Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Gabriel Morgan We all possess the gene to want to solve problems when faced with them. It’s human nature. People form organizations and this gene sometimes manifests itself in organizational titles and roles invented to address organizational challenges. This i…
We all possess the gene to want to solve problems when faced with them. It’s human nature. People form organizations and this gene sometimes manifests itself in organizational titles and roles invented to address organizational challenges. This is natural too. For example, when support organizations face the challenge of aligning to business organizations, we see…
One of my uncle’s favorite jokes goes like this:
Greg: “Hey Gabriel, say to me ‘what’s the most important thing about humor?’”
Gabriel: “Okay Greg, what’s the mo-“
Greg: “Timing.”
[At this point, you’re supposed to laugh]
“Timing” is the most important thing to business strategy planning
As it turns out, timing is also the most important thing to support business performance management in terms of managing scorecards and synchronizing them with their project portfolios across a company.
Organizational Hierarchy Strategy Alignment. Organizational Hierarchy Strategy Alignment is the linkage between organization’s scorecards and budgets based on an organization’s hierarchy. The head of an organization’s scorecard and budget links to its children’s organizational scorecards and budgets forming a pyramid-like structure of strategy alignment like the illustration below.
Value Stream Strategy Alignment. From a business strategy perspective, there are two types of organizations in a company; Business Organizations and Support Organizations. A Business Organization is an organization that is responsible for a product with scorecard KPIs related to market share, revenue and customer satisfaction.. All other organizations in a company are Support Organizations with scorecard KPIs related to cost, productivity, quality and risk. Business Strategy is set by the Business Organizations and Support Organizations mobilize to enable them, ideally in a sequential flow based on the Product’s value stream (aka core value stream, value chain and operating model). That is, organizations that deliver a product define their scorecards to express what success look like normally using KPIs like “units delivered”, “revenue received”, “customer satisfaction”. Then, working back up the value stream, Support Organizations determine how to sell the product to hit the desired success targets set by the deliver organization. Then, Support Organizations that market the product define KPIs on their scorecards to express what success looks like to hit the sale’s organization’s KPI Targets. Of course, not all processes are directly involved in the core value stream. Support Organizations that support customers, invoice/bill customers, hire people, manage partners, etc all have an enabling/support role and should work back from the core value stream process to determine what their success looks like based on the organization’s processes that they support. Here’s an illustration of a business strategy cascaded via value streams.
The Planning Paradox
More common than you think, organization’s use a planning schedule to arrive at organizational scorecards and budgets that starts at the top of an organizational hierarchy and flows down from there. The problem is that organizations are rarely organized by value streams. In situations where the Business Organization is a sibling organization to Support Organizations, they both have to produce their scorecards and budgets at the same time forcing Support Organizations to scramble to discover the Business Organization’s strategy to then set their own scorecard for success and the budget necessary to achieve it. Even further, there are times when Business Organization functions report to Support Organizations forcing the Support Organization scorecards and budgets to be set before the Business Organization can declare what they need to be successful. In my experience, this situation causes several intense activities in brief stints that ultimately result in a undocumented alignment of business strategy leaving open the possibility of gaps, overlaps and conflicts in plans to execute the business’ strategy.
To add to the problem, it’s also worth mentioning these challenges posed when business strategy is poorly aligned:
* Harvard Business School, 2006, “The Office of Strategy Management”, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5269.html
One of my uncle’s favorite jokes goes like this: Greg: “Hey Gabriel, say to me ‘what’s the most important thing about humor?’” Gabriel: “Okay Greg, what’s the mo-“ Greg: “Timing.” [At this point, you’re supposed to laugh] “Timing” is the most important thing to business strategy planning As it turns out, timing is also the…
Six years ago I posted a blog article called Solution Architect Skills Idea. At the time, I was a practicing Solution Architect pushing the boundaries to mature the Solution Architect discipline. I built the Solution Architect Skills Assessment to help organize the skills I felt were necessary to be a world class Solution Architect and used it to mentor folks interested in growing their Solution Architect skills. The skills taxonomy was later used to help form IASA’s Solution Architecture skills profile which, I think, is still used today. Funny, I still get contacted regarding help with Solution Architecture skills because the Excel workbook I used to store the skill information was passed around with my name still in the document author properties. Because of the viral use of the skills taxonomy and feedback from folks tell me how useful it was, I consider it a pretty good success.
Anyway, a few years ago, I shifted professions into a Business Architect role and have learned tons. I now know enough through learning from business management experts and through my own practical experience that I feel comfortable helping others in the area of Business Architecture. I’ve even begun to accept a few mentees and am using the Business Architect Skills Assessment to shape their learning roadmap. The feedback is very positive so I thought I’d share it on my blog. Keep in mind that it is only a start that needs maturing. I’ll try to keep it current with my personal copy as time goes on.
I hope the Business Architect Skills Assessment proves useful to you too: Gabriel’s Business Architect Skills Assessment workbook
Six years ago I posted a blog article called Solution Architect Skills Idea. At the time, I was a practicing Solution Architect pushing the boundaries to mature the Solution Architect discipline. I built the Solution Architect Skills Assessment to help organize the skills I felt were necessary to be a world class Solution Architect and…
I was a participant in a recent survey facilitated by the Corporate Executive Board’s Enterprise Architect community forum regarding “How do you reward failure?” My response to the survey triggered a bunch of emails from other members…
I was a participant in a recent survey facilitated by the Corporate Executive Board’s Enterprise Architect community forum regarding “How do you reward failure?” My response to the survey triggered a bunch of emails from other members to me noting how much they liked my response so I thought it might be worthy to share…
The Building Architecture industry is frustrated with IT Architecture. There is so much interest among IT Architecture forums to mature to the level of Building Architecture that many in the world are very confused. Building Architects looking for reso…
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I’ve been performing a Business Architect role within the Enterprise Architecture function over the past few years and wanted to share some opinions I’ve formed to help jog, and possibly advance, the thinking in the space of Business Archit…
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