Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
I was on a walk with my wife and our dog the other day and our conversation led to some of the problems we encounter at work. My wife is a Registered Nurse at a large acute care hospital. She has an amazing wealth of experience caring for very sick people. She told me about […]
The post A Case for an EA Approach appeared first on Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education.
Are you annoyed when you stumble across yet another rant that appears to be full of emotion but is hardly presenting any insight in how it should bring any other relief than channeling the originator’s frustration? Or is simply hinting … Continue reading →
In my last post I was writing about Tomorrow is Today. About working and being right now, this very moment. And I believe that is key, as I tried to point out in other recent posts, e.g. Architecting Past, Future or Present. Today I shortly like to tal…
I will be presenting a webinar at noon EST September 25th on the role of the business architect. This free webinar is sponsored by IASA (The International Association of Software Architects) and is open for anyone to attend. You can register at: WEBINAR REGISTRATION Here is the overview of the session, hope you join […]
With all the talk of worldwide double dip recession, the Euro Zone crisis, and the looming specter of falling over a proverbial fiscal cliff, it’s no wonder many CIOs find themselves in a difficult decision-making dilemma. Should today’s CIO brace for more economic uncertainty by focusing on cost cutting, or should they take a bolder tack and invest funds on new innovative initiatives that will bolster growth and yield a competitive advantage?
No doubt a tough decision fraught with risks and tradeoffs, so why pick one option over the other? Why not choose to do both?
The recent Gartner-Forbes 2012 Board of Directors and CEO Survey1 found that, with financial uncertainty around the globe, Corporate Boards and CEOs are hedging their bets. They are trying to figure out how to manage their businesses so a new recession does not find them as exposed as they were in 2008, while being prepared if the downturn is shallow, and rapid growth becomes the norm for the next few years. Coming out of this survey it is now becoming easier to see that market uncertainty does not just mean organizations will dig-in and cut costs – it means many companies are also looking for ways to fund initiatives to help differentiate themselves and grow market share.
The survey also found that half of the board directors were willing to invest in IT as a means to change the rules of competition, and accordingly, IT had the highest priority for investment in 2012, tied with investments in sales. That’s a pretty encouraging sign and vote of confidence if you are CIO. But the ‘hedge your bet’ strategy recommended by many Board of Directors and CEOs is easier said than done.
How do you execute on such a strategy? A good place to start is by simply taking inventory of the IT resources (both tangible and non-tangible) spread across the enterprise. By taking inventory, CIOs will have some very powerful information. That information when combined with ‘Business Context’ will provide the foundation to answer key business questions such as: What IT resources exist today? Which are needed to function, operate and grow the business? Which are not needed? And how can duplicate and obsolete assets be retired quickly and safely?
If CIOs and their teams can effectively deliver this level of transparency, they will have the information needed to execute on the cost cutting portion of the ‘hedge your bet’ strategy and limit exposure if a second wave global recession takes hold. With new insights and visibility over the IT resources spread across the enterprise, CIOs can embark upon a clear cost cutting path by consolidating and centralizing the many layers of different and obsolete technologies that exist in their businesses. The resulting cost saving can be re-directed towards investments that underpin the second half of the ‘hedge your bets’ strategy and fund promising innovative growth initiatives that increase the top-line and provide a competitive advantage.
Make no mistake: the ability to keep both growth and cost management in focus at the same time is very difficult in business, and will require a mind-set and tool-set that can help CIOs, business leaders, and their organizations to make more informed decisions while shifting from one focus to the other (see EA is Free blog posting, August 21, 2012). CIOs will know that they are effectively managing the ‘CIO dilemma’ and doing their jobs well on cost control when the CEO starts to emphasize that the CIO spend more time on growth initiatives. 2
Definitions are attention-seekers. And good ones. They get much more attention than they deserve. I’ve just read a post by Nick Malik called Many (flawed) Definitions of Business Architecture. There he does a very good job of analysing the existing definitions of Business Architecture. He comes to the conclusion that all of them need to […]
At @TheKingsFund today for a workshop on implementing healthcare reforms, with particular focus on the introduction of Health and Well-Being Boards. In this blogpost, I want to pick up the topic of Co-Production, which may appear at three logical levels:
There are various versions of Co-Production in the literature, in Healthcare and in other domains, but there are several related themes.
Coproduction provides a very interesting example of what I call organizational intelligence, involving a connected set of information gathering, feedback and learning loops. Paying attention to these collective intelligence loops helps us see how effective patient participation and coproduction should contribute to the quality and productivity of healthcare delivery, healthcare planning and healthcare strategy.
@BenP1972 tweeted that this sounded like a job for @patientopinion … “must b other existing models where feedback and user experience transformed service offering”. Meanwhile @PatientVoicesUK quoted Donald Schön (1988) “Storytelling is the mode of description best suited to transformation in new situations of action.”
Storytelling and sensemaking are vital elements of organizational intelligence. Professionals are trained to see the world according to a fairly prescribed set of narratives. These narratives give them considerable expertise and power, but they may also constrain thinking. For example, so-called “evidence-based medicine” may be dominated by professionally approved modes of evidence (double blind or triple blind studies) and it may be hard to accommodate the patient experience in this process. Interaction between different professional disciplines, together with the interjection of the (lay) patient voice, potentially brings in a much richer diversity of narratives.
But this diversity in turn calls for greater organizational intelligence – the collective ability to create a meaningful synthesis. What are the (organizational, political, cultural) conditions for successfully and flexibly integrating patient thinking with professional thinking?
Sources
Becky Malby, Involving service users in design: Four steps to co-production (Guardian, Aug 2012)
John Owens, Conflict in medical co-production: The challenge of combining professional and lay perspectives (Centre for Public Policy Research)
Alba Realpe and Louise M Wallace, What is co-production? (Health Foundation, 2010)
Wikipedia: Coproduction (public services)
Richard Veryard, Organizational Intelligence Primer (LeanPub, 2012)
Following on from the SCAN ebook, the next in the new series of ‘Tetradian Weblogs’ ebooks now hits the virtual streets – a selection of blog-posts on the Enterprise Canvas notation and model-type: Enterprise Canvas: the Tetradian weblogs Recommended price…
Not long ago, I attempted to create a refined definition of “business architecture.” I felt compelled to do so because the definition that I found in the Business Architecture Guild’s BizBOK (Guide to the Business Architecture B…
Frameworks, models and meta-models, governance policies, standards, boards, processes – these are the means to your architecture. Tools to help you get there.
They are the scaffolding that supports the building.
To observe some enterprise architects, one would be forgiven for thinking they were in the business of building scaffolding.
Should you design for bad behaviour or try to control it?
This is a very bad question. It leads you straight into the governance trap.
Advances in traffic engineering and automative safety have dramatically reduced road trauma in the developed world.
But no matter how much forgiveness is designed into a system, individuals will always remain accountable for their behaviour.
Good governance never trades one off against the other.
On Tuesday, September 18, The Open Group will host a special tweet jam to examine the topic of Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) and current approaches to managing it. Please join us! Continue reading →