Digital transformation impacts on EA - Sep 2018

Editor's Notes

• #5: If some of the points sounds provocative or offending, it is not personal. It is meant to trigger a conversation. At the end of the day, I will want to go home
• #7: It is not about helping the enterprise digitize its processes through inwards facing tech or new ways of working (not yet)
• #10: Its about outward facing, survival focus, value-creation org-wide transformation
• #12: Chief Digital Officer to drive digital transformation & look at new revenue models 2-Speed IT – new digital team for transformation but retains current team to help unlock data; cultivate agile practices into current IT setup
• #13: Info sharing workforce – breaking down processes and hence data silos; leverage use of collaborative tools such Slack, online co-edits, online workspaces / workgroups Products vs Projects Continuous journey – hence need to test-and-learn fast; hence need agile delivery practices; build rather than long lead time procurement Mobile-first workforce Field force mobility (classic use case) Work from home; work remotely but still collaborate Productivity tools on mobile devices Choice of devices
• #14: Start-ups: IoT, DER, smart home, data play Here to stay and disrupt; entrench yourself in the ecosystem of start-ups to keep and leverage specific capabilities to augment
• #15: Data silos How to discover the data sources locked in legacy systems? Esp OT systems? How to cleanse at source before consume? How to digitize manual records into usable formats? Tackling the Business/Application Architecture will take a long time due to the scale and number of people involved. Focus on Information Architecture to discover what are the data available, cleanse and digitize them so that innovation can take place faster and earlier.
• #17: Existing technology standards under challenge: Application tech stack not aligned with new digital org desired capabilities Existing TRM governance may not keep up Digital technology may change faster then you can update TRM New digital experts vs old guards (EAs): Why are you not following the prescribed standards? Integration governance? Reuse of existing assets ‘Fail-fast, fix-fast’ ethos vs strict gated processes: May not be EA prerogative to influence But architecture endorsement is often a required ‘step’ Testing business hypothesis vs structured BRM : New business areas or revenue ares Targeting new segments etc Existing BRM governance may not keep up Processes may change faster then you can update BRM Emergent vs long upfront design work: Digital - often new areas to explore / new tech platforms to try and many unknowns which is not possible to have pixel perfect design until you try Exposes gaps in digital capabilities (DevOps, PaaS/CaaS, Data Sciences, programming skills etc) ‘Walk the ground & kiss babies’: Not hands-on in development or driving business-tech implementation / transformation ‘Ivory towers’ corporate standards gate-keepers only Vendor-led organizartion: If you have a strong reliance on vendor solutions, views and architecture, it exposes a gap in your response to help digital properly
• #19: Lead early transformation initiatives: Help identify the capable individuals to jump start the digital org Help new digital org navigate: Reuse of configuration patterns, common physical infrastructure, Internal IT systems, practices (security, operations etc), cron jobs - help provide guidance and direction ‘Fail-fast, fix-fast’ means imperfections: Your BRM and governance board is never gonna keep up Let it be until the org figures the product vision  strategy  market positioning Don’t be a blocker instilling old processes Program level coordination & collaboration: You will know what other projects or programmes are in progress; utilize those knowledge to help remove blockers Unblock data discovery: Existing data sources are a trove of treasure to enable machine learning, discover patterns in your customers, operations etc Help digital org to discover these data trove through your IA Technically unlock these data access through tools, e.g. Mulesoft, to a registry for them to easily discoverable Help to negotiate data protection, ownership, accessibility with data owners Help advocate agile product based approach: Help the rest of org to understand what is product first organization and what benefits does agile brings Why product mindset is important and why project mindset should not be a default 2 speed IT bridge: Change agent for cultivating new ways of working in old org Help push best practices in old org, e.g. tech talks sharing, daily stand-ups etc Accommodate ‘chaos’ in tech stack: New tools, platforms, development tech stack and standards (e.g. programming languages, open source tools) will be brought in The old TRM may not be fully applicable but it is ok to accommodate the new standards so that it reflects new ways of working #learn-it-all: We need learn new skills and methodology (agile, CD/CI, PaaS, CaaS, new programming languages) etc Take the opportunity to learn-it-all Get your hands dirty, dude: Learn by doing, e.g. pairing session with digital org Volunteer to help Value-add through legacy integration know-hows: We are good with enterprise systems and products, e.g. ESB, SAP, Oracle etc Digital org are mostly weak in these systems know-hows and how to integrate to them, protocol to use, what tools to use? We can value add our enterprise knowledge and showing them the way
• #21: BA: Help incorporate customer journeys (some EA tools already catered for this). Include business areas or LOBs from the customer angles too. Add customer org and potential customer segments Because most of the time, digital products customer journey maps may not include LoBs ops processes and legacy systems impacted AA: Still relevant (include programming languages and internal products used), e.g. reactjs  serverless cloud IA: Most relevant as everything is data driven but this is also the weakest in most org TA: Include internal products as technology stack  to promote internal reuse and track usage
• #22: If sound of the points sounds provocative or offending, it is not personal. It is meant to trigger a conversation. At the end of the day, I will want to go home