The impact of Digital on the enterprise
All products and technologies would be enhanced by Digital that would pave the way to IoT (Internet of Things), that is Things that co-operate to deliver a service.
Transformation
Do not Stop-Start your EA
By stopping EA deliberately, we disrupt EA at our own enterprise risk. EA is like a city map where we have to continually update the plans because of new constructions and roads, demolitions,expansion, repairs…
Should we Stop-Start our EA every two years or so? (iii)
What if we apply the advice at the enterprise level? If it does not work properly why not starting it again, from scratch?
Should we Stop-Start our EA every two years or so? (ii)
EA is a full time and permanent job exactly because of enterprise change.
The EA should not be modelled during a transformation but before any transformation.
Should we stop-start our EA every two years or so?
To start and stop the EA function every so often reminds me of Windows we used to turn on and off to make it work.
The owner of Enterprise Architecture
Can anybody really own a part of the enterprise? What does ownership really mean? The business employs the term because there is a need for some body to be in charge of all issues related to an activity or aspect of the enterprise.
In…
Does Enterprise Architecture really enable the enterprise transformation?
In theory, EA does enable the enterprise transformation, the same way the blueprint of your house or town enables change. Without a blueprint, laying cables in the wall or under the pavement is a risky endeavour because you may break the existing elect…
A Wiggly Path To Transformation
According to Sunday Times journalist, Carly Chynoweth, “Managers must learn how to adapt so they can solve problems they haven’t faced before.”
And:
“The fundamental impression they give is that the future can be organised and managed to achieve what you set out to achieve, and as long as you do it right it will come out as planned. But the reality is much more complex. Organisations are wiggly. They don’t operate in the neat, straight-line way conventional management thinking assumes”.
“It is not possible to predict outcomes — they emerge from people’s actions. You might have plans about what you are doing, but so does everyone else.”
****
The culture and traditions of 100 year old Utility business make behavioual change hard. Power-plant Engineer’s detailed and precise planning techniques don’t work for this sort of long-term change. In our case, over 70% of the business processes will change. The main hurdle for us was the lack of certainty and predictability over 5, 10 and 20 years. It was impossible to answer the basic questions; when, how and how much? There was discomfort over sanctioning any plans without the ‘details’. This resulted in a period of ‘decision-making-block’.
This is when we introduced ‘Transition State’ planning. This borrows ideas from Complexity Theory: Specifically, the characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems. We started with the premise that we cannot predict the long range future. We also accepted that outcomes will emerge at various points along the way.
Much like ’Scenario Planning’, we first developed a few hypothetical ideas. These were refined in workshops with subject experts until we reached a reasonable consensus of:
- the principles we will apply to different aspects of the transformation ahead of us,
- an initial guess of when certain outcomes are needed,
- a list of the main influencing events/decisions assessed as ‘Known’, ‘Unknown’ or ‘Unknowable’ now – along with an assessment of risk.
Armed with this, we plotted-out a series of ‘Way-points’ over time. We call these ‘Transition States’. Each has a few goals (expected outcomes) that we estimate to complete. At this stage, Transition States are not pinned to a hard date. Rather they describe the sequence of outcomes, and roughly when we think they’ll happen. Transition States are re-planning points; a time to reassess and re-estimate the next phase of work. The Transition State is an opportunity to amplify value-adding and extinguish value-detracting aspects.
After a few iterations, a more precise view emerged of the early Transition States and a traditional approach to planning and deliverables could be applied.
At first, we were quite concerned that this approach would be rejected by the culture; a plan must be very detailed and accurate before work can start. This, however, wasn’t the case, decision-makers could see the merits of a more agile and iterative approach to complex change. They liked the way ‘doable’ increments became clearer after a few iterations. They also liked the explicit opportunities for re-think and course-correction.
****
Is a Complex Adaptive approach the only way to manage large-scale, long-running, change? I’d like to hear how others approach designing and managing business transformations and whether they see the merits of Complexity Theory that we’ve seen,
A Wiggly Path To Transformation
According to Sunday Times journalist, Carly Chynoweth, “Managers must learn how to adapt so they can solve problems they haven’t faced before.”
And:
“The fundamental impression they give is that the future can be organised and managed to achieve what you set out to achieve, and as long as you do it right it will come out as planned. But the reality is much more complex. Organisations are wiggly. They don’t operate in the neat, straight-line way conventional management thinking assumes”.
“It is not possible to predict outcomes — they emerge from people’s actions. You might have plans about what you are doing, but so does everyone else.”
****
The culture and traditions of 100 year old Utility business make behavioual change hard. Power-plant Engineer’s detailed and precise planning techniques don’t work for this sort of long-term change. In our case, over 70% of the business processes will change. The main hurdle for us was the lack of certainty and predictability over 5, 10 and 20 years. It was impossible to answer the basic questions; when, how and how much? There was discomfort over sanctioning any plans without the ‘details’. This resulted in a period of ‘decision-making-block’.
This is when we introduced ‘Transition State’ planning. This borrows ideas from Complexity Theory: Specifically, the characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems. We started with the premise that we cannot predict the long range future. We also accepted that outcomes will emerge at various points along the way.
Much like ’Scenario Planning’, we first developed a few hypothetical ideas. These were refined in workshops with subject experts until we reached a reasonable consensus of:
- the principles we will apply to different aspects of the transformation ahead of us,
- an initial guess of when certain outcomes are needed,
- a list of the main influencing events/decisions assessed as ‘Known’, ‘Unknown’ or ‘Unknowable’ now – along with an assessment of risk.
Armed with this, we plotted-out a series of ‘Way-points’ over time. We call these ‘Transition States’. Each has a few goals (expected outcomes) that we estimate to complete. At this stage, Transition States are not pinned to a hard date. Rather they describe the sequence of outcomes, and roughly when we think they’ll happen. Transition States are re-planning points; a time to reassess and re-estimate the next phase of work. The Transition State is an opportunity to amplify value-adding and extinguish value-detracting aspects.
After a few iterations, a more precise view emerged of the early Transition States and a traditional approach to planning and deliverables could be applied.
At first, we were quite concerned that this approach would be rejected by the culture; a plan must be very detailed and accurate before work can start. This, however, wasn’t the case, decision-makers could see the merits of a more agile and iterative approach to complex change. They liked the way ‘doable’ increments became clearer after a few iterations. They also liked the explicit opportunities for re-think and course-correction.
****
Is a Complex Adaptive approach the only way to manage large-scale, long-running, change? I’d like to hear how others approach designing and managing business transformations and whether they see the merits of Complexity Theory that we’ve seen,
The digital enterprise at all costs does not pay
If we look at the digital the way we look at enterprise architecture, we have to project the big picture at the end of the tunnel, the digital enterprise.
The ten commandments of a successful digital transformation
The digital officer role proposed by the business is the conceptual Enterprise Architect
Lessons from an IT transformation failure (iv), accountability
At the root of the IT transformation failures is the current culture of lack of governance and accountability. As a rule, those responsible must be accountable as well.