I recently moderated a roundtable to discuss the Enterprise Architect / Complexity Event Processing (CEP) survey that I worked on with StreamBase.
The roundtable featured Nigel Green of 5Di Limited and Jennifer Kennedy of Linden Lab, along with Richard Tibbetts of StreamBase Systems. We discussed the report results, and then some. Check out the webcast replay.
[Disclosure: StreamBase is a client of Elemental Links]
I’m working with StreamBase on an Event Processing survey directed at the enterprise architecture community. As a reader of elemental links, there is a high probability you are, work with, or lead enterprise architects. Can you do me a favor? Take the survey. And then, ask your enterprise architect friends and colleagues to do the same.
In appreciation for your participation, you’ll receive:
For your results to count, you need to complete the survey by Friday, April 29th at 5pm UK time, 12 noon ET.
Thanks for the assist! Take the survey.
[Disclosure: StreamBase is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]
Building the Business Case For EA Moderated by Chuck Keffer, Troux; Guest speakers: J-P Renaud, Director of Global Network Services and Jennifer Pfaff, Director of Information Technology PMO and Management Support Services at Jacobs Engineering, Inc
Session abstract: Relevant, compelling, in-demand enterprise architecture is the goal of many of today’s IT architecture and strategy leaders. Yet for many organizations, the first hurdle lies in communicating the value and justifying the required resources for EA to IT and business leadership.
There are actually four panelists: Sean Dwyer of Northwestern Mutual, Jennifer Pfaff of Jacobs, J-P Renaud of Jacobs and Eivind Nilsen of Liberty Mutual.
Aside: A few questions into the panel, the session is really about building the business case for an EA Tool (Troux), rather than building the business case for an EA practice. As such, I’d say the session should be “Building the Business Case for an EA Tool”.
Interesting introductory comment from Jennifer Pfaff of Jacobs: There are no dedicated enterprise architects. 18 people contribute a portion of their time to enterprise architecture. Troux modules: optimization, alignment and standards.
After a business value overview by Chuck Keffer, the panel discussion begins.
The first question: What were the top three factors and/or considerations in building the business case for your 2011/2012 initiatives?
Sean Dwyer: Echoes Warren Ritchie comment from yesterday, you can’t manage what you can’t describe. To support their simplification initiative, needed to understand what was in place. The Microsoft office based solution was outgrown.
J-P Renaud: Operationalize things like data gathering. Huge effort to gather data, whether it be for standards or optimization. Typically, happens once, for an initiative. Wanted a sustainable solution.
Eivind Nilsen (Liberty Mutual): Our product is a promise. Our systems are our product. As a result of acquisitions had multiple systems, suites. Needed to rationalize. More than IT costs, was difficult for business. Also have a lot of regulatory compliance changes. Having to apply those changes to redundant systems impacted their agility.
As a result, looked for tool to help manage the rationalization problem solving.
Q to Sean: Who did you have to convince to sponsor? What were their hot buttons?
Sean: Needed to answer the question “Is our organization ready to embrace the lifestyle change” required to get full advantage from Troux.
Sean brings up a good point, if the architects don’t like the tool, they won’t use it. Brought architects into the process early.
Q to Jacobs: What role did ROI have in your business case?
J-P: Engineering isn’t product based, it is man-hours. The decision was very ROI based. Troux is a complex tool. Challenge to identify the right data to put in, to get right information out. Focused on hard dollar savings.
Q to Jacobs: What techniques did your team employ in communicating the business case for your effort?
J-P: Didn’t have to sell EA, CIO brought EA in to Jacobs based on past experience. Spent a year defining what EA meant at Jacobs. What they had to justify was bringing in a tool. Needed to prove that current practices (spreadsheets, Visio) were constraining EA value delivery.
In their analysis, Jacobs did an extensive build versus buy analysis.
Q to Liberty: How involved were the targeted stakeholders in making business case?
Eivind Nilsen: Did POC that involved influential enterprise architect. Also pulled in business strategy group, demonstrated capabilities of tool.
Now, the panel is transitioning to “Up Leveling your EA”. Given Chuck’s first slide, I believe this is really about up leveling your use of, and value from, Troux. Chuck is describing some Troux accelerators, such as Rapid Answers and Program.
Back to the panel…
Question for everyone: Where are you in rolling out your current effort?
Sean: Focusing on governance, feeding outputs from Troux into corporate planning & governance systems.
Jacobs: Doing data gathering, preparing for first governance meeting in June.
Liberty: Started with optimization and a slice of alignment. Have pretty much completed data gathering with stewards. About to launch workshop focused on analytics and decision-making based on Troux information.
Question to Sean: Change management is a key part of your strategy, talk about importance and approaches?
Sean: This is change at its core. Can’t ignore change management element. Need people to embrace the tool. Have worked with representative from internal organizational change team.
Their philosophy is singles, getting on base, not home runs.
They didn’t start with Alignment, because that is a parter facing application. Wanted to build success in IT first.
Question to Jacobs: What are you doing right now to keep data current, correct and complete?
Jacobs: Just starting that project and establishing processes. Will have a lot of stewards. Element stewards and domain stewards, etc. Fewer pieces of data an individual has to maintain, the more likely they will update it.
This (data entry) is not a full-time job. The stewards will all have vested interest in keeping data updated.
Chuck: your distributed/federated EA structure probably lends more naturally to support your stewardship design.
Question to Liberty: Talk about target accomplishments?
Eivind: Need to make some applications “go away”. But, lots of views on which ones go versus stay. Using the data in Troux to help make decisions (associated dollar opportunity) and also communicate those decisions (retirement dates).
This is just starting. The dollar approach is resonating.
Questions from the audience
1. In launching initiatives, did you leverage any framework?
Sean: No.
Jacobs: No. But read EA as Strategy book for grounding.
Eivind: Took insights from a few models, mostly from the insurance industry. Did tailor for use in their company, rather than trying to change all business terminology.
2. Did you leverage any tools, like stakeholder maps to gain buy-in?
Sean: In road mapping, reached out to IT executives, “what does roadmap mean to you”.
Eivind: Keep it as simple as possible.
3. How does one measure success of EA initiative? And do in repeatable way?
Jacobs: In application simplification, once achieved savings > investment, everything after that was easy.
Sean: Cost avoidance.
Liberty: Hitting portfolio retirement numbers, or not.
Question: Are you “giving back” to the owners of retired applications? Redirecting the investment to something they want?
Generally, the panel says not yet.
Great Expectations: Ready to Move the Dial in the New IT Landscape? – Angela Yochem, IT Executive, Dell
Session abstract: As you know, businesses are evolving rapidly in response to changing market conditions. As a result, the expectations placed on IT have never been higher. In this session, Angela Yochem will discuss emerging competencies that are required to support business transformation and how we can move the dial in the new IT landscape.
Angela is going to talk about the changes and forces that are causing the business transformations, which in turn are driving IT evolution. Angela is an IT Executive spearheading Dell’s Services Technology portfolio.
What is happening in IT? Some IT shops are shrinking. In fact, many are shrinking. As IT professionals we should view this as a good thing, because it means we are being successful. It doesn’t mean less jobs, it means different jobs.
Another move, the shift from centralized global IT to federated, distributed IT. Enterprise architects typically fear this, because tendency to optimize for the good of the segment instead of the enterprise. However, that’s not what Angela sees. With a strong enterprise architecture backbone, can be successful in federated model.
Another trend, IT shops wanting to run like a product group. Thinking in terms of delivering capabilities, rather than applications.
All of these will change how IT operates.
Why these changes? Because business is changing. Consumer expectations and appetites are evolving. Mom and pop shops need to deliver same level of customer experience as large organizations. Customers are price sensitive, however it’s not the only factor. Other factors, environmental and local concerns.
Not just the consumer. Corporate customers have shifted focus to best overall value. They want what is optimal for them. No longer price and quality. Translate to IT, need to deliver best value solution.
Other change forces, economic volatility, political unrest and natural disasters.
Businesses are undergoing ambitious transformations to win in this new environment. Angela queried audience: how many going through business transformation (about half), how many in room were involved from the onset (only a small percentage). Angela finds that problematic.
Creative bundling and/or packaging of solutions for best value offerings to customers. Angela challenges EAs to put on business hats, think about how they could repackage or bundle current offerings to meet changing business demands.
New offerings, new pricing, new channels. How can you make your enterprise architecture adaptable?
Challenges group: On April 1 pull your top EA minds into a room, give them a (grand) challenge problem. If you are a bank, what would happen if you purchased an airline. If you are a law firm, how would you sell accounting software? Make the request outrageous, yet seemingly possible.
This isn’t M&A, optimizing for closing the books. This is about understanding capabilities. [I would say, business capabilities, organizational capabilities and business-technology capabilities].
Exercise your EA minds. Another challenge, could your organization start renting products or services? How would that change your operational models?
We must be able to shift with changing/emerging business models. [Why I'm focused on change-friendly.]
What if you aren’t able to support business transformation? You need to revisit, rework, revitalize your business-technology portfolio.
Not just the architecture and technology constraints. EA also needs to consider the cultural shifts to be an agile (responsive) organization. We need to break the reliance on F2F interactions. We can’t optimize enterprise architecture on face-to-face interactions.
Invest in business accelerating capabilities: business architecture, acceleration teams, strong toolsets. On strong toolsets, “knowledge is power”.
Actively manage your own capabilities and career as you do your IT shop. As in on the plane, “help yourself before helping others”. The opportunities that will come are significant. There will be great management opportunities. Thought leadership opportunities. All coming for you!
Industry Perspective: Great Performances, Moderated by George Paras, A&G Editor-in-Chief;
Guest speakers: Mike J. Walker, Principal Architect, Microsoft, Aleks Buterman, Founder, SenseAgility, Tim Westbrock, Managing Director EAdirections, Paul Preiss, CEO, Iasa
Session abstract: “What is it about certain EA teams that makes them great? In this session, a panel of industry experts will share their real-world observations on how and why a few EA teams consistently deliver value to their organizations, while others struggle.
The panelists will explore and debate some of the key attributes of top performing teams, those who have mastered the balancing act required for success; teams that understand the big picture, who gather data, synthesize and analyze, create appropriate recommendations, and provide actionable guidance that informs the rest of their organization. Their influence helps shape how organizations address everything from large scale transformational change to understanding how to optimize their portfolios.
Join our panelists as they discuss their observations, take questions from the audience, and share examples of the people, processes, structures, and approaches that EA teams use to deliver Great Performances.”
George Paras introducing the session: Traits and characteristics of top-performing enterprise architecture teams. Panelists will introduce self, and answer “what does top performing mean to you?”
Mike Walker, Microsoft: High-performance for EA is having business conversation to maximize and amplify business results.
Aleks Buterman, Sense Agility: Quantify value. Not [arm-wave] value, but real discernable value.
Tim Westbrock, EA Directions: Trying to become more proactive, less reactive.
Paul Preiss, IASA: No such thing as a top-performing EA team. There is a top-performing architecture team. ”Semantic gap”. Ability to claim revenue or shareholder value.
Tim: difference between enterprise architecture the thing, including all domain architects, and enterprise architects. There is generally an EA team. The things they do to be top-performing are different from architecture teams.
Aleks: Likens enterprise architects to sabre-tooth tigers. There is such a thing as an EA.
Mike: Challenge. Our industry is really immature. Have done a poor job defining what we do. Mike challenges “Enterprise Architecture” as the brand for what we do. [I agree. I agree. I agree again].
Paul: there is a reason why EA associated with ivory tower. Paul is harping on all the other architects. [Apparently, EAs give all the other architects a bad name.]
Mike: half agree with Paul. We’ve mixed enterprise architecture with IT architecture. We are impeding the end-job. EA within IT becomes about managing IT assets.
Is there enterprise architecture today, really? Perhaps not. Should there be? Yes.
Aleks: Difference between EA and tech architect is competitive advantage. The EA needs to join several domains, and that’s where competitive advantage is found.
Tim: A problem with enterprise architecture is where our deliverables go. They should be directed at executives. However, often directed at solution teams.
The organizations that do the EA the best are actively engaged with the CIO, the board, the executives of the company. Not “through” the CIO. But, in the room.
Questions from the audience:
1. Where should EA function report? Does it matter? Is it CIO, COO, CEO? Should it be federated?
Paul asks audience, how many report outside of IT. About 10 hands of 300 were raised. Paul asks, “what is the value that people come to EA for”?
Tim: Most EAs report to IT, because that is where EA started. In IT, EA is only group with true enterprise view.
Mike: All up, there is a lack of accountability in IT. All up, we haven’t done a good job earning business trust. Great percent of projects fail. Need incremental wins. Need to add value. Think in business context, business terms.
Paul: We’ve earned a seat at the table. We haven’t claimed it. Example, built e-commerce, but only claimed “we enabled marketing”. Then, marketing received more money, and IT less money.
[2. Segue to EA Value question]
Aleks: in a large organization, can’t just claim seat at the table. Need to earn it.
Aleks, need to market your value. That needs to be quantifiable. Use metrics like net present value (NPV).
Tim: Don’t think you quantify the value of enterprise architecture. Don’t think EA has quantifiable value in itself. Thinks EA value is in contribution to other initiatives, impact areas.
[Back to reporting]
Aleks: Board of directors. [I say, no]
Tim: No, information and technology should not report to the business.
Mike: Need to look at maturity of organization. Different industries have different drivers: agility, first-mover, fostering innovation, etc]. Need to be pragmatic. Should not prescribe. Mike calls for a set of patterns for enterprise architecture, patterns that reflect industry.
Aleks: We have those patterns, EA as Strategy book (Ross, Weil).
Paul: Reporting structure is less important to an organization. In most professions, the profession decides the reporting structure. Profession is technology strategy.
[Semantic fight in here.]
Tim brings us back on track. What should enterprise architects do to mature in profession? Assume building models for strategists (Zachman rows 1 & 2). Those models don’t get done in projects. Tim’s advice, if you don’t have those models, build them. Tim notes “model” is used in loose sense.
Mike: Picks up Tim’s thread, need to build and flex our communication muscles. Enterprise architecture is less about IQ and more about EQ (emotional intelligence).
Our success hinges on our ability to communicate and evangelize, both our value prop and what’s best for the business.
Aleks: does your organization have an evidence based management culture?
Tim: (to Aleks) using “models” differently. Tim, need to have conversation with execs on what do we need to change. Hard to have that conversation without models, because the models facilitate conversation.
Paul: missing skills: human dynamics and business-technology strategy.
Aleks: think about environment you are in. Don’t assume what worked at prior organization will work in current.
George: Tell me one thing audience should walk away with:
Mike: IQ to EQ focus. Action-oriented. Constantly focused on value. Maximize and amplify business value for our stakeholders.
Paul: Connect your architect team. All architects connected on skillset level. Give them more than a tool. Give them skills.
Tim: Spend time reading non-technical literature that is relevant to your business.
From Police to Partner: Transformation of EA at Cummins, Sherry Jordan, Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture, Cummins
Session abstract: From once being perceived by business leaders as operational support to now being viewed as business partners, the Enterprise Architecture area at Cummins is experiencing rapid transformation. Executives and staff at all levels of the organization are beginning to understand the benefits of their investments in centralized and standard architecture. One example of this commitment is the investment in people, processes and technology required to set the foundation for utilizing IT as a key enabler to achieve strategic business objectives globally.
This presentation offers a glimpse into the experiences and vision that drives EA forward at Cummins. Key areas of focus include:
Cummins manufacturers diesel engines and related products. Challenges of manufacturing sector: image and understanding of IT, maturity of the market. Manufacturing views IT as ‘keeping the lights on’.
Drivers for EA at Cummins: Cost reduction, aligning with strategic business objects & eliminating redundant capabilities across functions. Organizational structure makes the latter difficult. [Ties back to VW presentation, structure & strategy must move together to execute].
EA Evolution (organization): Organized by business (decentralized); centralized shared service organizations, operating in silos; shared service organizations, working in common processes.
EA Mindset: Historically, EA seen as traffic cop. The organization that constrains the business from doing their job. Next, dedicated EA developed. Recognized need, but limited understanding of value. Future: providing architecture ahead of the business and recognized as strategic partners.
Climate of EA Market: First, information focused on infrastructure. Then, pockets of focus. Now, business and investment focused tools.
Cummins has been building the EA foundation over the past year. Sherry calls out Eric Christian, Cummins new Chief Architect. [Eric has previously been at BofA and GM].
Cummins EA framework is based on Oracle’s EA Framework. ”Providing technologies that enable the business to be competitive”.
Cummins went through an EA tool selection process, choose Troux. Use Troux for TOGAF, Standards, Optimization and Alignment”.
Looking forward. 18-month roadmap:
- Standards management and architecture governance
- TOGAF, establish app portfolio, capability mapping
- enterprise IT planning, rationalization across enterprise
Future gains:
- reduced technologies (lower cost)
- improved efficiencies
- [something]
Police to Partner
- Business strategic objectives driving standards
- Information available further upstream
- Governance model inclusive of key stakeholders
Lessons Learned
- Executive support absolutely critcal
- Business users don’t care about operating systems or database systems
- Major transformation takes a long time, need to show value incrementally
- Ability to articulate EA value is essential
Editorial comment: It is always interesting to see new waves of Enterprise Architecture adoption by industry. Shows the increasing dependence of technology for all businesses, and the increasing awareness of executives on the importance of technology investment management. With cost/investment under control, organizations are better positioned to deliver strategic and tactical value to the business.
5th Anniversary Edition
Event-Driven Architecture Overview
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