Tim Westbrock to Speak at IT Leadership Forum, Dec. 13, in Atlanta

Join Tim at the IT Leadership Forum, Dec. 13, in Atlanta, sponsored by alfabet.

Tim will be presenting “Expanding Enterprise Architecture into the Business.”

The ultimate promise of Enterprise Architecture has always been the alignment of business and IT strategies, activities, assets and direction.  In order for EA to bridge the gap between the desired business future state and the work that must be done to achieve that future state, EA must evolve to include a business architecture sponsored by business leadership and developed by business professionals.

Tim will facilitate a discussion on the many facets of business-enabled EA, while also adding their experiences relating to the challenges of approaching the business, how EA and ITA work together, the goals, organization and outputs of a business enabled EA approach and how to get started.

This is an invitation-only event, so if you are going to be in the Atlanta area Dec. 13th, click here to get more information on the event and how to register your interest in attending.

Hope to see you!

EA Tips – Style AND Substance

For an EA practice to be effective EA leaders must pay attention to both the “style” of how their team operates and the “substance” of the work they produce. While that guidance isn’t new, in practice I often find that many leaders don’t have the balance quite right. It is worth revisiting as a general EA Tip.

First, what do I mean by “style” and by ‘substance”? (note: I chose those words because it sounded like a catchy blog title) For the sake of this article, I define “substance” to be the “work product” of the team as viewed by EA consumers wanting hard deliverables like frameworks, models, standards, roadmaps, strategy papers, and other related content. “Style” refers to “how” the team works with the rest of the organization in creating and utilizing their content: engaging business and IT leadership, fostering a collaborative environment; choosing communications vehicles, the words they use, and the “posture” of how they present themselves to the rest of the organization.

Many EA teams disproportionately direct more effort to the substance of the work than to building a sense of ownership and socializing the desired changes. In essence, they under serve the “style” elements. Granted, substance is critical. No matter how good the soft skills are or how convincing the leaders are, if the content isn’t solid then nobody will follow. But what is more surprising to many teams is that even the most elegant and perfect deliverables often don’t have impact. Why? – Because the team hasn’t positioned the larger workforce to embrace enterprise architecture content and to use it in their day to day work.

Improving the EA team’s style is often where we spend time with clients, specifically working on the “art” of practicing EA. Though many EA’s wish there was a methodological approach to these softer elements, there really isn’t one that works in all cases. People, perspectives, culture, and individual skills vary widely from organization to organization. One approach is to look to lessons learned from the organizational change management discipline, particularly as they apply to driving change across and down into an organization. There are tried and true techniques for preparing organizations for change, conducting education and awareness campaigns, gaining support and participation, and communicating effectively through a variety of different channels. After all, one of the valuable outcomes from EA is helping an organization move from an emphasis on tactical execution and silo behaviors to one that includes a larger, enterprise-wide strategic element. Substance is great, but style really does matter.

Why No Business with EA?

So there I am sitting on a panel at the Troux Worldwide Conference a couple of weeks ago, answering interesting questions with some interesting co-panelists, when a thought struck me.  “After decades of positioning EA as a discipline for business-IT alignment, why aren’t EA programs more in tune with(driven by, owned by, participation from) the business?”

I’m not just talking about myself positioning EA in this way.  Just about every definition you come across, from vendors, consultants, analysts, and practitioners alike; EA is described as being business driven, strategic in nature, and focused on the long-term future state of the enterprise.  But within most organizations I engage, EA is found to be lacking significant business drivers, business participation or even any level of credibility from business executives.

So I ask again, Why?

I think that there are a variety of reasons for this, and the exact mix of reasons are probably unique for each individual enterprise.  However, I would guess that there are a few factors that are predominant in most organizations.

1. Lack of EA leadership within the IT organization.  I don’t mean that there are no leaders in IT.  I mean that the leadership in IT for EA (let’s face it, most EA organizations are within the IT function) isn’t doing what is necessary to form the relationships and value proposition for EA to be relevant outside EA.  They remain satisfied with a focus on IT outcomes – applications, infrastructure, standards and governance.
2. Lack of business understanding within IT and EA leadership and practitioners.  IT leaders and EA program members must develop an understanding of the core operations, motivational forces, financial model, and strategic plans of the enterprise.
3. Lack of translation of business understanding.  Some EA practitioners have made the initial investment in gaining essential knowledge about the business in which their enterprise competes, as well as the internal operating and financial models, and their strategic drivers.  But the next step is the critical one.  They need to create artifacts that represent that understanding in a way that communicates with senior executive leadership.
4. Too much responsibility at the project/implementation level within IT.  Time and time again, we see very capable EA teams try to gain credibility by helping out as an added resource/technical lead/project manager; only to be given these responsibilities as a permanent part of their charter.

While there are other reasons that warrant consideration (lack of understanding/approval by the CIO, wrong personnel involved, economic downturn); the above represent the factors that demand focused effort to overcome.

What can we do to change this?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Read books and industry literature of a non-technical nature about the industry in which your company competes.
• Experiment with different types of high level models that represent your understanding of your business’ current and potential future state(s).  There are no commonly accepted formats and nomenclature for these types of models, as they are dependent on the executives you are trying to communicate with.  And do not be afraid to have different models to communicate the same thing to different audiences.
• Understand the financial model of your enterprise and how it impacts IT’s value delivery.  You must develop a contact in the CFO office.
• Resist project level responsibilities for your EA team.  If you have to accept them for a short time, develop a plan with your superiors to instill architecture skills into the project delivery staff.

Mobility and Social Networking: Do You Have a Need for a Strategy?

Two of the biggest trends that many companies are addressing right now are mobility and Social Networking.  Maybe second only to cloud computing in hype right now, these two areas  represent significant opportunities for many companies.  However, one thing that I have noticed is that sometimes the trends with a lot of hype get a lot of attention when it maybe isn’t necessary in a particular instance.

Mobility is not just about providing mobile phones and other mobile devices to all or some of the workforce, but also understanding the security, information and process impact of having a mobile workforce.  Likewise, social networking is not just about marketing products through another channel or managing relationships, but also understanding the culture and demographics of your customers/consumers, suppliers, employees and partners.  So there is some significant thought that needs to be put into leveraging either of these trends for your enterprise.  The question to answer first is whether your business is one that can leverage them given the nature of the way your organization COULD work, given the right tools and applications.  In order to answer this question, which is not a technology question,  you must develop an understanding of business process and information flows in your organization’s operations.  Too often, though, we see the analysis in this area focus on one or both of two aspects:  1) the technology (hardware and software and network) and 2) current mobile workers and executives and social networking users.   The full potential here can only be exploited by understanding the impact of mobility or social networking on the operations of your company (how you design, produce, sell, deliver, and market your products and services) and the relationships that your company maintains.

While it is likely that either mobility or social networking can have a positive impact on one or more aspects of your enterprise, you must be prepared to look beyond the technology and current state of operations to leverage them.  Sounds like a job for EA.

Transformational View of EA

OK, so you think you are practicing Enterprise Architecture, right? As I have pointed out before, the key is the answer to the question, “Are you architecting the enterprise, or are you architecting IT?”

As I dare say, most of you (if not all) would answer honestly that you are architecting the IT environment (apps, data and infrastructure), albeit with a significant alignment with the business of your enterprise. In any case, as I have been having this conversation with audiences, practitioners and clients over the last couple years (or even longer as a client of mine pointed out yesterday – Thanks, Marc!), I have been suggesting that true EA requires business-owned Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) and Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA).

The implication of this suggestion is that the EBA thought of in the traditional sense is not within the domain of IT; but rather owned, driven and primarily developed and maintained by a group of business professionals within the enterprise. Further, there is also a separation of EIA and Enterprise Data Architecture, with the former under business direction and the latter under IT direction, joining EA efforts for application and technology. Figure 1 depicts the relationships described above.

There is a role for IT EA professionals to play. As the figure suggests, a relationship exists between the business domain and IT domain. Initially, the IT architects must translate the impact of the business and information domain upon the architectures within the IT domain. This is done primarily through modeling and capabilities analysis, a topic for another time. IT professionals have the modeling experience, plus a vested interest in the outcome of the business and information architecture efforts, to be valuable members of the team working on the business domain architectures.

Recently, I have been working with an organization going through a significant transformation and they decided to do exactly what I have been suggesting. A group of business representatives including IT representation, lead by a representative of the executive leadership team, has taken ownership of business and information architecture to define how the business will transform. It will then become the IT Chief Architects responsibility to lay that business blueprint on the IT landscape to translate the changes necessary within IT to support the business transformation.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of a trend.