus on the articulation of principles based upon criteria like when does the principle apply, when can the developers differ from the principles, when should the principle be updated and who is responsible for updating the standard?

  • Standardization will likewise become a dominant topic, and many organizations will initiate projects that supports the development of it-projects enhances customer experience (platform independent and mobile). Management of standards are vital in order to ensure the development of these projects since it it is vital to ensure the data export of data.

Conclusion

Due to the crisis most organizations tries to reduce costs and deliver a better value proposition to its customers. Most organizations can save money through standardization of the their IT-architecture; however the decision-makers would have to know how to deal with gaining information of how the IT-architecture works, how it can be simplified (enhancing speed of development) and how it can be closer aligned with the business processes.

For this, enterprise architecture is essential and that is how I see the usage of enterprise architecture in Scandinavia in year 2012.

Five Things to do in order to deal with KPIs for Enterprise Architecture Processes

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Measuring Enterprise Architecture Processes

In most enterprises that applies Enterprise Architecture will there be a need to measure how the enterprise is progressing from adapting the Enterprise Architecture Program and there will be some stakeholders who would like to know what value or benefits they gain by investing (and keep financing) the Enterprise Architecture Program.

Enterprise Architecture Processes

Implementing Enterprise Architecture principles, standards, systems and strategies would need some changes, processes and scoping. In this particular paper the idea of Enterprise Architecture processes deals with the concept that a chief architect sets a set of tasks in motion in order to uncover systems, social networks and business processes. The Enterprise Architecture processes differs from business processes by the architectural processes changes systems, business processes, information systems, IT, technology and social systems. Business processes deals only with optimizing the flow of production and goods.

The Enterprise Architecture Processes deals with implementing the structured approach to Enterprise Architecture and to keep maintaining and maturing it. It is quite right that the Enterprise Architecture program would have to be maintained in order to ensure its functional in the long run.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it
– W. Edwards Deming.

Measuring

The chief architect would have to develop some KPIs in order to measure the processes that are a part of the Enterprise Architecture Program. In order to gain an overview of the processes it becomes a necessity to measure the processes before the initiatives have been initiated in the Enterprise Architecture Program. In the ideal situation the chief architect would have to investigate how the business performed before the Enterprise Architecture Program was initiated. The measurement should be used in order to improve the decision makers abilities to make the right decisions. In order to investigate if the proposed changes that have been implemented with the Enterprise Architecture Program have improved the situation for the enterprise, the chief architect would have to measure the “as-is” situation for the processes and “to-be” would have to be like. After the processes have been implemented the ideas would have to give the decision-makers an idea of or if the enterprise has moved closer to a desired state. For this key performance indicators can be a rather good tool for measuring.
The next section of the paper deals with the concept of key performance indicators.

Key Performance Indicators

In this paper a key performance indicator is defined as a number (simple indicator) indicating how a process or segment of an enterprise works. Key performance indicator is a simple tool that gives the various stakeholders data for interpretation and as such the KPI can’t stand alone it has to be accompanied with in-depth analysis documents.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are suitable situations when the decision-makers would have to a quick overview of how the enterprise works (processes, segments and systems).

The KPIs would have enable the chief architect and the various other profiles that are a part of the Enterprise Architecture group with the appropriate data from the various systems.

KPIs have a significant factor within the concept of the Enterprise Architecture Program due to the various elements of the enterprise’s architecture works.

The KPI is needed is used as by the decision-makers in order to find out if there are any particular problems in the day to day management. Each of the KPIs can guide the decision-makers and it would be able to misguide the decision-makers. In order to find out if the KPI is adding the right value to the the overview that the decision-makers understand the KPI and how it should be used. Likewise does it become a necessity to deal with the KPI in order to understand if the KPI can be used in order to gain the overview in the in the enterprise. KPIs are by all means simplified and it becomes a necessity for the chief architect and for that matter the enterprise architects investigates if the KPI is too simplified and if the KPI can be implemented in the enterprise at hand.

Validating the KPIs

In order to validate the KPIs the chief architect would have to go into the situation of the various groups in the enterprise e.g. do the various actors understand what is to be measured and how they are measured. It is a necessity to challenge each of the KPIs and their stakeholders in order to find the best possible way to ensure that the KPIs measures contributes with value.

Five Things to do in KPI – EA Development

As promised I will hereby present five things that the chief architect could do in order to develop usable KPIs:

1) Identify what KPIs are relevant for the enterprise from a business point of view. Associate other KPIs when the business KPIs have been identified.

2) Probe the views of the enterprise’s decision-makers and those who would make use of the KPIs. Ensure that the business-stakeholders understands why the KPIs have been chosen and what they represent.

3) Articulate a draft for the KPIs and simulate how they impact the decision-makers and if they give the right kind of indication to the decision-makers. Ensure that you incorporate business-politics in your plan for implementing the KPIs.

4) Refine the KPIs and educate the various stakeholders and decision-makers in how the make use of the KPIs and when not to make use of them.

5) Build in the KPIs for the Enterprise Architecture program and ensure that the KPIs are visible in all the various forms of governance structure that are directly related to the Enterprise Architecture program.

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

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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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vestas Wind Systems – Windy Architectures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Qualiware Enabling Positive Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 22 Enterprise Architecture Summer Camp

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

The Agile Standard Contract

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

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

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

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

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

Complexity and Enterprise Architecture

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

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

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

Value Estimation of Enterprise Architecture

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

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

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

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

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

Systems Thinking for Health – IT

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

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

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

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

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

Enterprise Architecture on Greenland (Arctic Architecture)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.