EA - Enabler of Organizational Change and Agility

This being the last week of blogging for the EA 872 course, I would like to reflect on a topic that goes back to the basics of why should organizations adopt EA. Out of the manifold benefits offered by EA, organizational agility has been one of them, perceived either as a direct or indirect benefit. The development and use of EA helps to achieve business-IT alignment which in turns contributes to organizational agility.

Achieving organizational agility and business-IT alignment remain the top management concerns. An agile organization is the one that has the ability to quickly and effectively respond to the demands of change while continually delivering high performance. One of the blogs of the Open Group, the writer says that - "Enterprise Architecture is good, but when we make it agile to embrace change, it is great". This is analogous to the ideas in the book 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins. Being nimble or agile to the adoption of organizational changes is a factor that distinguishes an organization and provides a competitive edge in the industry. The figure below depicts an Agile Enterprise Architecture.

It begins with analyzing the organization based on its current and future states and developing a rough initial architectural plan. Then it proceeds to communicating with the stakeholders, discussing the plan to achieve the future state and based on the feedback received from the stakeholders, updating the architectural model and then going back to the project teams to develop the solutions. We can see that the processes of stakeholder communication, updating the architecture and developing solutions are done repeatedly until the final state is achieved. Thus, in order to be agile, the tasks need to be broken down and executed in an incremental and iterative fashion. Also, a conscious efforts needs to be made to achieve the architectural state, hence it is intentional and emergent. A few points from Open Group's blog to achieve an agile EA are:

1. Build a strong foundation (to avoid going back and changing the basic model every time)

2. Establish an implementation strategy

3. Adopt a layered approach

4. Practice Change continually.

Now that we are talking about effectively handling change in an organization, the leaders and C-suite members are the ones leading the change. Bringing about change in an organization is definitely not an easy task, be it in the area of EA, business processes or the people. So, it is important for the organizational leaders to deeply understand the change and their effects on the overall organizational culture. Here are six points that stand for 'The Six secrets of Change' by Michael Fullan. 

1. Love your employees

2. Connect peers with a purpose

3. Capacity building prevails

4. learning is the work

5. Transparency rules

6. Systems Learn

The author states that "The theory of the six secrets can be used to create action plans to stimulate appropriate and effective organizational change." So, while trying to adopt agility, organizations primarily must embrace change and knowing the implied meanings of these six secrets will help make the transformation smoother.

References:

Agile Enterprise Architecture - A Good to Great Evolution. Retrieved from https://blog.opengroup.org/2015/04/27/agile-enterprise-architecture-a-good-to-great-evolution/

Fullan, M. (2011). The six secrets of change: What the best leaders do to help their organizations survive and thrive. John Wiley & Sons

Information Technology (IT) Planning & Strategy

This week's readings were on Information Technology (IT) Strategy. The Gartner glossary defines IT strategy as “the discipline that defines how IT will be used to help businesses win in their chosen business context.” It deals with effective planning and deployment of IT resources in alignment with the business strategy of the organization. IT is about empowering business and getting the organizational activities done quickly and with ease. Hence effective IT planning is necessary for improved agility and efficiency in an enterprise.

Technology innovation these days has become the distinguishing factor that provides the edge among competing organizations. The faster an organization adopts technology best practices and latest innovations, the further ahead is the organization. This makes it important to plan IT implementation and develop an effective IT strategy. Technology is the enabler to achieve the vision and goals of an organization. So, not only is necessary to have an IT strategy, but also it is equally important to develop a strong one.

The figure above shows Gartner's model on IT strategy planning. Three main aspects must be defined:

1. Demand

2. Control

3. Supply
'Demand' refers to the underlying business motive and needs to which IT resources must be aligned to such as the business context, defining capabilities etc.

'Control' defines the decision making to satisfy the demands. Hence, it includes the IT principles, governance and metrics

'Supply' involves efficiently managing and reusing IT services to achieve the goals. It also includes human resources management, deciding on IT sourcing and enabling EA to support capabilities.

In addition, the IT strategy includes identification of the risks and threats and ways to mitigate them. It also involves discussion on the current state and the ways to achieve the future state. A detailed migration plan is also included. A good way to represent these aspects is use a matrix representation. The enterprise business Strategies, the Change Requirements, IT Strategies and Initiatives must be decided. They can be shown in the matrix form:

- Business Strategies to Change Requirements and IT Strategies Matrix 

- Business Strategies to Change Requirements and Initiatives Matrix

This gives a clear view of the important factors involved in planning. These diagrams are useful because they help model the contribution of IT towards achieving the business goals.

References:

Bank XYZ IT Strategy Document. Gartner. Retrieved from http://online.ist.psu.edu/sites/ea872fusco/files/eaimprovesitsynergy.pdf

Schulte, A. (2014, March 28). IT Strategic Planning Key Initiative Overview (ID: G00262933). Retrieved from Gartner database.

EA Measurement

The topic assigned for this week is EA measurement. This involves trying to find out the effective of the EA implementation and the value that it has brought to the organization. It is not an easy task to demonstrate the value of EA in terms of accurate numerical metrics. One of the reasons being that a lot of factors (benefits, costs, risks) in the overall EA implementation program need to be considered while measuring the benefits offered by EA. Gathering all of such information in a timely manner is very tedious. At the same time, without proper means of measurement, it is not possible to assess the value of EA. So, it is of utmost importance to chalk out a good measurement program that addresses all possibles areas of EA adoption and projects the best possible outcome of EA.

As per Gartner, the EA Measurement program consists of the following stages:

1. Planning — mapping measurements to strategies

2. Assessing the organization — comparing capabilities with goals

3. Designing and identifying effective measures

4. Building the measurement process

5. Implementing and measure

6. Communicating appropriate results to appropriate stakeholders

7. Reviewing, changing and improving performance

The first two stages fall under scoping of the measurement program. It is about pre-planning and setting the stage for a good measurement program. It involves understanding and analysis of the various factors involved and collecting information about them. It might also involve going through historical data to get a better hold of the progress made by EA. The next stage is a thorough assessment of the organization based on the information gathered in the planning stage. It involves understanding the current state of the organization.

The third and fourth stages involve defining what and how to measure. It is the designing phase of the measurement program. The measurement matrix is used to test the quality of the EA program by defining the assessment areas (EA value areas) and different measurement categories (like balanced scorecard). Once all possible measures have been drawn out, the next task is to select the measures based on the strategy of the organization and deliver them.

The last three stages are the actual implementation part. The measures shortlisted in the preceding stages need to be finally implemented and also communicated to all the stakeholders. This needs to be done in a coordinated way. And then comes repeating these steps in an iterative fashion - review, change, improve. This helps to further refine the measures and align them with organizational goals. This requires strong support from the leadership team as well as the EA team.

So, we can very clearly that EA measurement is no doubt a complex process and involves a lot of planning and designing for it to be successful. It needs to be dynamic and resilient, and change as the needs and goals of the organization change. This is very important for the continuous growth and improvement of the organization.

References:

Weiss, D. (2006, September 13). Enterprise Architecture Measurement Program, Part 1: Scoping (ID: G00142314). Retrieved from Gartner database.

Weiss, D. (2006, September 13). Enterprise Architecture Measurement Program, Part 2: Defining What and How to Measure (ID: G00142387). Retrieved from Gartner database.

Weiss, D. (2006, September 13). Enterprise Architecture Measurement Program, Part 3: Implementing (ID: G00142355). Retrieved from Gartner database.

Leveraging Governance to sustain EA efforts

For this week's blog post, I will be reflecting on a white paper of Oracle Consulting on the topic of leveraging the governance methodology to support and improve EA efforts, especially in the area of technology innovation. A very important point is stated in the words - "Neither the importance nor the tedium of EA governance can be overstated". EA governance is considered to be a double edged sword offering the advantage of standardization of business processes but at the same time posing the disadvantage of being an overhead to the functioning of an organization.

This article is focused on the importance of governance in the context of new technology adoption and innovation in organizations. It discusses five major advances in technology:
1. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
2. Mobile Computing and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
3. Cloud Computing
4. Big Data
5. Consumerization of IT (CoIT)
The article highlights the governance areas that each of these technologies must focus on. Moving further, it suggests the characteristics that an effective governance methodology should have in order to meet new and dynamic IT/Business models.

Regarding SOA adoption, the articles stresses on having a separate SOA governance to get the expected ROI from SOA. The governance must include defining where in the SDLC would service development and reuse come into picture, effective internal communication channels, approval processes etc. Without a good SOA governance, it is hard to receive the full benefit of SOA implementation.
For Mobile Computing and BYOD, the main idea of governance would be around data ownership. With the use of smartphones and other personal devices to work on organizational data, ownership of data is a big issue to be concerned about. It is also important to think about data security and data access in this case.
With more and more organization making the move to the cloud, governance plays a big role here. Governance needs to be addressed based on six major factors - Standardization, Data ownership, Data Location, Availability, Service Request Handling and Procurement Authority.
With the big data explosion and big data technology adoption, the need here is to have a solid architectural plan along with a master data management plan. It is an extension of data governance. Data stewardship and data ownership are important factors to be considered.
The consumerization of IT also has governance needs similar to BYOD in terms of device management and maintaining security.

With the overview of the need for efficient governance, the article highlights the various characteristics of governance - the importance of EA governance, organization-specific governance, Just enough, Just in time, Socialization and Communication and Process Integration. The article provided a good overview of the importance of governance in an organization adopting EA. The organization must maintain a good balance of governance required and agility needed to keep up with the competition.

References:
Oracle Consulting.(2012). Leveraging Governance to Sustain Enterprise Architecture Efforts. (White Paper) Retrieved from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2013/13-jan/1697085

Effective EA Governance

In general, governance is necessary anywhere there is a team setting, wherein a group of people interact and work with each other to accomplish tasks. Be it an informal setting of a household or a formal setting of corporate organizations or government bodies, governance has a major role in the smooth functioning of the processes. The Business Dictionary defines governance as - "Establishment of policies, and continuous monitoring of their proper implementation, by the members of the governing body of an organization." This definition in the context of EA is that, "A governance body must be established to make final decisions regarding the approval of new or modified EA content. Gartner refers to this entity as the architecture review board (ARB).”

In the assigned readings for this week, the Gartner toolkit that defines the five steps to effective EA governance is of specific interest to me. It states that EA governance is different from corporate and IT governance because of the strategic nature of EA. EA governance contributes to both corporate and IT governance to help the organization align to and meet the strategic goals. IT governance, on the other hand is more operational. It cannot understand the business needs unless EA governance comes into picture and monitors that IT governance works on supporting the business strategy.

The five steps outlined by Gartner for effective EA governance are as below:
Step 1: Incorporate IT and Corporate Governance Principles
Both IT and Corportate Governance principles need to be assessed for a good EA governance. It helps to guage how much of support from the EA end is required for IT and Corporate governance. Some organizations are focussed more on the IT and have a much stronger IT governance. It is necessary to strike a balance between the two, so as to enable an effective EA governance.
Step 2: Identify your EA Archetype to Guide EA Governance
The EA archetype can be identified with the help of the following figure. It is based on the scope and focus of the organization.

Step 3: Identify your organizational culture
Gartner defines the culture of an organization as "a collection of attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values that is shared by people or groups, and that influences the way they behave with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization." It is a tough task for the enterprise architects to identify the culture because of its evolving and changing nature.
Step 4: Identify your Governance Style
Governance style refers to the way in which decisions are made in an organization. The well-known governance styles can be categorized as:
- Business Monarchy
- IT Monarchy
- Feudal
- Federal
- Duopoly
- Anarchy
- Blended
Step 5: Match your Governance Style with your EA Approach
The EA approach - traditional, federated, middle out, managed diversity or blended needs to be in sync with the governance style. The decisions to be made are identified and then mapped to the governance style in order to develop an EA Governance framework. This is a very time consuming task as it involves communicating with people from different teams before arriving at a consensus.

These five steps take into account a number of considerations identified by Gartner towards designing an efficient EA Governance framework. This will definitely help organizations get started with EA governance.



References:
Toolkit: Five Steps For Defining Effective EA Governance, Gartner. Retrieved from http://online.ist.psu.edu/sites/ea872fusco/files/5stepsforgovernance.ppt

Fusco, D. (2016). EA Governance. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1772174/assignments/8524422?module_item_id=20641324