Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
In the May 15th issue of CIO magazine, there is a rather interesting article, especially for Enterprise Architecture practitioners. The article, written by Stephanie Overby (a freelance writer), is titled “RIP I.T. Value” and opens with the f…
And it’s catch-up time again… not too delayed this time, though. A rather larger collection of Tweets and links this week – not sure why. Usual categories, usual comments or tags in italics, usual ‘Read more…’ link. As usual.
Enterprise-architecture, business-architecture, business-strategy, innovation and the usual stuff that goes around business big-picture:
bartleeten: Agile Architecture […]
I am going to talk about a consequence of the hype cycle that seems to be missed by many. I will use an anecdote to illustrate the point…
About 10 years ago, I was engaged on a short assignment to review a new technology organization’s customer service programs. The company had grown rapidly in a new market that was now maturing. They had 3 customer service systems. They had 4 main customer groups served through 4 sales channels. Each channel used different business processes to execute the same activities and accessed all three systems. The IT solutions had grown organically with the business and were a mess! But now, with the market maturing, there were mainstream solutions from major suppliers that could replace these systems that were starting to constrain the business. However, the cost of resolving this, $15M, was seen as too expensive.
A few years later, the organization had lost its competitive position, had moved from number 1 to number 2 and was taken over by a foreign competitor entering the market. With a more complex product portfolio, more customer groups, a more complex sales model, the customer services systems were now seen as a major constraint to business growth. I happened to be engaged through another consultancy to look at the problem again. This time the cost of sorting it out had grown to $80M. Again the executive board decided that this was too expensive.
Recently, the organization merged with a major competitor. I heard that they had embarked yet again on a program to replace their legacy customer service systems. The market is now much more complex with many more products, it is also more competitive with tighter margins. The systems have grown in complexity since the last attempt to sort them out. I suspect the cost this time will be $150M or more. A ten times increase in cost in ten years. More importantly, the organization was the market leader 10 years ago but now it is in 3rd position with a likely drop to 4th.
The key point is that everything that you build before good practice emerges is likely to be poorly designed and poorly built. It should be thrown away and you should start over. If you don’t you will inevitably perpetuate bad practice. Future development will be compromised because time pressures to deliver tactical business change and the constraint of the legacy. And the cost of replacing it to deliver strategic business change will grow over time.
Sometimes I wonder why there is so much legacy. The answer is obvious if you overlay the adoption cycle with hype cycle…
So what are the lessons:
I am going to talk about a consequence of the hype cycle that seems to be missed by many. I will use an anecdote to illustrate the point…
About 10 years ago, I was engaged on a short assignment to review a new technology organization’s customer service programs. The company had grown rapidly in a new market that was now maturing. They had 3 customer service systems. They had 4 main customer groups served through 4 sales channels. Each channel used different business processes to execute the same activities and accessed all three systems. The IT solutions had grown organically with the business and were a mess! But now, with the market maturing, there were mainstream solutions from major suppliers that could replace these systems that were starting to constrain the business. However, the cost of resolving this, $15M, was seen as too expensive.
A few years later, the organization had lost its competitive position, had moved from number 1 to number 2 and was taken over by a foreign competitor entering the market. With a more complex product portfolio, more customer groups, a more complex sales model, the customer services systems were now seen as a major constraint to business growth. I happened to be engaged through another consultancy to look at the problem again. This time the cost of sorting it out had grown to $80M. Again the executive board decided that this was too expensive.
Recently, the organization merged with a major competitor. I heard that they had embarked yet again on a program to replace their legacy customer service systems. The market is now much more complex with many more products, it is also more competitive with tighter margins. The systems have grown in complexity since the last attempt to sort them out. I suspect the cost this time will be $150M or more. A ten times increase in cost in ten years. More importantly, the organization was the market leader 10 years ago but now it is in 3rd position with a likely drop to 4th.
The key point is that everything that you build before good practice emerges is likely to be poorly designed and poorly built. It should be thrown away and you should start over. If you don’t you will inevitably perpetuate bad practice. Future development will be compromised because time pressures to deliver tactical business change and the constraint of the legacy. And the cost of replacing it to deliver strategic business change will grow over time.
Sometimes I wonder why there is so much legacy. The answer is obvious if you overlay the adoption cycle with hype cycle…
So what are the lessons:
Best and Worst Enterprise & Application Architecture Practices Presented by: Betsy Burton & Michael Blechar EDT: 10:00 a.m. & 1:00 p.m. | PDT: 10:00 a.m. | GMT: 14:00 & 17:00 Those who have cracked the code on enterprise and application…
It’s been a busy couple months for the analysts. Both Forrester and Gartner have built out and refreshed their latest Enterprise Architecture Tool Assessments for 2011. After reading both of them, they actually complement each other. The Gartner analysis reads…
I’m a big fan of mind maps for their simplified communication style. So when I stumbled across these interesting Enterprise Architecture Mind Maps I had to share. Take a look if you use a Mind Mapping tool. It could be…
I was just privy to a conversation about the value of creating a specific kind of metamodel, and it made me wonder… if I had to explain the concept of a metamodel to someone, how would I do it? First, let’s start by defining the term “met…
Most organizations employ multiple frameworks and standards for implementing and controlling technology. Here are some publications that map COBIT to other sources of guidance. While this is slightly out of date in terms of TOGAF it is still an interesting…
In my post last Monday, I discussed that if you leverage enterprise architecture (EA) disciplines and solutions during the business process design phase of your business process management (BPM) projects you can better discover what your best practices are. However, establishing visibility into your operations, and understanding how and why the top performers and departments in […]
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This is part of a series of posts that I’ll be doing about ‘The Really Big Picture‘ at a societal/economic level, in relation to enterprise-architecture.
This post sets out some of the scope and scale of the changes that are or are likely to be coming up on the horizon over the next few years and/or […]
Richard Seroter posted a great recap on the Gartner press release “Gartner Says By 2016, 30 Percent of Enterprise Architecture Efforts Will Be Supported as a Collaboration Between Business and IT” that triggered not only buzz on the #EntArch feed…
