#eavoices

Key Messages for ‘selling’ enterprise architecture to the CEO

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Alex Cullen from Forrester recently posted a blog post entitled "How Would You Sell Business Architecture To Your CEO?". To summarize as briefly as possible, Alex had no prior warning and used the following messages to ‘sell’ EA to the CEO.

EA supports consistency in the execution of corporate strategy
EA supports alignment of IT initiatives to corporate strategy
The use of capability maps

On Government Adoption of Enterprise Architecture as an Institutional Process

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 During the past few days, I have been reviewing Kristian Hjort-Madsen’s PhD ‘Architecting Government: Understanding Enterprise Architecture Adoption in the Public Sector’ in relation to enterprise ontology and enterprise modeling methodologies. A vast amount of his referenced research publications is framed around institutional theory, in which organisations are seen as acting in various institutional fields (e.g. professionalism, legislations, polices, technological trends) that stimulate and constrain organisational decisions (Dimaggio & Powell, 1983). Hjort-Madsen believes that this is one of the key influences behind EA adoption [1], but it also comes at the cost of theoretical lopsidedness with a paradoxical backlash: institutional forces might explain certain reasons for EA adoptions in government, but institutional analysis tends to ignore the importance of free will of agency and rather draw its explanations from abstract, nearly autonomic forces in the organisational environment. Ultimately, the importance of free will—both on the individual level and within organisations—is trapped inside an institutional iron cage manifested in socially contrived institutions that—paraxodically enough—were created, maintained, and bureaucratized by human free will in the first place. Several researchers have criticised the institutional approach:

  1. Hasselbladh and Kallinikos frame the popularity of institutional analysis in organisation theory whilst acknowledging its analytical tendency to reify social, emergent structural forces: “[…] the social and cultural processes that make up the project of rationalization and shape the structure functioning of work organisations have either been bypassed or given an exogenous status, reified to ’reality’, ’society’ or ’environment’ and treated as independent variables in cross-sectional or longitudinal empirical research.” (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000, p. 698) Neo-institutionalism, the authors say, grew out of a organisation studies as a response to classic positivist thinking: “[Neo-institutionalism emphasises that] Organizations are not responses that eolve as detached rational calculations. […] The realist-materialist conception of organizations as adapting systems in natural environments of resources, threats and opportunities has, thus, again been brought to the fore and criticized as inadequate, on several grounds.” (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000, p. 698) This shift might get rid of some problematic assumptions, but the result is merely another reduc- tionistic approach: organisational rationality now happens “by reference to legitimacy, as the major prerequisite for organizational survival and success.” (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000, p. 699)—but praising legitimacy as the key variable in organisational logic is merely shifting the influencing parameter in the same first order systemic view of organisations [2].
  2. Another key problem with institutionalism is tendency towards generalisability and the perceived birds-eye view of the organisational field, which tends to neglect local actions: “Neo-institutionalism offers no account of the means through which a domain of action is conceived, rules of conduct, performance principles and devices of controls are developed and forms of actorhood constituted.” (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000, p. 701) The global, generalising institutional perspective thus takes precedence over local meaning production, whilst failing to account for how and why a specific process of institutionalisation emerges and exerts influence (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000, p. 702).
  3. Mintzberg extends the above problems into management and strategy (Mintzberg et al., 2002, ch. 10), where he clearly explains the problems of institutional theory: organisations are turned into fruit flies swerving wildly in a thick, hazy porridge of policies, regulations, and cultural norms. Individual, strategic decisions (e.g. government adoption of ITIL) is turned into a programmatic stroke of the environment, invisibly but collectively manuscripting the behaviour of every CIO. After all, as Mintzberg writes, “what is an ’industry environment’ but all the organizations functioning in it?” (Mintzberg et al., 2002, p. 297)—or is the environment merely a social construction that actorhood applies locally in order to cover up for mistakes or irrational behaviour? Mintzberg rightfully labels this view “looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope” (Mintzberg et al., 2002, p. 293), and this is exactly what Hjort-Madsen tends to practice when he backtraces government practice to an illusorily forceful environment.
In summary, selecting an institutional foundation for analysing EA programs might provide a more qualitative framing of EA, but it is still: 
  1. reductionistic in the sense that organisational behaviour and rationality are mainly shaped by external institutional processes reified into a certain corporate reality. Rather, these processes are created and sustained by social, contrived entities (e.g. bureaucracies)—and not prescribed through scientific laws of society.
  2. ontologically paradoxical, since an institutional understand pays more attention to the so- called environment than the organisations inhibiting the environment, but fact is that the environment is constituted by nothing but the inhibiting organisations in the first place.
  3. ontologically imbalanced since it removes the analytical focus from local, immediate and particular to a birds-eye view in search of generalisability.
It follows from these conclusions that institutional theory is — on its own — insufficient for describing and explaining the complex social mechanics of government adoptions of EA — or any other transdisciplinary methodology with a high degree of organisational volatility and complexity.
I will work on how to developing and extending these views. Feel free to comment as I am looking for counterpoints and additional material and research material for inclusion in my thesis.

Footnotes
[1] For instance, see (Hjort-Madsen, 2007) (Publication II in (Hjort-Madsen, 2009)), (Hjort-Madsen & Marjin, 2007) (Publication III in (Hjort-Madsen, 2009)), (Hjort-Madsen, 2007) (Publication IV in (Hjort-Madsen, 2009)), and (Hjort-Madsen, 2009, p. 18, 20, 36, 61).
[2] As Hasselbladh and Kallinikos assert, Parsons’ structural functionalist framework for sociology already high- lighted the importance of inter-subjective meaning and interpretation in 1951 (Trevino, 2001). Thus, some aspects of institutional theory are very close to Parsons’ systems theory of society—and therefore not an inherently new theory of paradigm for understanding social organisation.

Sources

Dimaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizartional fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147-160.
Hasselbladh, H., & Kallinikos, J. (2000). The project of rationalization: A critique and reap- praisal of neo-institutionalism in organization studies. Organization Studies, 21(4), 697- 720.
Hjort-Madsen, K. (2007). Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in govern- ment. Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy, 1(4), 333-349.
Hjort-Madsen, K. (2009). Architecting government: Understanding enterprise architecture adop- tion in the public sector. Phd doctorate.
Hjort-Madsen, K., & Marjin, J. (2007). Analyzing enterprise architecture in natinal governments: the cases of denmark and the netherlands. In Proceedings of the 40th hawaii international conference on systems sciences. Big Island, Hawaii.
Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B., & Lampel, J. (2002). Strategy safari (2nd ed.). LT Prentice Hall. Trevino, A. J. (2001). Talcott parsons today: His theory and legacy in contemporary sociology.
New York: Rowan and Littlefield.

Enterprise Ontology Practice

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I have great news! Firstly, I have today (tentatively) put the last dot into my chapter on Enterprise Ontology Practice. Secondly, I have converted all of my Word/docx and Omnigraffle sources into LaTeX and vector graphics. I simply wasn’t happy with t…

EA Summit London – That’s a Wrap!

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We closed out another great EA Summit in London yesterday!  Dave Aron delivered an insightful talk on how to leverage business model analogies to bring some new ideas to the business strategy planning table.  And to wrap it up, Andy Kyte discussed how to overhaul a bloated application portfolio and of course applied all of […]

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Welcome EA Summit London

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Despite threats from the ash cloud, we’ve arrived and successfully kick-off the EA Summit in London this morning.  We’ve got a tremendous agenda lined up that I’m sure people will find the conference enlightening.  I’m especially looking forward to meeting with conference delegates, vendors and colleagues over the next couple of days at the EA […]

The post Welcome EA Summit London appeared first on Brian Burke.

Journal Recommendations

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Often getting access to a specific scientific journal can be very cumbersome or expensive, unless you have bulk access through an academic or research institution. In the past few weeks I have been looking for journal articles at the intersection of En…

What is Enterprise Analysis: does it differ from Enterprise Architecture?

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Enterprise Analysis is a knowledge area which describes the Business analysis activities that take place for an enterprise to identify business opportunities, build a Business Architecture, determine the optimum project investment path for that enterprise and finally, implement new business and technical solutions. The question you may ask: Does this really differs from Enterprise Architecture, and if so, how?

At first sight, business opportunities are not always considered as being part of an Enterprise Architecture initiative, more as an activity which should be considered as an input. But let’s look at this in more detail.

Let’s look at this in more detail by way of mapping activities between BABOK v2* and the TOGAF 9 Framework*. The BABOK is the collection of knowledge within the profession of business analysis and reflects generally accepted practices. It describes business analysis areas of knowledge, their associated activities and tasks and the skills necessary to be effective in the execution:

BABOK v2 Knowledge Area

Activity in Enterprise Analysis

 Definition Enterprise Architecture (e.g TOGAF 9) Differences, observations
Requirements Elicitation This describes the interview and research process-how to best extract needs from stakeholders (and even how to recognize needs they don’t know they have).Elements such as metrics (tracking the amount of time spent eliciting requirements) and elicitation techniques (prototyping and brainstorming are just a couple) among the topics covered Phase A: Architecture Vision is the initial phase of an architecture development cycle. It includes information about scope, the key steps, methods, information requirements and obtaining approval for the architecture development cycle to proceed

Business scenarios are a useful technique to articulate an Architecture Vision.

A Business Scenario describes, a business process, an application or set of applications enabled by the proposed solution , the business and technology environment, the people and computing components (called “actors”) who execute it, the desired outcome of proper execution

To build such a Business Scenario, workshops with business users (stakeholders) would be organized

Business Requirements Analysis

This describes how to write/state requirements that will meet business needs. Key objectives include methods for prioritizing and organizing requirements, as well as the most beneficial techniques for requirements presentation (including state diagrams, prototyping, data flow diagrams, and process modeling, and more).

Business Requirements for future project investments are identified and documented.

They are defined at a high level, and include goals, objectives, and needs are identified

Business Requirements are collected from business people during the Architecture Vision’s phase using the technique called Business Scenario (as mentioned above).

That document identifies what will be the business solutions in generic terms

The Enterprise Architects will define the Architecture Vision phase based on the goals, and objectives of the enterprise gathered from the business.

There are two steps:

1. Business people will have defined the goals and the objectives of the enterprise independently from the Enterprise Architecture team

2. The Enterprise Architecture team which include business people gather the requirements based on the previous activity
Enterprise Analysis

Begins after a Business executive team develops strategic plans and goals

This outlines the crucial (and sometimes political) process of keeping everyone in the loop and on the same page regarding project’s direction and progress. This activity delves into such details as the requirements review and approval processes (including record-keeping).

 Most of these activities are taken into account in doing Enterprise Architecture or done directly by the Business executive team before starting an new Enterprise Architecture project  
 

Strategic plan development

   Done outside of the Enterprise Architecture process by business people but is a key source of information
 

Strategic goal development

   This is done outside of the Enterprise Architecture initiative by business people but is a key source of information
  Business Architecture development   Done during Phase B:Business Architecture, looking at the baseline and target architecture, delivering a gap analysis, a plan and a roadmap
 

Feasibility Studies

   Done during Phase A: Architecture Vision (with a Business Scenario)
 

Business Case Development

   Done during Phase A: Architecture Vision (with a Business Scenario)
 

New Project Proposal

   This is done in two steps: during the Phase A where we identify a Business solution and during Phase F: Migration Planning
  Selecting and Prioritizing New Projects   This is done in two steps: during the Phase A where we identify a Business solution and during Phase F: Migration Planning
  Business Opportunities   This is done during the Phase A: Architecture Vision and the Phase E: Opportunities and Solutions
 

Launching New Projects

   This is done during Phase F: Migration Planning
 

Managing Projects for Value

   This is done during Phase F: Migration Planning
 

Tracking Project Benefits

   Once the project is in production, it is no longer part of the Enterprise Initiative
Solution Assessment and Validation Details how to choose the best solutions for specific business needs (as well as assessing how well the chosen solution worked after its implementation).This should also cover risks, dependencies, and limitations that must be identified before proposing any solution

Solutions are identified during Phase E.: Opportunities and Solutions.

This phase is directly concerned with implementation, identifying major work packages to be undertaken and creating a migration strategy.

Risk management, dependencies are taken into consideration.

  
Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring Explains how to decide what you need to do to complete an “analyst effort” (in other words, how to plan a project). This helps intelligently decide which stakeholders, tools, tasks and techniques we will need to get the job done Covered mostly in the Architecture Vision phase, then in the Business Architecture Phase Stakeholder management techniques are used within TOGAF, tools and techniques are identified in the Business Architecture phase (modeling, reference models, viewpoints)
Requirements Management and Communication Describes how to identify business needs (the why of the project; whereas requirements are the how) and state the scope of their solutions. This is a crucial piece of the analyst’s work. SMART criteria of measurement, SWOT analysis and other measurement factors that make identifying this root cause data objective and tangible are used Business Requirements are collected with the business people during the Architecture Vision’s phase using the technique called Business Scenario (as mentioned above).

SMART techniques are equally used.

Communication plans are defined.

 

This diagram below is a draft map BABOK® and TOGAF 9; more work is required!

 

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Observations

There are obviously overlaps between Enterprise Analysis and Enterprise Architecture, but activities are not always done in the same sequence.

  • Enterprise Analysis is more a business initiative than an Enterprise Architecture which includes both business and IT people
  • Enterprise Analysis provides the context in which an Enterprise Architecture should be conducted
  • Enterprise Analysis is about defining the strategic goals and the strategic planning taking into account the environment and market trends, identify business issues, focus on remaining competitive, profitable, efficient. Enterprise Architecture is reusing all this information.
  • Enterprise Analysis is only covering the initial activities of Enterprise Architecture but does not address other Enterprise Architecture activities such as: – Application Architecture, Data Architecture, Technology Architecture (and Solution Architecture).
  • Enterprise Analysis does not include all aspects related to governance such as the IT Governance and the Enterprise Architecture Governance Framework. Touch points with other frameworks are not addressed.
  • Enterprise Analysis may not completely address the need of working with other parts of the enterprise such as IT, PMO, development teams, IT partners.
  • Enterprise Architecture suggest a Preliminary phase which is about defining ‘‘where, what, why, who, and how” Enterprise Architecture will be done, establishing the business context, customizing the framework, defining the architecture principles, establishing the Architecture Governance structure.

Enterprise Analysis complements Enterprise Architecture but also overlaps in some areas. Organization looking into Enterprise Architecture and specifically TOGAF 9 may consider adopting a Business Analysis framework such as BABOK and integrate them in the Preliminary Phase. If both approaches exist in a company, this would be a great opportunity for optimizing the alignment between Business and IT, and to run an Enterprise Architecture program from a complete business perspective.

About Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®)

The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®) is the collection of knowledge within the profession of Business Analysis and reflects current generally accepted practices. As with other professions, the body of knowledge is defined and enhanced by the Business Analysis professionals who apply it in their daily work role. The BABOK® Guide describes Business Analysis areas of knowledge, their associated activities and the tasks and skills necessary to be effective in their execution. The BABOK® Guide is a reference for professional knowledge for Business Analysis and provides the basis for the Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®) Certification.

BABOK® Guide 2.0 represents the development of a common framework to understand and define the practice of business analysis.

http://www.theiiba.org/am/