Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
This is basically the question that many project managers ask me when we have a discussion about adhering to governance. They want to know what value their project gets from adhering to governance processes, from generating artefacts for governance gates. The short answer is “none – governance is not something we do for you!” If […]
Here’s an idea to help your projects go smoothly. Start each project off making sure that the team understands the business context it is operating in by performing a SWOT analysis. I’ve been in a number of discussion recently that have made me think about ways to get projects off on a solid footing, understanding […]
Something about the typical language of enterprise architecture is starting to bug me. The overuse of the word “alignment”. When people are asked to describe what enterprise architecture is all about, they often answer with the phrase “it’s about the alignment of IT with business strategy”. But is that enough? Should it be something more? […]
Does your architecture pass the “So What” test? Can you demonstrate the specific value that a particular architectural deliverable or activity will add? If not, why are you even bothering? In this case, as with justice, your activity must not just add value, it must be seen to add value. A number of recent discussions […]
If you have ever had a debate about whether your organisation should use cloud computing then a discussion of the risks of cloud computing will have been a significant part of it. In doing so, we often fall into a simple logical trap. Cloud computing is just one of the options that we have. The […]
This is another post based on a conversation – this time about options analyses. My colleagues were suggesting that it was OK to present options, highlight the pros and cons, and leave the business to make their own decision. Now, I’ve written a few in my time, and my opinion is clear: if, as an […]
How do we make sense of an enterprise? Is analysis the best or only way to do it? That now long-running LinkedIn thread about capability, function, service and process that I referenced in a couple of recent posts just keeps rolling…
In the Open Group conference at Newport Beach, I listened to a series of presentations on business architecture. In one of them, the presenter described his practice of using Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to create a model of his program’s environment after a business program (aka business initiative) is started. He felt that the canvas is useful for creating a clear picture of the business impacts on a program. There are problems with this method, which I’d like to share in this post.
Let me lay out the context for the sake of this post since there is no business architecture “standard vocabulary.”
A “business program” is chartered by an “enterprise” to improve a series of “capabilities” in order to achieve a specific and measurable business “goal.” This business program has a management structure and is ultimately provided funding for a series of “projects.” The business architect involved in this program creates a “roadmap” of the projects and to rationalizes the capability improvements across those projects and between his program and other programs.
For folks who follow my discussions in the Enterprise Business Motivation Model, I use the term “initiative” in that model. I’m using the term “program” for this post because the Open Group presenter used the word “program.” Note that the presentation was made at an Open Group conference but it does NOT represent the opinion or position of the Open Group and is not part of the TOGAF or other deliverables of the Open Group.
The practice presented by this talk is troubling to me. As described, the practice that this presenter provided goes like this: Within the context of the program, the business architect would pull up a blank copy of the business model canvas and sit with his or her executive sponsor or steering committee to fill it out. By doing so, he or she would understand “the” business model that impacts the program.
During the Q&A period I asked about a scenario that I would expect to be quite commonplace: what if the initiative serves and supports multiple business models? The presenter said, in effect, “we only create one canvas.” My jaw dropped.
A screwdriver makes a lousy hammer but it can sometimes work. The wrong tool for the job doesn’t always fail, but it will fail often enough to indicate, to the wise, that a better tool should be found.
The Osterwalder’s business model canvas makes a very poor tool for capturing business forces from the perspective of a program. First off, programs are transitory, while business models are not. The notion of a business model is a mechanism for capturing how a LINE OF BUSINESS makes money independent of other concerns and other lines of business. Long before there is a program, and long after the program is over, there are business models, and the canvas is a reasonable mechanism for capturing one such model at a time. It is completely inappropriate for capturing two different models on a single canvas. Every example of a business model, as described both in Osterwalder’s book and on his web site, specifically describe a single business model within an enterprise.
I have no problem with using business models (although my canvas is different from Osterwalder’s). That said, I recommend a different practice: If the business initiative is doing work that will impact MULTIPLE business models, it is imperative that ALL of those business models are captured in their own canvas. The session speaker specifically rejected this idea. I don’t think he is a bad person. I think he has been hammering nails with a screwdriver. (He was young).
Here’s where he made his mistake:
In the oversimplified value stream model above, Contoso airlines has three business models. The business owners for these three businesses are on the left: Bradley, Janet, and Franklin. Each are primarily concerned with their own business flows. In this oversimplified situation, there are only two programs, each with one project. If the session speaker were working on the Plantheon program, his idea works. there is only one business model to create. That nail can be hammered in with a screwdriver. Lucky speaker. Showing Franklin his own business model is a good thing.
But if we are working on the Flitrack program, what do we show Franklin? if we create a “generic” canvas that includes cargo, he will not recognize the model as being applicable to his concerns. He will not benefit and neither will the program. In fact, Franklin will think us fools because he had a presentation from Plantheon yesterday showing him an accurate model… don’t you people talk?
Program Flitrack should have one-on-one conversations with Bradley and Janet to develop their business models. The business model that Franklin cares about does not need to be created again. It can come out of the repository. The Flitrack program would consider all three models as independent inputs to the business architecture of the organization impacting the program.
Anything less is business analysis, not business architecture.
A few days ago, I quickly dashed off a post on the difference between a business architect and a business analyst. The reaction was immediate and rather vociferous. The IIBA took me to task for saying that a business architect is NOT a business analyst. In addition, Tom Graves (Enterprise Architect) asked me to consider the possibility that the two roles are primarily different in another way, altogether. Tom asked me to consider the possibility that an architect role is primarily one of synthesis (putting things together), while an analyst role is one of analysis (taking things apart). I beg to differ. This post included my thoughts on that distinction.
Tom has pointed out, in past articles, that there is real value for enterprise architects to consider the Hegelian triad of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. In his post, Tom presents a triad, based on Hegelian thinking, three different roles in sequence: business analyst – business anarchist – enterprise architect.
In Tom’s thinking, the analyst is good at creating an initial hypothesis that represents incremental improvement… at doing things right. The anarchist is the role that questions the assumptions underlying the analysis. It is the role of anarchist to test those assumptions, and make sure that they do indeed align with the real world of “trial, error and experience”. The anarchist prevents us from accepting our assumptions. The architect puts it all back together. According to Tom Graves:
And the architect role is about bringing it all together again. It’s the ‘synthesis’ part of the triad; but it’s also about the Concrete, about making things real, being effective – about doing the right things right in a concrete, practical way.
Here is where I have to take my hat off to Tom. There is a very important thought process going on here, and one that I both agree with and can immediately use. I admit to not having taken the time to really grok Tom’s post prior to now, but I couldn’t agree more with the thinking process. You have to form an initial idea, then break apart the assumptions in order to test the initial idea, and lastly bring it all together in a solution that actually works. It’s an excellent approach.
Shouldn’t this kind of thinking simply be a template for each individual person? Shouldn’t one person perform all three activities? Tom addresses this as well.
One way to resolve the architecture of that architecture is to have just one person doing all of those roles – after all, they’re different roles, not necessarily different people. But that can sometimes be quite a ‘big ask’, because each of the roles does demand different skillsets, different paradigms, even different worldviews – again, somewhat tricky.
Tom suggests that it is difficult for one person to perform all three, and that large organizations (and large markets) may have the freedom to separate out the roles into different people. It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know if provides the clarity I’m looking for.
I believe that Tom is completely right in one respect. Solving a problem effectively requires that you go through stages of thinking. If you simply look at the problem and conceive of a couple possible solutions, you could just as easily fail to consider the optimum one (not on the list), or choose the wrong solution (whatever “wrong” means). In order to reach the best possible decision, you must go through the additional steps of antithesis and synthesis. However, I don’t think that this distinction is sufficient to explain and position the roles of Business Analyst and Business Architect.
The process of thinking through a problem applies to ALL roles that solve problems (a fairly long list). It doesn’t just apply to business analysis. Following the path from thesis to antithesis to synthesis is an art practiced by artisans, craftsmen, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, leaders, managers, and politicians. It is best practice for all of human thought, and not just one area of human endeavor. Everyone who thinks, and considers, and solves, should use all three steps. To use Tom’s terminology, each person should be an analyst, an anarchist, and an architect.
Tom’s thought process is excellent, but I don’t believe it answers the core question. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the emergence of two different “job titles.” Both jobs emerged out of the need for the information technology division to address business problems in new and novel ways. The core question that I’d like to address is simple: is this something that one person does, or something that two people do? Are we more effective, and efficient, to separate the roles and responsibilities?
Some things we all agree on. The business analyst role is much more tactical than the business architecture role. Traditionally, the business analyst is required to understand the problems of a business area and to document the requirements of the business in solving them. The business analyst is NOT accountable for developing the solution, or even the vision for the solution (The solution architect does that). He or she is accountable for understanding the problem and documenting the requirements that the solution must meet.
The business architect role is a more recent innovation. This role emerged out of the need to insure that departments and divisions are using IT resources correctly by asking for the right problems to be solved. From there, the role has expanded to a non-IT-focused value proposition. The business architecture role is important. Without the business architect involved, we may do an excellent job of solving problems that the overall enterprise does not need solved, when the real enterprise-level problems are going unaddressed or under-resourced due to the long list of demands from the existing businesses.
The business architect is different from the business analyst because he or she is fundamentally charged with four different responsibilities:
Note that (2) occurs rarely… only when major changes to the business models themselves occur.
Some analysis will perform responsibilities (1) and skip to (3). In most cases, that works. On the other hand, performing responsibilities (2) and (4) requires the skills of an architect. There are two different skill sets here. Can one person do both? Yes. Should they? That depends.
As these roles continue to mature, we need to either carve out distinctions, or merge them into a single role.
In my prior post, I made the case that there are many differences between a business analyst and a business architect. My prior post was based on the assumption that there needs to be two different people playing these roles. That assumption is NOT valid in all cases.
There are many situations where it makes a great deal of sense for the activities of business architecture and business analysis to be performed by ONE individual for financial and logistical reasons. For example, if the IT unit in question has a small set of responsibilities, or if we are talking about a medium-to-small business (or business area), there just isn’t enough work to keep two different people employed full time in complementary roles. Within my company (Microsoft), there are some smaller areas of the business that are covered by one individual who performs both business architecture and business analysis tasks.
The question that I have, however, is simple. While it is possible for one person to perform two jobs, does that mean there SHOULD be one job? Should we merge the roles so that every business analyst should be an architect, and every business architect should be an analyst?
Regardless of what we want to happen, reality is going to keep getting in the way. Both roles exist. Sometimes they intersect. The real challenge comes when two people have to play complementary roles, one as a business architect, and the other as a business analyst. In larger organizations where business architects are appearing as independent roles, and in situations where consultants are being hired, this situation is increasingly common.
In order to be effective, these two folks need to have clear accountabilities. They need to be clearly supporting the success of one another, but able to succeed independently of one another (the failure of one cannot prevent the success of the other). In order to meet these criteria, there is one very important distinction. Both must have a different set of problems to solve, and both must have the full scope to solve those problems. Both must perform the three steps of emergent thought that Tom points out: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis… or analyst, anarchist, and architect.
There is no good source, in existence, for clarifying those accountabilities. The Business Analysis BOK focuses on skills and methods, not accountabilities. The Business Architecture BOK focuses on different skills and methods, but not accountabilities. Both fields seem happy to simply overlap. That is probably OK from the perspective of describing the fields.
However, in an actual organization, where people have jobs to do, more clarity is required.
No matter how we reconcile these two roles, we need to understand that the growth of business architecture will not be abated just because the profession of business analyst has laid a moral claim to the activities that business architects have decided to focus on. Rather than argue about whether business architects are, first and foremost, analysts, lets look at whether we can address two key questions:
a) Is it better or worse for these roles to be independent?
b) When both roles exist in the same organization, how do we prevent confusion, clarify accountabilities, and make both roles effective?
Arguments don’t matter. Answering these questions… that matters.
[Author’s note: within an hour of posting the following article, Kevin Brennen of the IIBA dry-roasted the post on his own blog. You can find a link to his entry here: Business Architecture is Business Analysis. I have made an attempt…
I’ve been looking at different ways to implement the ATAM method these past few weeks. Why? Because I’m looking at different ways to evaluate software architecture and I’m a fan of the ATAM method pioneered at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Along the way, I’ve realized that there is a flaw that seems difficult to address.
The ATAM method is not a difficult thing to understand. At it’s core, it is quite simple: create a list of “quality attributes” and sort them into order, highest to lowest, for the priority that the business wants. Get the business stakeholders to sign off. Then evaluate the ability of the architecture to perform according to that priority. An architecture that places a high priority on Throughput and a low priority on Robustness may look quite different from an architecture that places a high priority on Robustness and a low priority on Throughput.
So where do we get these lists of attributes?
A couple of years ago, my colleague Gabriel Morgan posted a good article on his blog called “Implementing System Quality Attributes.” I’ve referred to it from time to time myself, just to get remind myself of a good core set of System Quality Attributes that we could use for evaluating system-level architecture as is required by the ATAM method. Gabriel got his list of attributes from “Software Requirements” by Karl Wiegers.
Of course, there are other possible lists of attributes. The ISO defined a set of system quality attributes in the standard ISO 25010 and ISO 25012. They use different terms. Instead of System Quality Attributes, there are three high level “quality models” each of which present “quality characteristics.” For each quality characteristic, there are different quality metrics.
Both the list of attributes from Wiegers, and the list of “quality characteristics” from the ISO are missing a key point… “Time to release” (or time to market).
One of the old sayings from the early days of Microsoft is: “Ship date is a feature of the product.” The intent of this statement is fairly simple: you can only fit a certain number of features into a product in a specific period of time. If your time is shorter, the number of features is shorter.
I’d like to suggest that the need to ship your software on a schedule may be more important than some of the quality attributes as well. In other words, “time-to-release” needs to be on the list of system quality attributes, prioritized with the other attributes.
How is that quality?
I kind of expect to get flamed for making the suggestion that “time to release” should be on the list, prioritized with the likes of reliability, reusability, portability, and security. After all, shouldn’t we measure the quality of the product independently of the date on which it ships?
In a perfect world, perhaps. But look at the method that ATAM proposes. The method suggests that we should created a stack-ranked list of quality attributes and get the business to sign off. In other words, the business has to decide whether “Flexibility” is more, or less, important than “Maintainability.” Try explaining the difference to your business customer! I can’t.
However, if we create a list of attributes and put “Time to Release” on the list, we are empowering the development team in a critical way. We are empowering them to MISS their deadlines of there is a quality attribute that is higher on the list that needs attention.
For example: let’s say that your business wants you to implement an eCommerce solution. In eCommerce, security is very important. Not only can the credit card companies shut you down if you don’t meet strict PCI compliance requirements, but your reputation can be torpedoed if a hacker gets access to your customer’s credit card data and uses that information for identity theft. Security matters. In fact, I’d say that security matters more than “going live” does.
So your priority may be, in this example:
This means that the business is saying something very specific: “if you cannot get security or usability right, we’d rather you delay the release than ship something that is not secure or not usable. On the other hand, if the code is not particularly maintainable, we will ship anyway.”
Now, that’s something I can sink my teeth into. Basically, the “Time to Release” attribute is a dividing line. Everything above the line is critical to quality. Everything below the line is good practice.
As an architect sitting in the “reviewer’s chair,” I cannot imagine a more important dividing line than this one. Not only can I tell if an architecture is any good based on the criteria that rises “above” the line, but I can also argue that the business is taking an unacceptable sacrifice for any attribute that actually falls “below” the line.
So, when you are considering the different ways to stack-rank the quality attributes, consider adding the attribute of “time to release” into the list. It may offer insight into the mind, and expectations, of your customer and improve your odds of success.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: the old Hegelian triad. But what’s that got to do with enterprise-architecture and the like?
Quite a lot, as it happens – though we might need to take a detour or two to get there, of course.
One point is that it’s not quite as simple as ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’. In the classic […]