Thoughts on Lesson 6 reading

As I read through this week’s material on Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA), I can see the theoretical value of creating Business Architecture models/documentation.  Defining a model of the business, linked to the Business Context can inform the company of how the architecture of their business supports their goals in interacting with the world around it (my definition of Business Context).  However, it seems to me there are two topics missing from the discussion

1. Cost impact analysis


This is mentioned briefly, in respect to helping guide investment dollars to the most positive impact to the business.  However, I think there is a potential for additional benefit.  With the business context defined and linked to the EBA, ETA, EIA and ESA, current state expense analysis could be performed.  I believe this would allow current expenses to be analyzed to see if the ongoing cost of supporting various ongoing operations would provide useful information.  For example, if a sales channel is identified to only support one product, if the product profit does not support that expense, perhaps the product should be dropped.  However, it could also highlight a other corrective action such as opening the channel to other products, or combining to channels.  This type of analysis is of course already done, but having additional viewpoints on the relationships of expenses informed by the linked architectural viewpoints are another benefit of the EBA efforts.


2. Business Architecture knowledge is already possessed by the business


One of the challenges I see with defining the benefit of EBA efforts is much of the information is already known by individual people within the organization.  I believe some of the resistance to these efforts is the fact that when results are presented, individuals state something along the lines of, “you aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know”.  It seems to me that there is some validity to this feedback.  However, the benefit is realized in how the information can be more easily understood by all staff within the company.  This enables more people within the organization to take advantage of it.  I think this is one aspect that is missed in value analysis. 




I also still see a struggle between openly sharing information and keeping close hold of information.  This, strictly speaking, is not a problem specific to EBA efforts, but is one way that EBA efforts can add value by assisting in broader distribution of knowledge.

Interesting post for Lesson 4 #2

This article focuses directly on IT staff training needs beyond just hard and soft skills, but what methods and techniques can be used to help motivate people in a changing environment.

http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/51072/

Interesting link related to lesson 4 reading

I thought this article talked about the points I raised concerning the missing focus on managing the people side of any type of organizational change.

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/rr00006?gko=643d0

Thoughts on lesson 4 reading

The hardest part of any change initiative, in my opinion, whether IT or other area, is how the people management aspects are handled.  The thing that jumped out at me is how little of the reading focused on that aspect of the issue.  In my experience it is more about people being worried about their jobs that gets in the way of change rather than complexities or relevant skills sets needed to implement change.  This manifests in 2 different ways

• Passive Resistance: The people who can best contribute to change initiatives, those that know best how things work now and what skills and technologies are available are the ones that are often most at risk.  They can be hard to motivate to contribute to change efforts, so they are less likely to help

o   This can potentially be addressed with abundant training in new technologies, giving opportunities in the new target state

• Nay sayers: These people are often not very good at their current jobs, but have found their niche in the current system.  They may have little to contribute to the target state efforts.

o   This can be partially addressed as above, but other avenues must be made available.  Providing early retirement or transfer opportunities are two possibilities.  One innovative approach from a high performing culture I found is a standing separation bonus for any employee to take advantage of.  The theory is that anyone who can be tempted to leave has not completely bought into the enterprises goals.

Both of the above can be minimized with initiatives related to employee morale and culture.  Including both of these things can help uniting staff in a common goal and helps with change execution.

I did find that two of the optional readings talked a little about this type of issue

•  “Five steps to a faster, better cheaper I&O” identifies the above as one of its identified Key Challenges

Key Challenge: “Achieving and sustaining changes in I&O team behavior is reported consistently as the most challenging aspect of I&O transformation.”

However, I did not see where the paper gave real concrete actions to take to address this issue.

It did allude to how organizations with a strength in some aspects of people management, lated to organizational structures and project management may have developed these at the cost of the wider culture.  This causes imbalance where the overall culture cannot embrace change.   This suggests that there is a link to the broader Enterprise Culture and skill sets to be able to successfully implemented improvements.

Additionally, the paper partially addressed the topic further by talking about the importance of developing and communicating a clear vision of the future state to include required resources and competencies.  This I believe gives people a clear idea of the possibilities they have to be involved in the future.

• “Strategic Technology Planning: Picking the Winners”

This article talks about more details of how new technologies can be brought into the organization, but again, only indirectly mentions the broader context of the organizations ability to change. 

It first addresses indirectly culture as it discusses the broad idea of categorizing enterprises into A, B and C types of “Technology Aggressiveness”.  This categorization seems to at least indirectly show how enterprise culture has an effect on its ability to change.

It later brings up a discussion of how new technologies can be transferred around the enterprise.  It talks about different strategies which can indirectly address the concerns I raise.  The concept of creating an advanced technology group (ATG) and defining various options for moving the technology into the enterprise.  It suggests including staff transfers, ass one such approach.  I believe this is an implementation of part of my theory above.

Interesting Article related to Topic 3 #2

I found this paper very interesting.  It is the Enterprise Architecture Guide for MIT's own systems.  It is more than just strictly an Enterprise Information Architecture, but it contains many EIA elements, including a Logical IA laying out major entities and their relationships, and some systems data flow analysis along with Future State and iterative state planning

http://web.mit.edu/itag/eag/FullEnterpriseArchitectureGuide0.1.pdf

Interesting link related to Topic 3

Here is a paper published by Oracle.  I am impressed that there framework is not just a collection of there products and how they will solve all the worlds problems.  I was drawn to the idea of "Data Realms".  It looks like a good way to think about different types of data a company has and align solutions to these realms while keeping an eye on the Conceptual Level Data entities.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/entarch/oea-info-arch-framework-dev-process-513866.pdf

Interesting Link topic 7 #2

This is a video my company put together (I played a small part in developing the script) as part of a presentation we did for a recent Gartner Conference.  I think it is a good, simply worded explanation of what value Enterprise Architecture brings to an organization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6SIkadnGQ