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Organizational Economics and the Enterprise Architecture of a Religious Organization

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The Question

A reader of my blog, who is a minister in the Methodist Church, commented on one of my posts, (this is my paraphrase of the question)”How do you measure the benefits of a religious organization, like a local church?”  Or, “How would I apply Enterprise Architecture to religious organization”, since I posit that all organizations can benefit from Enterprise Architecture, as I’ve discussed in several previous posts.
This post is written with a slant toward the Methodist tradition, of which I am a part, but will apply equally well to all religious organizations.

An Organization’s Enterprise Architecture

Within Organizational Economics, any organization’s Enterprise Architecture has three sub-components, Mission, Governance, and infrastructure.
·         Mission: What the organization is supposed to do; it’s goal, target, or objective.
·         Governance: Within what parameters or rules it can perform its mission.
·         Infrastructure: What personnel, intellectual, physical, and financial support it has for achieving its mission.
To support the Missionof an organization, its leadership chooses Strategies(approaches or plans) for going from where it is to where it wants to be.  It implements these strategies using tactics, plans that account for the organization’s Governance and Infrastructure (its rules and talents/abilities/support).  Management then executes the tactics in operations(the actions of the organization).  The operations have two components, processes and tooling.
Additionally, the leadership and management of the organization is responsible for legislating, enforcing, and adjudicating some or all of the laws, rules, and/or regulations the make up the organization’s Governance.  [Sidebar: For an individual Methodist churches this would be called Administration.]
Finally, the organization must provide for its Infrastructure, “the tools and talents” it needs to perform the operations.  These tools include financial, physical, and intellectual.  For a religious organization this would be the money, time, talents of the adherents and the buildings, property and assets of the organization.

Processes and the OODA Loop

All processessupporting the mission or infrastructure of any organization fall into the OODA model of Col. John Boyd.  The OODA, as discussed in several previous posts includes four step: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.

Observe

Initially, data is gathered by observing some aspect of the current state of the Universe.  This includes data about the results of their previous actions.  In point of fact,
Datum—some observation about the Universe at a particular point in four dimensions
Data—a set consistent datum

Orient

The Orient step in the process is an individual’s model of how the world (Universe) works (descriptive) or should work (prescriptive).  These models are sometimes called paradigms. 
Rules from Governance enable and support the Orient step, by structuring the data within the individual’s or organization’s model.
Information—patterns abstracted from the data.  This is the start of orienting the observations, the data and information.  The pattern analysis to convert data into information is derived from the organization’s model of its environment or Universe.  For religious organizations this is found in its “bible” and its organizationally related texts like the “Book of Discipline” of the Methodist Church.
Knowledge—identified or abstracted patterns in the information.  Using the same paradigm, environmental model, or model Universe, people analyze and abstract patterns within the information.  This is their knowledge within the paradigm.  When they can’t fit information into their model, they often discard as aberrant, an outlier, or as an anomaly.  When enough information doesn’t conveniently fit into their model the adherents have a crisis.  In science, at least, this is the point of a paradigm shift.  In religion this is a reformation (the reforming of the “bible” and/or the “book of discipline”, that is the rules of governance.  While in science some conservative adherents to the old model lose their reputations after a time, in religion people on both sides of the model’s discontinuity lose their lives.

Decide

Once the organization or individual has the knowledge, he or she uses input their knowledge within their models of the Universe to make decisions.
Wisdom—is the understanding of the consequences of the application of knowledge.  
This is the hard part of the OODA Loop because it’s difficult to understand both the consequences and the unintended consequences of a decision.  If your paradigm, environment, or Universe model is good, or relatively complete, then you’re more likely to make a good decision.  More frequently than not people, even religious people, make decisions that are “Short term smart and long term dumb.”  Part of the reason is that they are working with a poor, incomplete or just plain wrong paradigm (view of the world or universe).  This is where the Risk/Reward balance comes in.  When choosing a path forward, what are the risks and rewards with each path?  [Sidebar:  A risk is an unknown and it is wise to understand that “you don’t know what you don’t know”.]

Act

Once the decision is made people act on those decisions by planning a mission, strategies, and so on within their paradigm.

Religious Organization’s Orienting Model

Joseph Campbell’s four categories of functions of religions: include: the metaphysical, the cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical.  While there may be much quibbling with some of what Mr. Campbell writes, the four functions of religion (and perhaps culture) ring true.

The Metaphysical Function

Awakening a sense of awe before the mystery of being
“According to Campbell, the absolute mystery of life, what he called transcendent reality, cannot be captured directly in words or images. Symbols and mythic metaphors on the other hand point outside themselves and into that reality. They are what Campbell called “being statements” and their enactment through ritual can give to the participant a sense of that ultimate mystery as an experience. ‘Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion…. The first function of mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is.’”
This is truly the “religious function of the four; the other three tending to be more cultural than religious.

The Cosmological Function

Explaining the shape of the universe
“For pre-modern societies, myth also functioned as a proto-science, offering explanations for the physical phenomena that surrounded and affected their lives, such as the change of seasons and the life cycles of animals and plants.”
While there still is much proto-science, science is serving the cosmological function in today’s culture and has identified many patterns in information and knowledge, and clarified many previously fuzzy concepts and theories.  Still, at this time, religion plays a significant role in many “ultimate” questions.  These include: What was there before the Big Bang (if there was one), what architected “the laws” of the Universe (e.g., the speed of light), why am I here, and what happens to me after I lose consciousness in the process of dying?

The Sociological Function

Validate and support the existing social order
“Ancient societies had to conform to an existing social order if they were to survive at all. This is because they evolved under “pressure” from necessities much more intense than the ones encountered in our modern world. Mythology confirmed that order, and enforced it by reflecting it into the stories themselves, often describing how the order arrived from divine intervention. Campbell often referred to these “conformity” myths as the “Right Hand Path” to reflect the brain’s left hemisphere’s abilities for logic, order and linearity. Together with these myths however, he observed the existence of the “Left Hand Path”, mythic patterns like the “Hero’s Journey” which are revolutionary in character in that they demand from the individual a surpassing of social norms and sometimes even of morality.”
More than any other the sociological function of religions leads to culture, to cultural conflict, and religious wars.  This is the key reason for the incessant wars among the three great monotheistic religions—especially when “the authorities” in each want to hold the political power that comes with the cosmological function (the function of how the Universe and God work).

The Pedagogical Function

Guide the individual through the stages of life
“As a person goes through life, many psychological challenges will be encountered. Myth may serve as a guide for successful passage through the stages of one’s life.”
Within the context of a given combined metaphysical, cosmological, and sociological model or paradigm, teaching the paradigm becomes important so that members of the organization can navigate in an orderly manner through the model.  Order reduces risk and increases cost efficiency, while creativity increases risk but may increase effectiveness.  All religious/cultural models work to decrease risk for its adherents and teaching the adherents the cultural behaviors is seminally important for the religious organization to last.

The Methodist Denomination; an Example

All religions create prescriptive paradigm or orienting model that include all four functions (or dimensions) as discussed by Campbell.
All religious orienting models are based on religious authority; either priests, shaman, etc., “Holy” texts, or both.

The Catholic Church before 1500

The Catholic Church before Luther and the Reformation and before Guttenberg and printing used both written text and Clerical Authority, with the latter being far more important.  Clerical Authority caused the burning and killing of the faculty or the library and museum (university) at Alexandria, the extermination of the Templers, the near extermination of the Huguenots, and Inquisitions killed hundreds of people and attempted to rewrite science (see the biographies of Galileo, Copernicus and others).  A big part of this was that the Catholic Church’s hierarchy believed their paradigm that they were the final authority on knowledge and wisdom.  They’re model included an Earth centered Universe with the Pope or Jerusalem at the very center.  This meant that they were always right and competing models damned the heretics to Hell.  To this was added a major dose of politics; e.g., “The ends justifies the means” inferred to the Jesuits.    

Strategies (Based on the Christian Protestant Paradigm)

Enter, initially, Luther and Guttenberg.  In 1455 Guttenberg has perfected the printing press and began to print the Bible so that by 1500 there were a comparatively large number floating around, as well as many other books with both ancient and “modern” ideas.  In 1507, Professor Dr. Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy, saying that the scriptures, not the Pope and his minions held the core to the Christian paradigm or prescriptive model of how the Universe should work and that all people should be allowed to read these and interpret them for themselves.  This change or shift in strategy was greatly facilitated by the increasing number of printed scriptures.
This meant that people had to learn to read, which meant they learned to write.  The ability to write meant that many more people had the ability to express concepts, ideas, and theories across space and time.  Learning was not just for the clerics and clergy.
One consequence for the Catholic Church was that science took on the cosmological functions, reducing the church hierarchy’s political authority.  Another was the increased risk of “Christians” against “Christians”.  And finally there was the blossoming of intellectual and economic wealth; since knowledge is the root of all wealth.

John Wesley, Adam Smith, and the United States

In 1783, John Wesley had his epiphany; he called it his “heart-warming” experience.  He continued his work among the poor and ostracized, attempting to bring them into the church.  These people had been tenet farmers and owners and workers in “cottage industry” manufacturing that supported the farmers and the estates on which they worked.  These people were being displaced by the new and very controversial mass production using powered tools; that is, the nascent industrial revolution of the early and middle 1700s. 
These people migrated to towns and cities in search of work.  Many that migrated had no skills that were needed in the new industrial economy.  With the debtor laws then in place, they ended up in prison or worse.  By 1811, the displaced workers formed radical groups, called Luddites, who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs; which the machines were.  These were the people that Wesley sought out and these were the people he reached.
As his “cult”, the Methodists, continued to grow, he a) had to have help; additional “clergy” to preach, teach, and comfort the cultists, b) these people needed to read but many couldn’t, and c) most of the rest of the very early Methodists couldn’t either.  Wesley set about educating his clergy and many of the cult members by teaching them to read.  In turn, reading and other skills taught in Sunday school were used by these “Methodists” to compete for jobs and to become entrepreneurs in their own right; that is, the Church of disciplined learning, demonstrated that there was a “Method” to John Wesley’s heretical madness. The Methodist Sunday School (A real school teaching reading, riting, and rithmtic) enabled Methodists to compete for better paying jobs and join the “Middle Class”.  This follows Wesley’s admonition, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can”.  This is really the credo for the knowledge-based Enlightened Capitalism as espoused by Adam Smith.
As espoused by Smith, Enlightened Capitalism is really about ensuring that there is an even economic and regulatory platform for all individuals to start from; no one individual being favored in an economic or political sense or even perceived as such.  This means that all individuals feel they have a chance to succeed to the full measure of their God (or nature) given talents.
In 1789, the framers of the United States Constitution used many of the concepts from the An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  These include:
·         Defense of the country
·         Support of the country’s infrastructure through creation and maintenance of standards that cross state boundaries and support of intra-country communications.
Everything else was left to the states and the people.  The Methodist church and other religious organizations noticed there was a need for, what is now called, “a social safety net”.  This was initially for its members.  So they constructed and supported hospitals, orphanages, old folks’ homes, and so on.  Many of the most prestigious hospitals still include the name of a domination or religious organization.  Many modest sized towns ended up with a Catholic and a Protestant hospital, while cities might have two or three of each plus a Jewish hospital.
In the 1880s and 90s, most Christian churches recognized the need for kids to have physical activity, since fewer of them were “working the farm”.  So, along with Sunday School to teach them to read, the churches built gyms for them to play in.

The Changed Mission

Politically correct, social liberal cultists in the Methodist denomination have turned the strategies of this denomination from a focus on religious activities to forcing societal change through political action (tactics).  They no longer give any weight to the other religious functions discussed by Campbell.
In my opinion, in doing so, they have lost focus.  The consequence is that young adults (gen X and Y) see no difference between the Methodist Church and the Democratic or socialist parties, other than possibly this is the organization to belong to, if you want to earn your way into heaven, (but more about Heaven and Hell in my other blog).  So they see no reason to join the Methodist Church.  Those that are looking for a religious organization head to fundamentalist churches, even religious cults, like James Jones’ Jonestown.  But defining social injustice is even harder and religious organizations have three other functions.  “Wicked Clowns lives matter” is an organization for “social justice”, but does that serve all four functions of a religion?
Remember while “Social Justice” is easy to proclaim, it’s hard to remember the individual as embodied in the song “Easy To Be Hard”
Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needy friend
I need a friend

Choosing a Mission, the Governance, and Infrastructure to Support a Religious Institution

The Three Great Principles

For a Christian church community any mission should be founded on the three great principles of Christianity. 
·         Love and respect God no matter what
·         Treat all others as you would want to be treated
·         Try to be your ownself at your very best all the time.
The first, in the Christian Bible is that, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”  If a religious institution forgets this principle, it is no longer a religious organization, but possibly a civic or political one.  Additionally, from any serious reading of history, it is the principle all people find most difficult to inculcate into their being and also the one that has caused more wars and more massacres than any other.  The reason is that many religions believe they have a lock on God will and how to please him/her/it.  Their mighty God has given them the right to enslave or kill anyone that espouses any variation from their orthodoxy.  This is true of all closed religions.
However, any Christian denomination must have this as their chief goal and guiding principle.
“The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  This is the chief principle of all civic and political organizations, as well as a secondary principle of religious organizations (at least this is what most religious organizations espouse).  This principle is the basis for all laws internal to a culture.  Most people, even those espousing religion, follow the law rather than inculcating the principle into their lives.  My mother said most followers of a particular Christian domination followed the principle of “sowing their wild oats six days a week and praying for a drought on Sunday.”  Hundreds of laws are needed to ensure that not too many “wild oats” are sown.
There is a significant problem with “loving your neighbor as yourself” and that is, many (most) people hate themselves in one way or another.  This may be caused by poor brain wiring, by bad experiences, or both.  This is the reason that I include the third principle.  People, especially young people, try to distance themselves by drink and drugs, and destruction of anything that might be beautiful. Why; because they can’t stand or understand themselves and act out on those feelings.  That is, “I’m entitled and if I can’t…then I’m being disrespected.”
So any local church mission statement must include teaching “my own self at my very best all the time.” (Which is impossible for any human but should be the goal of all humans).

Organizational Architecture and the Protestant Church

A Mission Statement and the Strategies

There are four dimensions of “my own self”: mental, physical, social, and religious (notice these fit well with Campbell’s functions).  As discussed earlier, John Wesley intuitively understood that the Methodists had to address all of these within the organization that he created.  First and foremost, it addresses the religious needs of its adherents.  Second, from the history of Methodism, it is plain his “methods” and governance created a secure internal environment for his adherents and that their openness combined with discipline continued to attract more.  Third, his Sunday school addressed their mental dimension, while including gyms, etc., addressed the physical.  And like his mentor, Jesus of Nazareth, the people of early Methodism “…grew stature (the physical), wisdom (the mental), and in favor with God (the religious), and man (the social).”
Any mission statementor goal and the strategies for achieving the goal should include a balance of all four religious functions, rather than a great emphasis on just one.   Having said, there need to be a set of strategies for meeting the goal.  These should encompass all four dimensions.  Once these are decided on, the church organization must decide on processes (ordered sets of activities or “methods”) that move the organization toward the goal. 

Processes and Governance

However, the strategies and processes must be limited to those that can function within governance of the organization.  If the mission simply cannot be met within the rules and regulations of organization then either: 1) the governance should change, 2) the strategies should change, or 3) the processes.  The simplest to change are the processes; the most difficult is the governance.  One other thing, the mission or goal should not be changed.

Infrastructure

These follow the practices of organizational architecture.  Finally, the religious organization has to work within the limits of its infrastructure and support systems (even though with the right blessing these may greatly multiple to feed the “my own self” of all members).

What’s A Strategy?

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Link to article
Recently, I was asked this simple question: What is a strategy?
According to this article a business strategy is: the result of choices executives make, on where to play and how to win, to maximize long-term value. 

Which seems reasonable enough definition, for the CEO, but doesn’t really help those who need to think strategically about other initiatives,  like, for example,  business change programmes. 

Here’s some thoughts on what a strategy is, and what it isn’t:


A strategy:
– Tells a story

– Is future focused

– Can apply to short, medium on long term futures

– Provides focus on what is important (and what isn’t)
– Is actionable

– Is a framework for decision-making

– Is holistic – considers changing environment & external events

– Examines alternatives

– Assesses risks

– Takes step back from Business As Usual – it is an abstraction from the current operation
– Can be emergent and living: will undergo revisions and course-corrections.
– Is a reference point for dealing with emergent change
– Is ‘WHY’, ‘WHAT’, ‘WHEN’ and ‘HOW’ focused. The ‘HOW’ in a strategy is a ‘Meta-HOW’:  often speaking to unknowns and unplanned (unknowable) events. The ‘WHEN’ is often more sequence focused than time-definite


– Is a choice

What a strategy isn’t:

– A detailed plan of activities

– A grand design

– A set of desired aims/objectives ( although these might be the basis)
– A mission statement

– A budget plan

– A collection of pre-determined projects

– A list of possibilities (technology-based or otherwise)

– Only applicable to ‘big’ or ‘long-term’ change (things often labelled as ‘strategic’).

Addendum:
I recommend reading Roger Martin’s wise words on the subject of Stategy.  A few quotes from his post:

“The problem with a lot of strategies is that they are full of non-choices. Probably most of us have read more than a few so-called strategies that say something like, “Our strategy is to be customer centric.” But is that really a choice?”

“I would argue that 90 percent of the strategic plans I’ve seen in my life are really more accurately described as budgets with prose”.

“If you’re into destroying innovation, two words—”prove” and “it”—will do the trick”.

What’s A Strategy?

by

Link to article
Recently, I was asked this simple question: What is a strategy?
According to this article a business strategy is: the result of choices executives make, on where to play and how to win, to maximize long-term value. 

Which seems reasonable enough definition, for the CEO, but doesn’t really help those who need to think strategically about other initiatives,  like, for example,  business change programmes. 

Here’s some thoughts on what a strategy is, and what it isn’t:


A strategy:
– Tells a story

– Is future focused

– Can apply to short, medium on long term futures

– Provides focus on what is important (and what isn’t)
– Is actionable

– Is a framework for decision-making

– Is holistic – considers changing environment & external events

– Examines alternatives

– Assesses risks

– Takes step back from Business As Usual – it is an abstraction from the current operation
– Can be emergent and living: will undergo revisions and course-corrections.
– Is a reference point for dealing with emergent change
– Is ‘WHY’, ‘WHAT’, ‘WHEN’ and ‘HOW’ focused. The ‘HOW’ in a strategy is a ‘Meta-HOW’:  often speaking to unknowns and unplanned (unknowable) events. The ‘WHEN’ is often more sequence focused than time-definite


– Is a choice

What a strategy isn’t:

– A detailed plan of activities

– A grand design

– A set of desired aims/objectives ( although these might be the basis)
– A mission statement

– A budget plan

– A collection of pre-determined projects

– A list of possibilities (technology-based or otherwise)

– Only applicable to ‘big’ or ‘long-term’ change (things often labelled as ‘strategic’).

Addendum:
I recommend reading Roger Martin’s wise words on the subject of Stategy.  A few quotes from his post:

“The problem with a lot of strategies is that they are full of non-choices. Probably most of us have read more than a few so-called strategies that say something like, “Our strategy is to be customer centric.” But is that really a choice?”

“I would argue that 90 percent of the strategic plans I’ve seen in my life are really more accurately described as budgets with prose”.

“If you’re into destroying innovation, two words—”prove” and “it”—will do the trick”.

Implementing SOA through TOGAF 9.1: the Center Of Excellence

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Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has at times been challenged but is now on the verge of mainstream acceptance. It now shows maturity, success and even signs of popularity. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an enterprise scale architecture for linking resources as needed. These resources are represented as business-aligned services which can participate and be composed in a set of choreographed processes to fulfil business needs.

The primary structuring element for SOA applications is a service as distinct from subsystems, systems, or components. A service is an autonomous and discoverable software resource which has a well defined service description.

SOA is based on a fundamental architectural model that defines an interaction model between three primary parties, the service provider, who publishes a service description and provides the implementation for the service, a service consumer, who can either use the uniform resource identifier (URI) for the service description directly or can find the service description in a service registry and bind and invoke the service. The service broker is the third party who provides and maintains the service registry in addition to providing mediation services between providers and consumers.

In 2012, the use of SOA for pivotal emerging technologies, especially for mobile applications and cloud computing, suggests that the future prospect for SOA is favourable. SOA and cloud will begin to fade as differentiating terms because it will just be “the way we do things”. We’re now at the point where everything we deploy is done in a service-oriented way, and cloud is being simply accepted as the delivery platform for applications and services. Also many enterprise architects are wondering if the mobile business model will drive SOA technologies in a new direction.  Meanwhile, a close look at mobile application integration today tells us that pressing mobile trends will prompt IT and business leaders to ensure mobile-friendly infrastructure.

To be successful in implementing a SOA initiative, it is highly recommended that a company create a Center of Excellence and the Open Group clearly explains how this can be achieved through the use of TOGAF 9.1. This article is based on the specification and specifically the section (in italics) 22.7.1.3 Partitions and Centers of Excellence with some additional thoughts on sections 22.7.1.1 Principle of Service-Orientation and 22.7.1.2 Governance and Support Strategy.

I have looked at the various attributes and provided further explanations or referred to previous experiences based on existing CoEs or sometimes called Integration Competency Centers.
The figure below illustrates below a SOA Center of Excellence as part of the Enterprise Architecture team with domain and solution architects as well as developers, QAs and business architects and analysts coming from a delivery organization.
clip_image002
This center of excellence support methodologies, standards, governance processes and manage a service registry. The main goal of this core group is to establish best practices at design time to maximize reusability of services.
Below is then what is written in the TOGAF 9.1 specification.


A successful CoE will have several key attributes:

  • A clear definition of the CoE’s mission: why it exists, its scope of responsibility, and what the organization and the architecture practice should expect from the CoE.

Any SOA Center of Excellence must have a purpose. What do we want to achieve? What are the problems we need to solve?

It may sound obvious, but having a blueprint for SOA is critical. It’s very easy for companies, especially large enterprises with disparate operations, to buy new technologies or integrate applications without regard to how they fit into the overall plan. The challenge in building a SOA is to keep people, including IT and business-side staff focused on the Enterprise Architecture goals.

In order to realize the vision of SOA the following topics should be addressed:

· What to build: A Reference Architecture
· How to build: Service-Oriented Modeling Method
· Whether to build: Assessments, roadmaps, and Maturity evaluations
· Guidance on Building: Architectural and Design patterns
· Oversight: Governance
· How to build: Standards and Tools

The Center of Excellence would first have a vision which could be something like:

“ABCCompany will effectively utilize SOA in order to achieve organizational flexibility and improve responsiveness to our customers”.

Then a mission statement should be communicated across the organization. Below a few examples of mission statements:

“To enable dynamic linkage among application capabilities in a manner that facilitates business effectiveness, maintainability, customer satisfaction, rapid deployment, reuse, performance and successful implementation.”
“The mission of the COE for SOA at ABCCompany is to promote, adopt, support the development and usage of ABCCompany standards, best practices, technologies and knowledge in the field of SOA and have a key role in the business transformation of ABCCompany. The COE will collaborate with the business to create an agile organization, which in turn will facilitate ABCCompany to accelerate the creation of new products and services for the markets, better serve its customers, and better collaborate with partners and vendors.”

The Center of Excellence would also define a structure and the various interactions with
· the enterprise architecture team
· the project management office
· the business process/planning & strategy group
· the product management group
· etc.

And create a steering committee or board (which could be associated to an architecture board).

They will provide different types of support:

· Architecture decision support
     o Maintain standards, templates and policies surrounding Integration and SOA
     o Participate in Integration and SOA design decisions
· Operational support
     o Responsible for building and maintaining SOA Infrastructure
     o Purchasing registries and products to grow infrastructure
· Development support
     o Development of administrative packages and services
     o Develop enterprise services based on strategic direction

  • Clear goals for the CoE including measurements and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It is important to ensure that the measures and KPIs of the CoE do not drive inappropriate selection of SOA as the architecture style.

Measurements and metrics will have to be identified. The common ones could be:

· Service revenue
· Service vitality
· Ratio between services used and those created
· Mean Time To Service Development or Service change
· Service availability
· Service reuse
· Quality assurance
· Etc.

  • The CoE will provide the “litmus test” of a good service.

Clearly comprehensive testing activities must be described by the Center of Excellence. In addition to a set of defined processes related to Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) testing, functional unit testing, regression testing, security testing, interoperability testing, vulnerability testing and load, performance testing, an analysis tool suite may be used to tailor the unique testing and validation needs of Service Oriented Architectures.

This helps test the message layer functionality of their services by automating their testing and supports numerous transport protocols including: (here a few examples) HTTP 1.0, HTTP/1.1, JMS, MQ, RMI, SMTP, .NET WCF HTTP, .NET WCF TCP, Electronic Data Interchange, ESBs, etc.
Only by adopting a comprehensive testing stance, enterprises can ensure that their SOA is robust, scalable, interoperable, and secure.

  • The CoE will disseminate the skills, experience, and capabilities of the SOA center to the rest of the architecture practice.

The Center of Excellence will promote best practices, methodologies, knowledge, and pragmatic leading-edge solutions in the area of SOA to the project teams.

  • Identify how members of the CoE, and other architecture practitioners, will be rewarded for success.

This may sounds like a good idea but I have never seen this as an applied practice.

  • Recognition that, at the start, it is unlikely the organization will have the necessary skills to create a fully functional CoE. The necessary skills and experience must be carefully identified, and where they are not present, acquired. A fundamental skill for leading practitioners within the CoE is the ability to mentor other practitioners transferring knowledge, skills, and experience.

Competency and skills building is needed for any initiative. SOA is not just about integrating technologies and applications but it is a culture change within the enterprise which requires IT to move from being a technology provider to a business enabler. There may be a wide range of skills required such as:

· Enterprise Architecture
· Value of SOA
· Governance model for SOA
· Business Process Management and SOA
· Design of SOA solutions
· Modeling
· Technologies and standards
· Security
· Business communication
· Etc.

It has to be said that lack of SOA skills is the number one inhibitor to SOA adoption.

  • Close-out plan for when the CoE has fulfilled its purpose.

Here again, I am not sure that I have observed any Center of Excellence being closed…
The Center of Excellence will then also define a Reference Architecture for the organization.

A Reference Architecture is an abstract realization of an architectural model showing how an architectural solution can be built while omitting any reference to specific concrete technologies. Reference Architecture is like an abstract machine. It is built to realize some function and it, in turn, relies on a set of underlying components and capabilities that must be present for it to perform. The capabilities are normally captured into layers which in their own right require an architectural definition. However, the specific choice of the components representing the capabilities is made after various business and feasibility analysis are performed. A Reference Architecture can be used to guide the realization of implementations where specific properties are desired of the concrete system.

The purpose of the Reference Architecture is reflected in the set of requirements that the Reference Architecture must satisfy. We can structure these requirements into a set of goals, a set of critical success factors associated with these goals and a set of requirements that are connected to the critical success factors that ensure their satisfaction.

A Reference Architecture for SOA describes how to build systems according to the principles of SOA. These principles direct IT professionals to design, implement, and deploy information systems from components (i.e. services) that implement discrete business functions. These services can be distributed across geographic and organizational boundaries, can be independently scaled and can be reconfigured into new business processes as needed. This flexibility provides a range of benefits for both IT and business organizations.

Using the pattern approach the SOA Reference Architecture is a means for generating other more specific reference architectures, or even concrete architectures depending on the nature of the patterns. Or to put it another way, it is a machine for generating other machines.

The Open Group Standard for SOA Reference Architecture (SOA RA) is a good way of considering how to build systems.

The center of Excellence needs also to define the SOA life cycle management which consists of various activities such as governing, modelling, assembling, deploying and controlling/monitoring.
Simply put, without management and control, there is no SOA only an “Experience”. The SOA infrastructure must be managed in accordance with the goals and policies of the organization, which include hardware and software IT resource utilization, performance standards as well as goals for service level objectives (SLOs) for the services provided to IT users as well as business goals and policies for businesses that run and use IT. To be truly agile, enactment of all these different types of policies requires automated control that allows goals to be met with only the prescribed level of human interaction.

For every layer of the SOA infrastructure a corresponding Manage and Control component needs to exist / be in place. Moreover, the “manage and control” components must be integrated in a way that they can provide an end-to-end view of the entire SOA infrastructure.

These manage and control functions provide the run-time management and control of the entire enterprise IT execution environment. This includes all of the enterprise’s business processes and information services, including those associated with the IT organization’s own business processes.

The “Principle of Service orientation” must exist as defined in 22.7.1.1 Principle of Service-Orientation, but lower levels of principles, rules, and guidelines are required.

Needs and capabilities are not mechanisms in the SOA Reference Architecture. They are the guiding principles for building and using a particular SOA. Nonetheless, the usefulness of a particular SOA depends on how well the needs and capabilities are defined, understood, and satisfied.

Architecture principles define the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise. They reflect a level of consensus among the various elements of the enterprise, and form the basis for making future IT decisions.

Guiding principles define the ground rules for development, maintenance, and usage of the SOA. Specific principles for architecture design or service definition, are derived from these guiding principles, focusing on specific themes. These principles are the characteristics that provide the intrinsic behaviour for the style of design.

SOA principles should be clearly related back to the business objectives and key architecture drivers. They will be constructed on the same mode as TOGAF 9.1 principles with the use of statement, rationale and implications. Below examples of the types of services which may be created:

· Put the computing near the data
· Services are technology neutral
· Services are consumable
· Services are autonomous
· Services share a formal contract
· Services are loosely coupled
· Services abstract underlying logic
· Services are reusable
· Services are composable
· Services are stateless
· Services are discoverable
· Location Transparency
· Etc.

Here is a detailed principle example:

· Service invocation
     o All service invocations between application silos will be exposed through the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
     o The only exception to this principle will be when the service meets all the following criteria:
          § It will be used only within the same application silo
          § There is no potential right now or in the near future for re-use of this service
          § The service has already been right-sized
          § The Review Team has approved the exception

As previously indicated, the Center of Excellence would also have to provide guidelines on SOA processes and related technologies. This may include:

· Service analysis (Enterprise Architecture, BPM, OO, requirements and models, UDDI Model)
· Service design (SOAD, specification, Discovery Process, Taxonomy)
· Service provisioning (SPML, contracts, SLA)
· Service implementation development (BPEL, SOAIF)
· Service assembly and integration (JBI, ESB)
· Service testing
· Service deployment (the software on the network)
· Service discovery (UDDI, WSIL, registry)
· Service publishing (SLA, security, certificates, classification, location, UDDI, etc.)
· Service consumption (WSDL, BPEL)
· Service execution (WSDM)
· Service versioning (UDDI, WSDL)
· Service Management and monitoring
· Service operation
· Programming, granularity and abstraction
· Etc.

Other activities may be considered by the Center of Excellence such as providing a collaboration platform, asset management (service are just another type of assets), compliance with standards and best practices, use of guidelines, etc. These activities could also be supported by an Enterprise Architecture team.

As described in TOGAF 9.1, the Center of Excellence can act as the governance body for SOA implementation, work with the Enterprise Architecture team, overseeing what goes into a new architecture that the organization is creating and ensuring that the architecture will meet the current and future needs of the organization.

The Center of Excellence provides expanded opportunities for organizations to leverage and re-use service oriented infrastructure and knowledgebase to facilitate the implementation of cost-effective and timely SOA based solutions.

Implementing SOA through TOGAF 9.1: the Center Of Excellence

by
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has at times been challenged but is now on the verge of mainstream acceptance. It now shows maturity, success and even signs of popularity. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an enterprise scale architecture for linking resources as needed. These resources are represented as business-aligned services which can participate and be composed in a set of choreographed processes to fulfil business needs.

The primary structuring element for SOA applications is a service as distinct from subsystems, systems, or components. A service is an autonomous and discoverable software resource which has a well defined service description.

SOA is based on a fundamental architectural model that defines an interaction model between three primary parties, the service provider, who publishes a service description and provides the implementation for the service, a service consumer, who can either use the uniform resource identifier (URI) for the service description directly or can find the service description in a service registry and bind and invoke the service. The service broker is the third party who provides and maintains the service registry in addition to providing mediation services between providers and consumers.

In 2012, the use of SOA for pivotal emerging technologies, especially for mobile applications and cloud computing, suggests that the future prospect for SOA is favourable. SOA and cloud will begin to fade as differentiating terms because it will just be “the way we do things”. We’re now at the point where everything we deploy is done in a service-oriented way, and cloud is being simply accepted as the delivery platform for applications and services. Also many enterprise architects are wondering if the mobile business model will drive SOA technologies in a new direction.  Meanwhile, a close look at mobile application integration today tells us that pressing mobile trends will prompt IT and business leaders to ensure mobile-friendly infrastructure.

To be successful in implementing a SOA initiative, it is highly recommended that a company create a Center of Excellence and the Open Group clearly explains how this can be achieved through the use of TOGAF 9.1. This article is based on the specification and specifically the section (in italics) 22.7.1.3 Partitions and Centers of Excellence with some additional thoughts on sections 22.7.1.1 Principle of Service-Orientation and 22.7.1.2 Governance and Support Strategy.

I have looked at the various attributes and provided further explanations or referred to previous experiences based on existing CoEs or sometimes called Integration Competency Centers.
The figure below illustrates below a SOA Center of Excellence as part of the Enterprise Architecture team with domain and solution architects as well as developers, QAs and business architects and analysts coming from a delivery organization.
clip_image002
This center of excellence support methodologies, standards, governance processes and manage a service registry. The main goal of this core group is to establish best practices at design time to maximize reusability of services.
Below is then what is written in the TOGAF 9.1 specification.


A successful CoE will have several key attributes:

  • A clear definition of the CoE’s mission: why it exists, its scope of responsibility, and what the organization and the architecture practice should expect from the CoE.

Any SOA Center of Excellence must have a purpose. What do we want to achieve? What are the problems we need to solve?

It may sound obvious, but having a blueprint for SOA is critical. It’s very easy for companies, especially large enterprises with disparate operations, to buy new technologies or integrate applications without regard to how they fit into the overall plan. The challenge in building a SOA is to keep people, including IT and business-side staff focused on the Enterprise Architecture goals.

In order to realize the vision of SOA the following topics should be addressed:

· What to build: A Reference Architecture
· How to build: Service-Oriented Modeling Method
· Whether to build: Assessments, roadmaps, and Maturity evaluations
· Guidance on Building: Architectural and Design patterns
· Oversight: Governance
· How to build: Standards and Tools

The Center of Excellence would first have a vision which could be something like:

“ABCCompany will effectively utilize SOA in order to achieve organizational flexibility and improve responsiveness to our customers”.

Then a mission statement should be communicated across the organization. Below a few examples of mission statements:

“To enable dynamic linkage among application capabilities in a manner that facilitates business effectiveness, maintainability, customer satisfaction, rapid deployment, reuse, performance and successful implementation.”
“The mission of the COE for SOA at ABCCompany is to promote, adopt, support the development and usage of ABCCompany standards, best practices, technologies and knowledge in the field of SOA and have a key role in the business transformation of ABCCompany. The COE will collaborate with the business to create an agile organization, which in turn will facilitate ABCCompany to accelerate the creation of new products and services for the markets, better serve its customers, and better collaborate with partners and vendors.”

The Center of Excellence would also define a structure and the various interactions with
· the enterprise architecture team
· the project management office
· the business process/planning & strategy group
· the product management group
· etc.

And create a steering committee or board (which could be associated to an architecture board).

They will provide different types of support:

· Architecture decision support
     o Maintain standards, templates and policies surrounding Integration and SOA
     o Participate in Integration and SOA design decisions
· Operational support
     o Responsible for building and maintaining SOA Infrastructure
     o Purchasing registries and products to grow infrastructure
· Development support
     o Development of administrative packages and services
     o Develop enterprise services based on strategic direction

  • Clear goals for the CoE including measurements and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It is important to ensure that the measures and KPIs of the CoE do not drive inappropriate selection of SOA as the architecture style.

Measurements and metrics will have to be identified. The common ones could be:

· Service revenue
· Service vitality
· Ratio between services used and those created
· Mean Time To Service Development or Service change
· Service availability
· Service reuse
· Quality assurance
· Etc.

  • The CoE will provide the “litmus test” of a good service.

Clearly comprehensive testing activities must be described by the Center of Excellence. In addition to a set of defined processes related to Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) testing, functional unit testing, regression testing, security testing, interoperability testing, vulnerability testing and load, performance testing, an analysis tool suite may be used to tailor the unique testing and validation needs of Service Oriented Architectures.

This helps test the message layer functionality of their services by automating their testing and supports numerous transport protocols including: (here a few examples) HTTP 1.0, HTTP/1.1, JMS, MQ, RMI, SMTP, .NET WCF HTTP, .NET WCF TCP, Electronic Data Interchange, ESBs, etc.
Only by adopting a comprehensive testing stance, enterprises can ensure that their SOA is robust, scalable, interoperable, and secure.

  • The CoE will disseminate the skills, experience, and capabilities of the SOA center to the rest of the architecture practice.

The Center of Excellence will promote best practices, methodologies, knowledge, and pragmatic leading-edge solutions in the area of SOA to the project teams.

  • Identify how members of the CoE, and other architecture practitioners, will be rewarded for success.

This may sounds like a good idea but I have never seen this as an applied practice.

  • Recognition that, at the start, it is unlikely the organization will have the necessary skills to create a fully functional CoE. The necessary skills and experience must be carefully identified, and where they are not present, acquired. A fundamental skill for leading practitioners within the CoE is the ability to mentor other practitioners transferring knowledge, skills, and experience.

Competency and skills building is needed for any initiative. SOA is not just about integrating technologies and applications but it is a culture change within the enterprise which requires IT to move from being a technology provider to a business enabler. There may be a wide range of skills required such as:

· Enterprise Architecture
· Value of SOA
· Governance model for SOA
· Business Process Management and SOA
· Design of SOA solutions
· Modeling
· Technologies and standards
· Security
· Business communication
· Etc.

It has to be said that lack of SOA skills is the number one inhibitor to SOA adoption.

  • Close-out plan for when the CoE has fulfilled its purpose.

Here again, I am not sure that I have observed any Center of Excellence being closed…
The Center of Excellence will then also define a Reference Architecture for the organization.

A Reference Architecture is an abstract realization of an architectural model showing how an architectural solution can be built while omitting any reference to specific concrete technologies. Reference Architecture is like an abstract machine. It is built to realize some function and it, in turn, relies on a set of underlying components and capabilities that must be present for it to perform. The capabilities are normally captured into layers which in their own right require an architectural definition. However, the specific choice of the components representing the capabilities is made after various business and feasibility analysis are performed. A Reference Architecture can be used to guide the realization of implementations where specific properties are desired of the concrete system.

The purpose of the Reference Architecture is reflected in the set of requirements that the Reference Architecture must satisfy. We can structure these requirements into a set of goals, a set of critical success factors associated with these goals and a set of requirements that are connected to the critical success factors that ensure their satisfaction.

A Reference Architecture for SOA describes how to build systems according to the principles of SOA. These principles direct IT professionals to design, implement, and deploy information systems from components (i.e. services) that implement discrete business functions. These services can be distributed across geographic and organizational boundaries, can be independently scaled and can be reconfigured into new business processes as needed. This flexibility provides a range of benefits for both IT and business organizations.

Using the pattern approach the SOA Reference Architecture is a means for generating other more specific reference architectures, or even concrete architectures depending on the nature of the patterns. Or to put it another way, it is a machine for generating other machines.

The Open Group Standard for SOA Reference Architecture (SOA RA) is a good way of considering how to build systems.

The center of Excellence needs also to define the SOA life cycle management which consists of various activities such as governing, modelling, assembling, deploying and controlling/monitoring.
Simply put, without management and control, there is no SOA only an “Experience”. The SOA infrastructure must be managed in accordance with the goals and policies of the organization, which include hardware and software IT resource utilization, performance standards as well as goals for service level objectives (SLOs) for the services provided to IT users as well as business goals and policies for businesses that run and use IT. To be truly agile, enactment of all these different types of policies requires automated control that allows goals to be met with only the prescribed level of human interaction.

For every layer of the SOA infrastructure a corresponding Manage and Control component needs to exist / be in place. Moreover, the “manage and control” components must be integrated in a way that they can provide an end-to-end view of the entire SOA infrastructure.

These manage and control functions provide the run-time management and control of the entire enterprise IT execution environment. This includes all of the enterprise’s business processes and information services, including those associated with the IT organization’s own business processes.

The “Principle of Service orientation” must exist as defined in 22.7.1.1 Principle of Service-Orientation, but lower levels of principles, rules, and guidelines are required.

Needs and capabilities are not mechanisms in the SOA Reference Architecture. They are the guiding principles for building and using a particular SOA. Nonetheless, the usefulness of a particular SOA depends on how well the needs and capabilities are defined, understood, and satisfied.

Architecture principles define the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise. They reflect a level of consensus among the various elements of the enterprise, and form the basis for making future IT decisions.

Guiding principles define the ground rules for development, maintenance, and usage of the SOA. Specific principles for architecture design or service definition, are derived from these guiding principles, focusing on specific themes. These principles are the characteristics that provide the intrinsic behaviour for the style of design.

SOA principles should be clearly related back to the business objectives and key architecture drivers. They will be constructed on the same mode as TOGAF 9.1 principles with the use of statement, rationale and implications. Below examples of the types of services which may be created:

· Put the computing near the data
· Services are technology neutral
· Services are consumable
· Services are autonomous
· Services share a formal contract
· Services are loosely coupled
· Services abstract underlying logic
· Services are reusable
· Services are composable
· Services are stateless
· Services are discoverable
· Location Transparency
· Etc.

Here is a detailed principle example:

· Service invocation
     o All service invocations between application silos will be exposed through the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
     o The only exception to this principle will be when the service meets all the following criteria:
          § It will be used only within the same application silo
          § There is no potential right now or in the near future for re-use of this service
          § The service has already been right-sized
          § The Review Team has approved the exception

As previously indicated, the Center of Excellence would also have to provide guidelines on SOA processes and related technologies. This may include:

· Service analysis (Enterprise Architecture, BPM, OO, requirements and models, UDDI Model)
· Service design (SOAD, specification, Discovery Process, Taxonomy)
· Service provisioning (SPML, contracts, SLA)
· Service implementation development (BPEL, SOAIF)
· Service assembly and integration (JBI, ESB)
· Service testing
· Service deployment (the software on the network)
· Service discovery (UDDI, WSIL, registry)
· Service publishing (SLA, security, certificates, classification, location, UDDI, etc.)
· Service consumption (WSDL, BPEL)
· Service execution (WSDM)
· Service versioning (UDDI, WSDL)
· Service Management and monitoring
· Service operation
· Programming, granularity and abstraction
· Etc.

Other activities may be considered by the Center of Excellence such as providing a collaboration platform, asset management (service are just another type of assets), compliance with standards and best practices, use of guidelines, etc. These activities could also be supported by an Enterprise Architecture team.

As described in TOGAF 9.1, the Center of Excellence can act as the governance body for SOA implementation, work with the Enterprise Architecture team, overseeing what goes into a new architecture that the organization is creating and ensuring that the architecture will meet the current and future needs of the organization.

The Center of Excellence provides expanded opportunities for organizations to leverage and re-use service oriented infrastructure and knowledgebase to facilitate the implementation of cost-effective and timely SOA based solutions.

How Strategic Planning relates to Enterprise Architecture?

by

TOGAF often refers to Strategic Planning without specifying the details of what it consists of. This document explains why there is a perfect fit between the two.

Strategic Planning means different things to different people. The one constant is its reference to Business Planning which usually occurs annually in most companies. One of the activities of this exercise is the consideration of the portfolio of projects for the following financial year, also referred to as Project Portfolio Management (PPM). This activity may also be triggered when a company modifies its strategy or the priority of its current developments.

Drivers for Strategic Planning may be

· New products or services

· A need for greater Business flexibility and agility

· Merger & Acquisition

· Company’s reorganization

· Consolidation of manufacturing plants, lines of business, partners, information systems

· Cost reduction

· Risk mitigation

· Business Process Management initiatives

· Business Process Outsourcing

· Facilities outsourcing or in sourcing

· Off shoring

Strategic Planning as a process may include activities such as:

1. The definition of the mission and objectives of the enterprise

Most companies have a mission statement depicting the business vision, the purpose and value of the company and the visionary goals to address future opportunities. With that business vision, the board of the company defines the strategic (e.g. reputation, market share) and financial objectives (e.g. earnings growth, sales targets).

2. Environmental analysis

The environmental analysis may include the following activities:

· Internal analysis of the enterprise

· Analysis of the enterprise’s industry

· A PEST Analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors). It is very important that an organization considers its environment before beginning the marketing process. In fact, environmental analysis should be continuous and feed all aspects of planning, identify the strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and threats (SWOT).

3. Strategy definition

Based on the previous activities, the enterprise matches strengths to opportunities and addressing its weaknesses and external threats and elaborate a strategic plan. This plan may then be refined at different levels in the enterprise. Below is a diagram explaining the various levels of plans.

image

To build that strategy, an Enterprise Strategy Model may be used to represent the Enterprise situation accurately and realistically for both past and future views. This can be based on Business Motivation Modeling (BMM) which allows developing, communicating and managing a Strategic Plan. Another possibility is the use of Business Model Canvas which allows the company to develop and sketch out new or existing business models. (Refer to the work from Alexander Osterwalder http://alexosterwalder.com/).

The model’s analyses should consider important strategic variables such as customers demand expectations, pricing and elasticity, competitor behavior, emissions regulations, future input, and labor costs.

These variables are then mapped to the main important business processes (capacity, business capabilities, constraints), and economic performance to determine the best decision for each scenario. The strategic model can be based on business processes such as customer, operation or background processes. Scenarios can then are segmented and analyzed by customer, product portfolio, network redesign, long term recruiting and capacity, mergers and acquisitions to describe Segment Business Plans.

4. Strategy Implementation

The selected strategy is implemented by means of programs, projects, budgets, processes and procedures. The way in which the strategy is implemented can have a significant impact on whether it will be successful, and this is where Enterprise Architecture may have a significant role to play. Often, the people formulating the strategy are different from those implementing it. The way the strategy is communicated is a key element of the success and should be clearly explained to the different layers of management including the Enterprise Architecture team.

To support that strategy, different levels or architecture can be considered such as strategic, segment or capability architectures.

image

Figure 20-1: Summary Classification Model for Architecture Landscapes

This diagram below illustrates different examples of new business capabilities linked to a Strategic Architecture.

image

It also illustrates how Strategic Architecture supports the enterprise’s vision and the strategic plan communicated to an Enterprise Architecture team.

Going to the next level allows better detail the various deliverables and the associated new business capabilities. The segment architecture maps perfectly to the Segment Business Plan.

image

5. Evaluation and monitoring

The implementation of the strategy must be monitored and adjustments made as required.

Evaluation and monitoring consists of the following steps:

1. Definition of KPIs, measurement and metrics

2. Definition of target values for these KPIs

3. Perform measurements

4. Compare measured results to the pre-defined standard

5. Make necessary changes

Strategic Planning and Enterprise Architecture should ensure that information systems do not operate in a vacuum. At its core, TOGAF 9 uses/supports a strong set of guidelines that were promoted in the previous version, and have surrounded them with guidance on how to adopt and apply TOGAF to the enterprise for Strategic Planning initiatives. The ADM diagram below clearly indicates the integration between the two processes.

The company’s mission and vision must be communicated to the Enterprise Architecture team which then maps Business Capabilities to the different Business Plans levels.

image

Many Enterprise Architecture projects are focused at low levels but should be aligned with Strategic Corporate Planning. Enterprise Architecture is a critical discipline, one Strategic Planning mechanism to structure an enterprise. TOGAF 9 is without doubt an effective framework for working with stakeholders through Strategic Planning and architecture work, especially for organizations who are actively transforming themselves.

How Strategic Planning relates to Enterprise Architecture?

by

TOGAF often refers to Strategic Planning without specifying the details of what it consists of. This document explains why there is a perfect fit between the two.

Strategic Planning means different things to different people. The one constant is its reference to Business Planning which usually occurs annually in most companies. One of the activities of this exercise is the consideration of the portfolio of projects for the following financial year, also referred to as Project Portfolio Management (PPM). This activity may also be triggered when a company modifies its strategy or the priority of its current developments.

Drivers for Strategic Planning may be

· New products or services

· A need for greater Business flexibility and agility

· Merger & Acquisition

· Company’s reorganization

· Consolidation of manufacturing plants, lines of business, partners, information systems

· Cost reduction

· Risk mitigation

· Business Process Management initiatives

· Business Process Outsourcing

· Facilities outsourcing or in sourcing

· Off shoring

Strategic Planning as a process may include activities such as:

1. The definition of the mission and objectives of the enterprise

Most companies have a mission statement depicting the business vision, the purpose and value of the company and the visionary goals to address future opportunities. With that business vision, the board of the company defines the strategic (e.g. reputation, market share) and financial objectives (e.g. earnings growth, sales targets).

2. Environmental analysis

The environmental analysis may include the following activities:

· Internal analysis of the enterprise

· Analysis of the enterprise’s industry

· A PEST Analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors). It is very important that an organization considers its environment before beginning the marketing process. In fact, environmental analysis should be continuous and feed all aspects of planning, identify the strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and threats (SWOT).

3. Strategy definition

Based on the previous activities, the enterprise matches strengths to opportunities and addressing its weaknesses and external threats and elaborate a strategic plan. This plan may then be refined at different levels in the enterprise. Below is a diagram explaining the various levels of plans.

image

To build that strategy, an Enterprise Strategy Model may be used to represent the Enterprise situation accurately and realistically for both past and future views. This can be based on Business Motivation Modeling (BMM) which allows developing, communicating and managing a Strategic Plan. Another possibility is the use of Business Model Canvas which allows the company to develop and sketch out new or existing business models. (Refer to the work from Alexander Osterwalder http://alexosterwalder.com/).

The model’s analyses should consider important strategic variables such as customers demand expectations, pricing and elasticity, competitor behavior, emissions regulations, future input, and labor costs.

These variables are then mapped to the main important business processes (capacity, business capabilities, constraints), and economic performance to determine the best decision for each scenario. The strategic model can be based on business processes such as customer, operation or background processes. Scenarios can then are segmented and analyzed by customer, product portfolio, network redesign, long term recruiting and capacity, mergers and acquisitions to describe Segment Business Plans.

4. Strategy Implementation

The selected strategy is implemented by means of programs, projects, budgets, processes and procedures. The way in which the strategy is implemented can have a significant impact on whether it will be successful, and this is where Enterprise Architecture may have a significant role to play. Often, the people formulating the strategy are different from those implementing it. The way the strategy is communicated is a key element of the success and should be clearly explained to the different layers of management including the Enterprise Architecture team.

To support that strategy, different levels or architecture can be considered such as strategic, segment or capability architectures.

image

Figure 20-1: Summary Classification Model for Architecture Landscapes

This diagram below illustrates different examples of new business capabilities linked to a Strategic Architecture.

image

It also illustrates how Strategic Architecture supports the enterprise’s vision and the strategic plan communicated to an Enterprise Architecture team.

Going to the next level allows better detail the various deliverables and the associated new business capabilities. The segment architecture maps perfectly to the Segment Business Plan.

image

5. Evaluation and monitoring

The implementation of the strategy must be monitored and adjustments made as required.

Evaluation and monitoring consists of the following steps:

1. Definition of KPIs, measurement and metrics

2. Definition of target values for these KPIs

3. Perform measurements

4. Compare measured results to the pre-defined standard

5. Make necessary changes

Strategic Planning and Enterprise Architecture should ensure that information systems do not operate in a vacuum. At its core, TOGAF 9 uses/supports a strong set of guidelines that were promoted in the previous version, and have surrounded them with guidance on how to adopt and apply TOGAF to the enterprise for Strategic Planning initiatives. The ADM diagram below clearly indicates the integration between the two processes.

The company’s mission and vision must be communicated to the Enterprise Architecture team which then maps Business Capabilities to the different Business Plans levels.

image

Many Enterprise Architecture projects are focused at low levels but should be aligned with Strategic Corporate Planning. Enterprise Architecture is a critical discipline, one Strategic Planning mechanism to structure an enterprise. TOGAF 9 is without doubt an effective framework for working with stakeholders through Strategic Planning and architecture work, especially for organizations who are actively transforming themselves.

Architectural Control as a Managerial Paradox

by
In recent years, IS academia has argued that EA is increasingly becoming a strategic management tool or a high-level business function for long term planning and execution. It has been a healthy evolution for EA to question its IT heritage and adopt a broader perspective of how commercial enterprises navigate and gravitate in their respective marketplaces. This healthy evolution has particularly been articulated by Turner, Gotze, and Bernus (2010) in their paper Architecting the Firm: Coherency and Consistency in Managing the Enterprise, which argues the key role of architecture in executive management. Architected organisations are said to achieve better, more consistent results since the strategy is aligned and architected against operations, processes, and the technology portfolio.

As I have previously argued in my writings on strategic management, the assumed reality of strategic long term planning has to a large extent ignored the socio-political side of human and organisational behaviour. Planning is volatile and subject to rapid change in turbulent environments. As Rittel & Webber (1973) argue in their 1973 article on government policy and planning, assuming that any problem can be solved by rational planning will ultimately lead to confusion and failure. In their view, assumed rationality leads to unexpected ambiguity. Here, it is crucial to ask the question: if EA really is such a strategic discipline driven by the need for informed decision making, how can the first and always at-the-top-of-the-framework-pyramid component called strategy rely on such a naïve view of how human planning works in practice? This discussion is by no means new; already in the late 90ies, Mintzberg (2002) argued the need for an organic, emergent view of strategy by elaborating on Simon’s (1997) concept of bounded, contextual rationality. 


Let us for a short moment forget about strategy as an applied, deliberate package of human reason and rather think of strategy as inherently equivocal. Management concepts, as they often arrive straight out of the business scholar’s first year text book on business strategy, are, in fact, paradoxical and ambiguous despite the strive for precision and forecasting. This is explained in the following:
  1. The first paradox concerns the relationship between assumption of control vs. human and environmental ambiguity. The more one attempts to control and superimpose predictability onto reality, the more imprecise and irregular reality, in fact, becomes. This classic paradox of the manager as an assumed homo oeconomicus is discussed in depth by Kallinikos (2004).
  2. The second paradox is three-sided: the short, very generic nature of corporate vision and mission statements vs. the corporate search for control and manageability vs. the complexity of the business ecology surrounding the enterprise. The first facet is short and simple, where the second facet strives for precision, detail, and consistency, both which in turn neglect the ecological complexity and institutional pressure (the third facet) of the organisation’s environment.
  3. The third, most noticeable paradox is the fact that the implicit equivoque of high-level mission/vision statements fosters organisational resilience. The more loosely or ill-defined the strategy, the better will the official policy document fit into the actions and immediate strategies (what Weick (2001) denotes just in time strategies) deployed by employees to fulfil or achieve certain goals and expectations (Astley & Zammuto, 1992). The more ambiguous the official strategy or policy articulation, the more free hands for the individual employee to appropriately navigate the socio-political problems of the business environment. Despite the intended precision of a strategy document, the more possible interpretations of a strategic policy or plan, the more organisational resilience and responsiveness (Weick, 2001).

However, it is too simplistic to assume that corporate ambiguity per se triggers organisational resilience and flexibility. In that case, any old plan would do.The paradoxical nature of precision and ambiguity is better understood as a second order systems theoretical concept (Luhmann, 1995 & Luhmann, 2000), in which any system, be it social or biological/ecological, applies certain reductionisms in order to reduce the outside complexity the environment. In Luhmann’s theory of symbolically generalised media within social systems, phenomena such as scientific truth, politics, sex, and power are applied by different institutional systems in order to reduce the complexity and ambiguity of modern society. Similarly, organisations as social systems deliberately deploy equivocal mission statements and simplistic strategies in order to interpret and cope with a hyper-complex, fast-paced business environment. Despite the claim of predictability, strategic long term plans are thus put in place in order to reduce societal complexity and constraints to static architectural maps and prescriptive policies. The reduced conception of reality is by no means successful or comprehensive enough to account for all important details simultaneously, but it makes reality manageable until the actions taken and plans made are reasonable enough (see  reasonableness as a criterion for strategic success in (Weick, 2001)). 
As Teubner (2000) writes, strategic planning fosters productive misunderstandings: business strategies have to be misunderstood (compared to what was originally intended by e.g. senior management) and reinterpreted in the particular reality and bounded rationality of the individual. The final, synthesised (mis-)understanding of strategy, mission, and vision serves to build and sustain resilience and organisational responsiveness—but only with reference to the organisation itself. As Luhmann’s sociology tells us, the end result would never achieve the same results in the outside reality. This also explains why replicating or adopting existing patterns of strategy will most likely lead to a bad result without adopting, contextualising, and productively misunderstanding the presumed strategic rationality. Good strategies are misunderstood, self-referential and contextual whilst fostering resilience and adaptability.

It is my conception that EA must adopt such view of strategic thinking as a self-referential, ambiguity-producing human practice in order to successfully navigate the needs and requirements of tomorrow’ adaptive and flexible virtual enterprises.

References

Astley, W. G. & Zammuto, R. F. (1992), `Organization Science, Managers, and Language Games’, Organization Science 3(4), 443{460.
Kallinikos, J. (2004), `Deconstructing Information Packages: Organizational and Behavioural Implications of ERP Systems’, Information Technology & People 17(1), 8-30.
Luhmann, N. (1995), Social Systems, Writing Science, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.

Luhmann, N. (2000), The Reality of the Mass Media, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.

Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B., & Lampel, J. (2002). Strategy safari (2nd ed.). LT Prentice Hall. 
Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973), `Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences 4.

Simon, H. A. (1997), Models of Bounded Rationality, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA.
Teubner, G. (2000), `Contracting worlds: Invoking discourse rights in private governance regimes’, Social and Legal Studies 9, 399-417.,

Turner, P., Gøtze, J., Bernus, P. (2010) Architecting the Firm: Coherency and Consistency in Managing the Enterprise. In Bernus et al (2010) Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability: IFIP TC 5 International Conference, EAI2N 2010, Held as Part of WCC 2010, Brisbane, Australia, September 20-23, 2010, Proceedings. 

Weick, K. E. (2001), Making Sense of the Organization, Blackwell Publishing.