EA Tips: Anchor Models

Anchor models are context diagrams that capture the essence of the enterprise as a simple graphic. They should be equally meaningful to both business and IT personnel and should be so intuitive that they don’t require a multi-page text narrative to understand. While we see many models created by EA teams, most are lower level “IT” models of business systems or technology components. Even models that attempt to represent the entire enterprise tend to be IT-oriented. While these models can be very useful, they don’t serve the same purpose as an anchor model.

The term “anchor model” represents a concept, not a specific format.  In our experience there is no such thing as the perfect template for an anchor model. The model must resonate with the broadest audience in as natural a way as possible. Therefore, the model should be in the language of the business it is depicting and is “good” only if it is meaningful to that organization. We have seen wildly different representations from different companies, yet each turned out to be exactly the right model. It’s one of those “you know it when you see it” phenomenon. When it is right, the model just makes sense.

Anchor models are basically top-level context diagrams describing the “enterprise”. They go by various names: company on a page, enterprise value network (EVN), concept of operations, operating models, root models, etc. These diagrams serve multiple purposes:

• As a consistent view of the company – a context for common understanding, language/terminology, etc. It allows everyone to get on the same page in the simplest, most direct way possible, representing a “big picture, enterprise view”.
• As a root for other derivative models (business, information architectures, business capability portfolios, etc.)
• As a credibility building tool for the IT executives in interactions with their business counterparts
• As a base model to super-impose various information systems, exposing overlaps, duplication, etc.

Creating a “good enough” initial anchor model is more art than science. It is a people-driven, collaborative exercise. A “starting point” model created by a sponsor usually helps kick off a productive session. We consistently observe several behaviors associated with the process, both good and bad, and have several tips to help you. Here are just a few:

• Anchor models can be controversial and are challenging to create. Don’t let that stop you from trying.
• Find passionate, business-knowledgeable people to start. Ideally, an anchor model should be something created by the business, not IT. An EA group is often the instigator to its creation and should act as catalysts to the process and not owners of the model.
• Not everyone is going to be happy. Someone will always object to something in the diagram, and the tendency is to just “make it a little better”. Our advice, work in a small group and time-box the activity. We suggest a few hours initially.
• Keep it simple, simple, simple, including only the significant parts of the organization. Resist the tendency to try to include everything a business does.
• Look at value networks, internal and external to the organization. Expose internal functional blocks, flows of information and services in/out/between them. Include the full range of external stakeholders and the interactions with them in the diagram (customers, suppliers, partners, regulators/government, etc.)
• Catalog your desired “functional hierarchy” to understand the main business functions performed. Avoid organizational constructs (departments, divisions, etc.). They are fluid and will undoubtedly change. Make your models as timeless as possible.
• Relationships are at the heart of anchor models. Understand the flows of information (not data models) and how functional elements relate.
• Timing is everything. We have seen good anchor models get no traction when presented to the wrong people at the wrong time.

There are many more tips that we can suggest. If you have a successful anchor model that resonates with your business, let us know. We’d like to hear your experiences and will share any other general pointers back to the community.

A strong anchor model, once complete, appears so obvious that many wonder why it was created. But that misses much of the point. It is the process of creating it that often yields the highest value.

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!

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.

IASA Chicago Chapter Inaugural Event April 7- George Paras Featured Speaker

Thursday evening, April 7, marks the inaugural event for the new IASA Chicago Chapter.  The meeting will be from 6:00pm-7:30pm at Illinois Technology Association (ITA), 200 S. Wacker, 15th Floor, Chicago.  The new chapter provides a networking and educational forum for IT and Enterprise Architects from across the Chicago area.  I will be leading a session on “Changing Architects’ Conversations”, sharing tips and techniques on how architects can create and take advantage of opportunities to engage enterprise leadership in strategic conversations.

In addition to speaking at the event, I am honored to have been asked to serve on the Advisory Board for this new chapter.  Please invite your architecture colleagues to come and join us!

Event and Registration Details

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.

Top 10 Things an EA Should Be Thinking About (Part 2)

A couple of months ago, we published part 1 of Top 10 Things an EA Should Be Thinking About.  Now we add a few more, with considerations for the New Year.  To get started, I will repeat what we said in part 1 as the means of introduction…

…Our list represents the Top Ten (or so) things that we think true Enterprise Architects should be thinking about.  As always, this represents our thinking that Enterprise Architects should be focused on the whole of the enterprise, business and IT perspectives, long-term business strategy and transformation, and the impact that has on the work that needs to be done beyond the here and now.  Not the kinds of things that solution architects, data architects, application architects, infrastructure architects, or security architects should be thinking about – What should ENTERPRISE architects be thinking about?

Not listed in order of importance – they are all important.  Also, we would like to tell you that a typical IT-centric Enterprise Architect may not be able to answer these questions or think about them as completely as they should – in which case, they need to seek out the appropriate business and/or IT professionals to discuss these topics with from the perspective of their enterprise.

6.  With increasingly creative business partnerships forming in the marketplace, how can we effectively share information and collaborate with partners while protecting business confidentiality and adhering to regulatory concerns.  Are there general rules we should develop?  This is a dilemma of the new century.  The types of partnerships forming between suppliers and buyers, between former and even current competitors, between public entities and constituents, and between producers and consumers are primarily being created to share/consume information rather than products and services.  Another factor to consider is the element of trust, as the use of information outside the enterprise boundaries may be impossible to monitor and control. 

7.  As increasing amounts of information about customers, markets, transactions, sensor status, etc. flow into our company, are we able to effectively analyze that information to increase profits and/or value to our constituents?  Can we handle it, manage it, store it, protect it, etc.?  Which work processes must change or be invented to operate in the new environment?   The amount and size of data are increasing at a tremendous rate for most companies.  While the hardware to move, secure and store this data is an issue in and of itself, the more pressing issue is how to utilize the information to your enterprise’s benefit.  The focus needs to be on the information consumers.  Who can use the information to support their work activities and/or decision making processes?

8.  How does our enterprise “measure” or represent value?  What are the most important factors of success to our executive leaders?  Are they being measured?  How can EA facilitate the achievement of those success factors?  We are often asked how to measure the value of EA.  Short answer: Measuring EA’s value is dependent on the measurement of value in other activities influenced by EA, and most organizations are not mature enough in their general performance management capabilities to support the ability to measure the value of EA.  So the workaround is to figure out how EA can enable those factors that are most important to executives and show the indirect linkage that EA has to contributing value.  But it all starts with understanding what your executives value.

9.  With the current aggressive pace of marketplace and technology change, have we made the right decisions to be nimble enough to respond ahead of our competitors?  How important is agility to the business and are we prepared to be innovative?  How can I make the enterprise understand the need for adaptability?  This is not a NEW question, by the way, as those of you who have followed us for the last 15 years know.  But as time goes by and these paces continue to accelerate, these questions become even more important…as we have been saying for the last 15 years.

10. Where are the decision-making bodies and processes disconnected in our enterprise?  And once you identify them, how can you create a visualization of these broken chains?  EA is part of the planning and decision making ecosystem of your enterprise.  Influencing decisions and plans for investments and implementations is the outcome of a well functioning EA program.  In order to do this effectively, you need to identify where to influence these decisions and convince executive leadership that EA has a place in the process.

We would love to hear what are readers are thinking about in 2011.  Please share with your comments.

Better or Different? An Argument for Adaptability

As a primary direction to create and sustain competitive advantage, some executives have decided it is more important to be different, than better. This is not to say that there is no consideration for operational efficiency, only that it is not the primary driver for many companies seeking sustainable competitive advantage.  Many market leaders separate themselves from their competition by operating differently, offering different services, delivering via different channels, providing different information or producing different products.  Because success breeds imitation, many competitors will change also, eliminating the differentiating factors.  In order to sustain their advantage, companies must differentiate themselves again and force the market in which they compete to continually react to their changes.   Consequently, executives of competitive differentiator companies understand the need for an adaptive environment and have enabled corporate agility with an adaptive enterprise architecture (EA) strategy.

What is Competitive Differentiation? Companies with a differentiation strategy strive to provide uniqueness in their industry along dimensions that are widely valued by buyers.  They position themselves to provide one or more needs that buyers perceive as important that is different from the competitors in their industry or a specific focus within that market.  Differentiation can be presented through a product or service itself, the channels through which the product or service is provided, marketing, procurement and other factors.  Each industry has its own factors for differentiation.

Competitive differentiation strategies require faster than average business process change and high demand for information access, both requirements for an adaptive EA.  For instance, one market leader has an internal metric for measuring its business process change rate — with a goal of once every 6 months.  This compares to the average of once every 12-18 months for other fast-change organizations.  This company, like others engaged in competitive differentiation, has placed a high priority on developing an adaptive EA to facilitate this degree of rapid change.  The need for information access is derived from the requirement for faster decision making among hyper-competitive organizations.  Providing access to the right information to the right people at the right time becomes a key architectural requirement.

The key linkage between the business and enterprise architecture is the identification of the fast-change business capability changes and the parallel business information capability changes affected by the competitive differentiation strategies.  Not all processes are affected as dramatically as others by differentiation.  For example, a manufacturer that is differentiating itself through multiple distribution channels is more likely to have fast-change within the processes that interact with distributors and customers, rather than its internal manufacturing process.  This change will also impact the type and amount of information that is shared between the manufacturer, distributors and customers.  Likewise a manufacturer striving for competitive advantage through product differentiation would impact engineering, design and manufacturing processes more than customer service, accounting and billing, while increasing the amount of information sharing necessary between product designers, engineers and the manufacturing floor.  The impact of these fast-change strategic capability changes on EA is that they become the basis for the common set of drivers which the business and the IT organization agree to pursue with their EA.

Is your company pursuing competitive differentiation?  How is that effecting your EA plans?

EAdirections’ Views on Business Architecture at Troux Worldwide Conference

Tim Westbrock will be sharing his views on Business Architecture with attendees at the upcoming Troux Worldwide Conference in Austin on March 23rd and 24th.  For those able to attend, you will be intrigued by Tim’s perspectives on Enterprise Architecture as it is commonly practiced today and on his thoughts on how the discipline of EA is fundamentally altered by the addition of business architecture practices.

George Paras will also be in attendance, serving as Master of Ceremonies for the event in his role as Editor-in-Chief of Architecture and Governance Magazine, the event’s main media sponsor.

We both look forward to the opportunity to meet with our subscribers and blog readers while in Austin.  If you plan to attend,  please contact us ahead of time and we’ll be happy to arrange for a time to meet, or just be sure to come up and say hello at the event.  

Here are some more details:

The Troux Worldwide Conference is a must attend conference for companies involved in Strategic IT Planning and Enterprise Architecture (EA) programs. Set for March 23-24, 2011 in Austin, Texas and sponsored by Architecture and Governance Magazine, the conference will include some cutting edge case studies from some of the most innovative and successful companies in the industry.

This is your chance to hear the latest on how to make your EA programs sing with success and most importantly – deliver value!

The Troux Worldwide User Conference is also a great opportunity to network face-to-face with your peers and industry thought leaders. For more information and to request your invitation, please visit www.troux.com/conference

Things EA’s Should Think About – External Collaboration

One of the many interesting outcomes of today’s business climate is the increasing variety of new business partnerships. Traditional boundaries between organizations are giving way to innovative and creative relationships, driven by a combination of necessity and opportunity. Cross-company information exchange and collaboration is the central success component.

Organizations are discovering that there is often more to implementing these partnerships than is apparent at the outset, and the issues multiply with each new relationship. For example, “How can we effectively share information and collaborate with partners while protecting business confidentiality and adhering to regulatory concerns”? Those are just two among many important considerations. Issues intrinsic to external collaboration have far-reaching implications. Identifying and addressing them is tailor-made to the broad, cross-enterprise, cross-domain perspective and analyses that an EA group can bring to the table.

Many organizations are discovering that the volume of requests to share information is increasing with each new business partnership, as is the type of information exchanged. Increasingly, they are seeing demand for bi-directional collaborative interactions, in near real-time, and with a frequency that makes it difficult to respond in time to address the market opportunity. Furthermore, these collaboration requirements are contextual and don’t always fit into a standardized approach. Not only will different companies have different needs, but it is likely that there will be many different models even within a single company based on the type of partnership and the participating departments. Some cross-organization collaborative examples we have seen include legal negotiations, multi-company engineering activities, resource scheduling /provisioning, joint marketing initiatives, barter arrangements that include trading excess production capacity for a right to access an organization’s client base in a foreign market, and many other variations.

It is likely that a single standard solution cannot address the full range of scenarios an organization might encounter. The EA group should work to raise the visibility of the most pertinent issues. They should guide the creation of a general framework, including a set of rules, principles and approaches that can address them. Here are just a few of the questions organizations we work with are beginning to ask:

• What is the business vision for partnerships? How will they grow and evolve? Where do they fit in our overall enterprise model? Which business processes, business functions and information areas are involved? What is the business value to enabling these partnerships?
• What confidentiality, proprietary, legal and regulatory issues are relevant? What other business risks are in play?
• What patterns of external collaboration exist with potential partners? Are there standardized business patterns and collaboration models that will broadly satisfy business need?
• How should external collaboration integrate with our own internal collaboration models and enabling infrastructure? Should it? Do we grant access to external parties?
• How do we protect our proprietary and confidential information from being intentionally or accidentally passed on to other parties? How do we protect theirs? Do we restrict unauthorized copying? Do we lock access, encrypt, etc.?
• How do we address different data definitions, data security zones, data classifications, etc.?
• How do we ensure timely and scheduled updates to our partners? How do we alert each other to changes? How do we ensure partners are not working with expired information?
• Etc.

So, what should enterprise architects do? Get ahead of the conversation, not so much that you get tuned out, but enough that you begin asking the right questions to gauge the enterprise need. Use a multi-pronged communications approach to get the conversation started with business leaders, IT leaders, your own team and other stakeholders. Techniques can include individual discussions, facilitated sessions, and internal social media postings. Once you get a sense for the appetite of the enterprise you may see traction develop. Begin to create hard artifacts for discussion; capabilities analysis first, then principles, then iteratively build increasingly detailed models, specifically business architecture models. Remember that, at any time, you may get too far ahead for anyone to care. You can always park your work and come back to revisit later.

External collaboration is just one of the many questions that enterprise architects might want to think about in the next year. A proactive EA group’s role is to be thinking about high impact, enterprise-wide constructs at least in enough detail to have an appreciation for the issues, the scope and scale of possible approaches. Doing so will inform the organization enough to make the proper decisions when time becomes the critical constraint.

Smart Grid and EA – Making Smart Grid Smarter

Many electric utility companies are in the process of fundamentally changing both their individual operations, as well as the electric industry as a whole.  Many of you have probably heard the term “Smart Grid,” but those in the electric industry are either embracing, waiting on or fearing (or maybe even a little bit of all three) the change that this transformation is bringing.  Essentially, Smart Grid refers to making the utility grid system of electric generation, transmission, distribution and consumption “more intelligent” with digital technology. 

The intelligence is to be supplied by two-way digital communications, digital sensors, and a host of intelligent devices such as smart meters, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, improved substation machinery, and even consumer appliances.  So at first glance, Smart Grid may appear to be a vast upgrade of the utility grid infrastructure and devices.  While some companies may have viewed it that way to begin with, as they begin to look at the specific changes necessary to their assets, they are finding that there are many more fundamental changes needed in their business processes, organization, human resources, and overall business operations.  And many of them are finding their enterprise architecture program to be extremely useful in this endeavor.

Our advice to EA groups at electric companies has been to actively seek involvement in the Smart Grid initiative as early as possible.  While some have gotten involved early in the process and proven their value in the planning of the overall strategy and implementation trade-offs; others have gotten involved strictly as an IT advisor and planner, still showing the value of EA as they demonstrate the linkage between significant business decisions and IT investment options.  In any case, the participation of the EA group in the Smart Grid initiative seems to be increasing, and a variety of outcomes are being achieved.

EA groups are leveraging Smart Grid as the business justification for long-overdue communications network upgrades, common integration approaches and data standardization.  EA groups are pointing to business architecture methods and artifacts to help executives consider the impact of Smart Grid on their internal business processes, information flows, application portfolio and decision trade-offs.  In general, EA Groups are leveraging Smart Grid as an opportunity to do something they have always strived for — engage with business leaders on a topic in which the business has a strong interest and the EA group has a strong competency.  Many a utility company is finding this to be a win-win.

One last observation to pass along regarding the involvement of EA in such an apparent technology-oriented initiative.  As with many so-called transformations through technology, companies are finding out that much more than both the Operational Technology (OT) and supporting Information Technology (IT) need to change.  And in many cases, it is the involvement of the EA team that has demonstrated the future required changes to business processes, shared information, training, skills and competencies, and even the overall operating model of the company.