Updated Registration Info – EAdirections speaking at AOGEA Collaboration Event in Southfield, MI

UPDATE: It is still not too late to join us at this multidisciplinary event in Michigan.   A Registration Site is now available with full event details and information on how to register.  Allen Brown, CEO and President of The Open Group will be delivering the opening keynote presentation.  If you have any questions, or would just like to chat before the event or on-site, drop us a note via the attached form.

George Paras and Tim Westbrock are scheduled to speak at the upcoming Collaboration Event sponsored by the AOGEA Michigan Chapter (Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects) on September 16, 2010 from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI.  The theme of the event is “Interoperability between various disciplines in an enterprise”.

In our session titled, “Don’t Call It EA if It Isn’t EA!: Holistic EA for a Tightly Integrated Enterprise” we’ll be discussing the dynamics of Enterprise Architecture as it evolves from an IT-oriented discipline into a necessary part of a compelling and successful business transformation effort.

This event is a collaboration between the AOGEA Michigan Chapter and the ABPMP SE Michigan Chapter (The Association of Business Process Management), itSMF Great Lakes Chapter (Information Technology Service Management Forum), and the SE Michigan IIBA Chapter (International Institute of Business Analysis).

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EAdirections speaking at AOGEA Collaboration Event in Southfield, MI

George Paras and Tim Westbrock are scheduled to speak at the upcoming Collaboration Event sponsored by the AOGEA Michigan Chapter (Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects) on September 16, 2010 from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI.  The theme of the event is “Interoperability between various disciplines in an enterprise”.

In our session titled, “Don’t Call It EA if It Isn’t EA!: Holistic EA for a Tightly Integrated Enterprise” we’ll be discussing the dynamics of Enterprise Architecture as it evolves from an IT-oriented discipline into a necessary part of a compelling and successful business transformation effort.

This event is a collaboration between the AOGEA Michigan Chapter and the ABPMP SE Michigan Chapter (The Association of Business Process Management), itSMF Great Lakes Chapter (Information Technology Service Management Forum), SE Michigan IIBA Chapter (International Institute of Business Analysis) and the local PMI Chapter (Project Management Institute).

Further details will be posted shortly on the AOGEA Michigan Chapter site or use the attached form to contact us for more information.

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CIO’s and EA – Leadership Challenges in IT

We ask a lot of our CIOs.  Just follow the myriad magazine articles and research pieces targeting CIOs to read of the breadth and depth of expectations heaped upon a single role.   The industry experts who define what CIOs ”should be” suggest that they must be technology visionaries and innovators, business transformation change agents, vendor relationship negotiators, savvy business managers and human capital performance motivators, cost-cutters, quality experts, portfolio managers, talent scouts, have operations and service management knowledge, be technology, process and solutions aware, passionate leaders and experts on the company’s industry, etc.  The list goes on.  Actually, I agree with all of these traits and more – they are all required.   It’s a tough job and can’t easily be characterized into a simple role description.    

As a case in point, I have been following Bob Evans’ column in Information Week of late.  I enjoy his perspectives.  His most recent column, “Do CIOs Still Matter“ , struck a chord in me.  He listed ten ideas to get started redefining a CIOs roles and boundaries.  Many of his points spoke to things that we have been coaching our Enterprise Architecture clients on for years.  In particular, he commented that today’s CIOs “spend too much time on the tech side of IT and should instead be more involved in technology-enabled business growth and customer intimacy”.  Other points included “lead the charge in seeing the future”, “drive transformation” and my favorite, “be a business-model buster”.

So, what is the CIO to do?  How can a CIO be tactical and strategic, responsive yet not reactionary, thoughtful and systematic yet not slow and obstructionist, operational and also transformational, cost-sensitive while investment and growth oriented?  The simple answer is that in all but the most extraordinary individuals, it isn’t possible, or it is at least unlikely that all of the required personality traits and knowledge can co-exist.  The best approach to being broad and deep enough is to surround him/herself with a strong team, with each member focused on different aspects of the role.   The best CIOs are already doing this, realizing that the CIO role isn’t intended to be a single super-human (though many white papers seem to suggest that and some CIOs try to become one) but is instead an aggregation of the skills and talents of a group. Traditionally, that group is called the “Office of the CIO”.

Many CIO’s already recognize that they can’t personally be everything to everyone and that they must have a great staff.  Most CIOs put a director in charge of the data center with a focus on operational efficiency and meeting service levels.  One or more directors are usually focused on solutions development and delivery.  The better organizations have a PMO in place to shepherd the project portfolio, though most PMO’s are low maturity engaging in mainly project tracking and reporting.  More on that in a future article.  What is missing in most CIO Offices is a person responsible for the big picture future state business context, the holistic cross enterprise perspective, the long view of the health and utility of the asset portfolio, and to address larger concerns like complexity management, portfolio optimization, integration, and the integrity of the information, technology and business architecture assets.  These activities and perspectives are embodied in the role Tim and I have prescribed to the “enterprise” architect since we began in this discipline in the 1990′s.    

While empowering a diverse IT leadership team is necessary, successful CIOs also understand that the buck stops with them, so they need to be able to make sound decisions when the rest of their staff doesn’t.  One powerful way to be sure the staff can address all the perspectives above, including the longer term, holistic enterprise view, is to elevate the Chief Architect to be a full member of the Office of the CIO.  If you have an EA function, but it is doing only the subset of enterprise architecture that we describe as “IT” architecture ( which usually means they reside several levels down in your organization)  then augment their skills and personnel and have them engage in the strategic and business-oriented discussions described above.  You will find them to be a valuable addition to your core team.

Stay tuned, we will be writing a lot more on the placement of EA in the Office of the CIO, the complimentary roles that exist in the Office, the dynamics, politics and culture of the team at that level, and the processes, perspectives, and leadership skills required for that team to support the breadth and depth of activities expected of the modern CIO.

Calgary – Larry DeBoever speaks on Business Architecture

Larry DeBoever will be speaking October 15th at the Calgary Chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA)

A Pragmatic Guide to Constructing a Compelling Business Architecture (That Results in the CEO & Board Making ‘Yummy Noises’)

Mr. DeBoever is widely recognized as one of the most successful ‘business architects’ who is able to capture the imagination of leadership while also executing the critical blocking and tackling of transformation execution.  In this presentation, Mr. DeBoever will share his ‘hands-on’ experience in supporting and mentoring his clients to successful BA outcomes.  He will provide ‘sanitized’ examples of his efforts and provide very pragmatic guidance.  Topics will include: 

• What CEOs and Boards Want – ‘Consumable Artifacts’
• My Approach – The Golden Triangle (‘DF4BA’ – as if we need yet another acronym)
• Thoughts on ‘Touch Points’, ‘Maturity’, ‘TECH-tonics’ and ‘Info-nomics’
• Giving ‘Good Diagram’
• Planning for the Pass Along Effect – The Path to Glory, Riches & Fame
• The 6 Rules To Becoming A ‘BA Hero’

New EA Book, “Coherency Management”, is Now Available

“Coherency Management – Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance” is a new EA book from co-editors Gary Doucet, John Goetz, Palla Saha and Scott Bernard.    It includes a chapter, contributed by Larry DeBoever, George Paras and Tim Westbrock at EAdirections, entitled “A Pragmatic Approach to Enlisting the Support of CEOs for Enterprise Architecture”.  This chapter covers everything from assessing a leadership team’s attitides and perspectives, to executive messaging, alignment approaches. and specific recommendations on how to engage the CEO and other executive leaders.

With submissions from over 30 authors and co-authors, the book reinforces the idea that EA is being practiced in an ever-increasing variety of circumstances – from the tactical to the strategic, from the technical to the political, and with governance that ranges from sell to tell.  One key message is that  EA must be viewed as an Enterprise Design and Management approach, adopted to building better enterprises, rather than a IT Design and Management approach limited to building better systems.

It is available directly from the publisher, AuthorHouse, or from your favorite bookseller.

 

A new EA book containing a contribution by EAdirections

‘Deflation’ and Managed Services

A major theme of our discussions with IT Leadership and EA teams is to understand the ongoing changes in, and potential impact of, the continuing price/performance improvements in processing, networks, storage and services.  (See our materials on ‘Tech-tonics’ – the long-term implications of the changes in technology economics). 

I was reminded of the importance of monitoring these trends when working with a client this week.  The client is a small/mid-sized IT shop with approximately 70 staff (including contractors).  We have been encouraging this client for some time to look at selective outsourcing to improve service as well as lower cost. 

I reviewed with the client this week a proposal to manage and monitor their approximately 100 Windows servers.  The client was planning to hire two additional staff to meet the demands of applying updates and patches, and to extend support coverage into evenings. 

I like to think I am ‘on top’ of everything but I was positively surprised by the proposal they received from a mid-sized, good quality services provider using on-shore resources whose business remains strong.  

The proposal includes 7x24x365 support at a cost of just around $100.00 USD per physical server per month.  Said differently, the cost of the managed service is significantly less than the cost of the two hires (e.g. salaries, benefits, office space, PCs, travel) and the client’s organization receives significantly extended service coverage. 

This experience just reinforces our view at EAdirections that focused outsourcing can provide significant benefits in both cost and service.

George Paras – SITPforum in Minneapolis

I will be visiting Minneapolis on August 19 as the guest speaker at the SITPforum.  This is an interactive, executive round-table session beginning with refreshments at 4 PM.  I’ll be leading a discussion on “Aligning Business and IT” with a focus on IT Strategic Planning, EA and Portfolio Management with side discussions on any aspect of those topics of interest to the group.  At previous sessions in Atlanta and New York I touched on Governance, Organizational Models, Business and Information Architecture, Capabilities Analysis, and how to be an effective IT Leader.

If you can’t attend but know someone in the area, please forward this announcement to them. 

Please send an email directly to me at gparas@EAdirections.com if you’d like to attend.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Survey: Help Us Plan New EAdirections Events

In response to several inquiries, we have created a survey to the larger community to understand your needs for high-quality, practical and pragmatic education including conferences, workshops, webinars, roundtables, etc.  Please take a few minutes to complete this short survey. 

DRAWING – At the end of the survey you will be asked if you would optionally like to enter a drawing for a complimentary one hour Mentoring Teleconference to discuss your IT Leadership, EA, Portfolio Management, Governance, IT Strategy, Alignment, Cost Containment or Transformational Initiatives.

EA for Everybody!

EA has always been a polarizing phenomenon and remains so today.  The diversity of opinions on exactly what EA is and how to approach it continues.  While there are many variations, two opposing camps dominate.  

• The architecture-driven camp focuses on creation of the various “architectures” (solution, application, technical, project, business, SOA, Cloud, etc.), usually as implemented in projects. 
• The enterprise-coordinated camp focuses on the “enterprise” with emphasis on strategic alignment, transformation roadmaps, and other holistic portfolio perspectives. 

The best EA programs include both approaches, with the enterprise-coordinated perspective providing context for the various “architectures”.  That way it ensures that efforts to “get things done” (i.e. projects) are implemented with all of the larger and longer-term goals in mind; to consistently manage complexity, improve integration, increase agility, balance cost and risk, or achieve whatever future-oriented, holistic objectives the leadership team deems important.  Too often, though, one camp dominates to the exclusion of the other, causing an imbalance.  The divide between the architecture-driven and enterprise-coordinated camps should not exist, yet it does!  Several factors conspire to amplify the divide, not the least of which is the economy.

(Follow this link to read more on the economy and other issues that influence your EA approach, plus suggested remedies, in the full article.)

I have rarely found an organization that couldn’t benefit from EA – from very small to very large, in every industry, in the private and public sectors and in not-for-profits.  Everybody can do it, adopting the “core concepts” of EA in order to enhance decision-making to include an enterprise perspective.  Implement just enough mechanisms to create processes and deliverables that align strategy with implementation across the continuum from the short to the long term, always sensitive to the balancing act described above.  Drive your program with an enterprise-coordinated approach.  You don’t need to call it “EA”, nor do you need to completely implement any particular framework or methodology.  Good, or even just “better”, will come over time.

Directions: A solid EA leader always adjusts his/her approach with the times, with sensitivity to the biases and needs of their enterprise.  Make sure you are focused, delivering value and addressing the needs of leadership.  Don’t get caught up in perfectionism, avoid the extremes, and take a balance approach.  And don’t forget to be leaders yourselves – provide enterprise perspective and context so that decisions are consistent with both short term needs and longer term visions.  If you make your EA program more transparent and actionable, while focusing on the right balance, you will make a difference for your enterprise.

Discipline & Knowledge: Keys To Cost Containment Assessments

The pressure on IT to contain costs is well understood. Every vendor has a presentation about how their products can be central to lowering costs.  Research companies are publishing cost containment frameworks and consultants have lots of white papers. 

Over the past several months we have worked with a number of clients to help them in their cost containment efforts.  At 50,000 feet, it appears that everyone starts with the same playbook – renegotiate with vendors (starting with your telecomm vendor), cut consultants and contracts, virtualize everything, defer some maintenance, cut travel and training…and hope that is enough (so you don’t have to cut permanent staff).  Frankly, this approach gets many CIOs down to an expense level that is “acceptable” to corporate leadership.  Many CIOs also “accept” that this approach will likely increase long-term IT costs as well as inhibit long-term business strategy. 

On the other hand, those clients who seem to make the best tactical and strategic decisions, when executing a cost containment exercise, appear to have two consistent characteristics. 

First, they are very disciplined in their approach to ensure a comprehensive review of all areas of IT costs (i.e.  IT Procurement & Asset Management, Product & Technology Rationalization, Application Portfolio Rationalization, Server Virtualization, Open Source, PC Costs, IT G&A etc.).  Even ‘un-thinkables’ are reviewed to ensure completeness, for example:

• “Are there staff who can use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft?”
• “Should we re-examine our commitment to clusters and look at horizontal scaling?”
• “What are the implications of replacing EMC with NetApp?”

 This discipline includes doing an objective and ‘truly loaded’ cost analysis.  ‘Truly loaded’ refers to being sure that all costs are fully accounted for.  For example, in looking at the cost of internally managing Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server versus a specialized outsourcing option (e.g. MailStreet) they make sure they include the cost of internal staff’s travel, training, PCs, cell bills, office space, etc. as well as the full loaded data center/support costs (e.g. Help Desk, space, storage, electricity).  It is very clear that internal IT staff significantly underestimate the ‘truly loaded’ costs of providing specific services.

Second, they make sure they have adequate knowledge to make their evaluation.  They don’t rely on speculation or anecdotes and, instead, look for hard facts and case studies.  And when they see an example they really work to understand what are the dynamics in play at companies like:

• Wal-Mart – which uses SaaS (Red Prairie) to optimize employee scheduling at their stores versus running a similar application in house
• Sabre – which executes 60% of all travel reservations in North America on a server farm using very inexpensive HP Intel servers running Linux and MySQL, which saves Sabre approximately $20 million a year in operating expenses in support of AA.com, Travelocity and several other travel-related sites

 These clients recognize that a meaningful evaluation of Cloud Computing requires an in-depth knowledge of the types of offerings available, and comparative strengths and weaknesses of each category of offering as well as the different vendor offerings in the category. These clients make sure that if they are evaluating an open source alternative to Cognos (e.g. Pentaho) that it can meet their needs.

 The bottom line is that ‘discipline’ and ‘knowledge’ are key characteristics of cost containment assessments that yield  the best tactical and strategic decisions.  (Based on our experience working with clients, we have developed a Cost Containment Workshop that helps ensure these are achieved. 

For more information on this topic and to read a description of a new IT Cost Containment Workshop check out the entry on the Education and Seminars page.