Enterprise architecture program v2

Enterprise Architecture
Program
Making Order out of Chaos
By: Robert R. Rowntree, Jan. 14th,2018

Summary
The following will be discussed in this presentation:
1. What is Enterprise Architecture, its mandate, its importance
and how can it be used to deliver business value.
2. Balancing Architecture Governance between Architecture
Quality and Project dimensions – scope, time and cost.
3. Approach to providing Superior Customer Service, Quality
Deliverables and efficient/effective Operations while
demonstrating progress, value and results.
4. Create a Technology Strategy that drives the Business.
Robert R. Rowntree
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#1 -Mandate
 Need to establish a Mandate for each unit within an Organization
so each units and their people know their role and responsibilities.
 Improves throughput and lowers cost by:
 Reducing duplication of effort
 Accountability through ownership
 Lowers the uncertainty in who does what in the organization.
 Reduces organizational “frictions”
 Each organization needs to establish what's right for them. The
industry’s best practice is:
 The EA Unit should mediate between the Users of Technology
(business) and all the Units comprising technology including Operations,
Solution Delivery and PMO to:
Deliver the Technology that Drives out of
the Organization’s Vision and Performance
goals.
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#1 -What is EA?
 Best Analogy “City Planning vs. Building Planning”- EA is
City Planning. Over time without the “City Planning” the landscape
will increasingly have difficulty integrating/interoperating, shortages
will arise.
 Cities need sufficient services – Security (Fire, Police), Hospitals, Power, Transportation.
 Cities need to “fit” together functionally and aesthetically (interoperate).
 Cities need financing and budgeting for investments/expenditures.
 So do you want a “Detroit” or a “Palm Springs” – a few good buildings (GM, Ford offices)
sprouting up over a decaying metropolis.
 Which do you have? How can you tell?
 Formally there are many definitions of EA based on
perspective:
 Business - What – Key Processes, Systems and Data (EA as Strategy)
 Business – End Game – Optimize often fragmented processes into an integrated
environment that is responsive to change and supportive of delivery of the business strategy.
(The Open Group).
 Technical  EA ≠ IT Architecture (Business, Application, Data, Technology)
EA = IT Architecture + Link Tech Investment to Bus Performance + Guiding Principles +
Standards + Research/Trends + Governance + ADM + Blueprints (Current/Target Env) +
Roadmap
Standards = Technical + Product + Architecture + Information
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#1 – Why is EA Important?
Accountability -> Links Technology Investment
to Business Performance
 Technology can’t exist without business
 Technology needs to be an accelerant of business initiatives
 Warning! – Don’t fall for the “alignment trap”
 Avoids Key Pain Point – Spending with no Accountability
Kaizen -> Captains the Discovery of Technology
Disruptors that can improve the Business
 External – Scanning the global technology landscape, industry
 Internal – Scanning within the organization for discoveries that
can benefit the entire enterprise – stop “reinventing the wheel”
 Think better customer service, up operational effectiveness,
reduce costs
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#1 – Why is EA Important?
Faster/Agile Business -> Faster/Better
Decisions by People via Governance and
Guidance.
 Governance – Getting desired behaviors to accelerate business
performance – “well-oiled” process reducing “frictions”.
 Principles – Guidelines that simplifies and aligns decision
making.
 Standards – Lowers component, labor cost. Speeds decisions
Accurate View of IT Stuff -> Uncertainty of
Asset State mitigated
 Big Pain Point of business – where is my stuff, how's it doing in
terms of age, fitness and support costs.
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#1- Why is EA Important?
Where are we headed? -> Technology
Roadmap clarifying how the business will win
over time.
 Roadmap – Time sequenced view of how technology will change
as business landscape changes while keeping the organization
competitive.
 ADM – Architectural Development Method that allows effective
change to happen in the right amount of time, quality and cost.
 Integrates and Interoperates – EA is “City Planning vs. Building
Planning”. Over time without the “City Planning” systems will
increasingly have difficulty integrating/interoperating.
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#2- Balancing Architecture
Balancing and Tradeoffs between EA Quality
and project dimensions – scope, time and cost
 Balance by Degree of Rigor (High, Medium, Low)
 Rigor scale typically based on cost – High =$$$$, Med = $$$, Low = $
 Factors – Risk (Strategic[Space Travel vs. Building Mgmt], Compliance,
Financial, Operational, Reputational), Culture, Finance Priorities, Mandate
 Rigor levels have levels of governance requirements - # of Checkpoints,
intensity of EA involvement, artifacts produced – In themselves cost $$$
 Mandate – Advocate versus Enforce – no teeth versus too much bite.
 Watch out for exploding OPEX – non-standard, limited reuse of
licenses & manpower skillset, solutions work fine individually but
lack integration capabilities – point to point vs centralized comm.
Duplicated data in each solution vs. normalized common data.
 El-Cheapo, non standard projects don’t likely translate to low
OPEX  OPEX = 4 to 8x CAPEX.
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#3 – Quality EA
Superior Customer Service
 Manage End to End EA Process  Higher Satisfaction
 Rapid Attention to Issue  Head off Customer Dissatisfaction
Quality Deliverables
 Only so much a “process” can drive quality – Activities that are
more an art than a science, those with many possible
exceptions, are dependent on the Artist.
 Aim for Artisans that have discipline, ability to learn, passion for
excellence.
 Provide Organizational Support – Good Technology, Physical Environment ,
Coaching, Training and Team Cohesion.
 Provide the Conditions - Autonomy, Mastery and Meaning – Meaning trumps
everything!
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#3 – Quality EA
Effective Operations – Unit, Team, Individuals
 High Performance Business – Targets, Incentives, Monitoring.
 High Performance Team – Vision, Priorities, Plan of Attack,
Knowledge/Capabilities Inventory, Speak Truths/Gotcha’s, Devils
Advocate.
 High Performance Individuals
 Are you making progress? - Clear Road Blocks. Highly correlated to Job
Satisfaction.
 “Check in” without “Checking up” – Vanquishes perception of micromanaging.
 Coaching – everyone has a learning plan – part personal goals, part traced to
company goals.
Demonstrate Progress, Value and Results
 Metric - Project Leaders satisfaction, # of Architectural Defects
ID’ed after Launch, % On-Time checkpoints.
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#4 – Technology Strategy
Strategy is not easy
 Not easy to assess – Wall street penalizes companies with game
changing strategies.
 CEO’s have tough time communicating and executing strategy -
IBM worldwide survey of CEOs.
Strategy is about – How are you going to get
there?
 Where are you? – Current State
 Where do you want to go? – Technology Vision
 How are you going to get there? - Strategy
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Approach
 Where are you?
 Company Analysis - Business and Technology current state,
Technology maturity assessment, SWOT analysis, Capabilities.
 Industry analysis - Current Trends, SWOT analysis
 Environmental Analysis – PEST – Political, Environmental, Social,
Technology
 Where do you want to go?
 Technology vision - Congruent with the business vision, strategy,
goals and objectives and roadmap
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Approach
 How are you going to get there? Strategy
 Guiding principles
 How you will make decisions. Mapped to business strategy, goals
and objectives.
 Proxy for technology having to understand all the business strategy.
 E.g., GP Lean/Agile approach because business mandate to move
towards Lean Management.
 Risks – E.g., Shadow IT, Lax DR/BC testing
 Technology Trends – Industry Analysis
 Company Today – Company Analysis – Landscape, benchmark etc
 Company Going Forward
 Vision
 Goals
 Capability Gaps.
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Appendix
Risks of EA
Metrics for EA
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Risks of EA
Over Thinking - Imbalance towards too much
thinking leaving little resources for Doing.
Lacks Integration – EA is not well integrated
with all Management centers
 Mgmt Centers – Solution Delivery, Portfolio Project Management
and Operations.
Advocate or Enforce– Have to determine
whether EA just advocates/advises, enforces or
somewhere in between.
 Post Mortem of Financial crisis showed Risk Management at
major financial institutes seen as Advocators/Recommenders of
what To Do/Not to Do. Major Fault.
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Metrics for EA
Metrics that can be used to communicate the
value of Enterprise Architecture
1. Time to Market/Agility - Quantitative
 Use of Standards – easier decisions, better
interoperability.
 Modern Technology – improve performance &
interoperability.
 Governance - streamlines decision making.
2. Revenue/IT Costs - Quantitative
 Financial markets track Revenue/IT Cost – research
shows that using people, process and technology can
elevate organization financial performance.
 Fewer Technologies – lower variance in product licensing
and labor – e.g.,databases all Oracle – volume discounts.
 Shorter Projects – faster decisions with slimmer set of
technologies provide deeper and narrow expertise.
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Metrics for EA
Metrics that can be used to communicate the
value of Enterprise Architecture
3. Reliability - Quantitative
 Standardize - Lower complexity and interoperability
gotchas.
 Focused expertise - slimmer set of technology
components.
4. Customer Satisfaction – Qualitative
 Combination of business owner and end user satisfaction
statistics.
 Business owners of IT systems satisfaction.
 End User satisfaction.
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WIP
Finished Beats Perfect – Avoid “Gold Plating”
Individual Time Buffers - % of Time for Thinking
Priorities, Categories, Triage.
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WIP
Creative/Innovating or Informing Meetings
Core Problem  CEO’s Worldwide – Lots of
Informing not enough Creative/Innovation.
EA mandate/culture – significant portion of
Creative for Organization.
Psychographics – Divergent/Creative/Unbounded
vs. Convergent/Consensus/bounded discussions
Divergent vs. Convergent Discussions
Corporation worldwide lack Divergent Thinkers.
Distribution in IT is about 80/20
Convergent/Divergent Thinkers.
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Risks of No EA
Locally Optimal, Enterprise Suboptimal – Organizational
units meet their performance goals, the Enterprise likely
not.
 Income vs. Balance sheet statement – short term solutions vs. long term
enterprise wealth. EA works to maximize enterprise wealth versus solutions
maximizing short term income/expenses.
Loosely following Standards, Regulations –
 Lower integration – point solutions work fine individually but not together.
Enterprise wide systems hard to build if not impossible.
 Lower interoperability – non standard means difficult and fragile integrations.
Changing anything takes more $$$, time and effort.
 Agility suffers – lower integratability and interoperability means less agility to
tackle fast moving and disruptive markets.
Denormalized, Duplicated and Dirty Data – .
 Low Integrity – hard to consistently update data in multiple spots.
 EA creating order and building solutions creating disorder.
 Complexity and disorder produces inefficiencies.
 Result  Costs go up, agility to grow and survive disruptions goes down.
Robert R. Rowntree
20

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