Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
I’m sitting in a friend’s office, talking about book-production and enterprise-architecture. Whilst he’s struggling with his recalcitrant computer, my eyes drift to a Wikipedia page pinned on the wall just beyond his head. ‘Galbright_star_model.png‘, says the label. A five-pointed star, apparently describing some kind of business-related concepts. Interested. Look at it again, notice the word […]
In October 2010 Gartner Group assessed that Cloud is at the top of the Hype Curve, the peak point of inflated expectations. But no one really needs this authoritative assessment to confirm an opinion that the industry in general is still in the early s…
In October 2010 Gartner Group assessed that Cloud is at the top of the Hype Curve, the peak point of inflated expectations. But no one really needs this authoritative assessment to confirm an opinion that the industry in general is still in the early s…
Definition of a RequirementA Requirement is a measurable expression of what a customer wants and for which the customer is willing to pay. Therefore, a requirement has three attributes:It has a description of what the customer wants or …
Business Rules and Process FlowIn a recent post, A Model of an Organization’s Control Function using IDEF0 Model, The OODA Loop, and Enterprise Architecture, I briefly described the Governance and the Policy Management processes within the context of t…
Depending on the scenario, enterprise architecture projects can be led by different people and groups within an organization. In the first of our three-part series published last week, we discussed a customer case study where enterprise architects drove the need for implementing an EA solution, but this is just one example. With a powerful enterprise […]
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Who drives an enterprise architecture initiative? Does it come from an enterprise architect? Maybe it’s a request from IT? Or perhaps it comes from a business unit looking to solve a serious and specific problem… Of course the answer really depends on the problem you are trying to solve. The reality is that any of […]
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I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion last week with a few of my PwC colleagues, Cara Beston and Greg Dupier, during which we talked about both private clouds and also what it takes for businesses to offer public cloud services. What made this discussion unique for me was that the audience was largely made up of U.S. government contractors, so they were particularly focused on the federal direction and mandates about […]
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This blog post deals with first day at the summer camp for Enterprise Architecture in Week 22 that was held in Denmark at the IT University of Copenhagen. The participants were mostly students. The tagline for this event is “Scandinavian … Continue reading →
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:
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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