Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
How do we make sense of ‘value’ in enterprise-architecture – particularly when we introduce the economists’ notion of ‘the market’ into the picture? In the midst of the same LinkedIn discussion on capability and suchlike, mentioned in the previous post…
The chance that your car might be washed away is not the only reason to avoid driving across a flooded road.
The greater danger is that the road under the flood waters has already been washed away.
How many large system projects fail because of unexpe…
The chance that your car might be washed away is not the only reason to avoid driving across a flooded road.
The greater danger is that the road under the flood waters has already been washed away.
How many large system projects fail because of unexpected dependencies or unknown conditions?
Visibility is a clear and immediate benefit of a mature EA practice.
And remember, just because the road is going in the right direction – i.e., is aligned with your business – does not mean it’s at all safe.
Photo By Brian Stansberry (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Enterprise is a complex system. I have accepted that fact. I think many of us in the enterprise architecture profession have also accepted this fact as well, or at least I hope we have. But then again there is nat…
The Enterprise is a complex system. I have accepted that fact. I think many of us in the enterprise architecture profession have also accepted this fact as well, or at least I hope we have. But then again there is natural response to things in which we do in order to address “complexity.” There is a tendancy to…
Some @ATKearney consultants have written an interesting article on Business Network Optimization
“Anyone thinking about rationalizing a network would naturally ask whether so many nodes are really necessary. Networks are a great deal more complicated than that, and managing them requires expansive strategic imagination.”
A simplistic accountancy view of a network looks at the direct contribution of each node. From this viewpoint, some nodes may not produce enough direct value to justify their continued existence, and there will be calls for these nodes to be closed or merged with their neighbours.
For example, there are several proposals currently under consideration within the UK National Health Service to rationalize Accident and Emergency provision by closing some hospital departments and relocating staff. These proposals are based on arguments about the optimal size of an Accident and Emergency unit, and on claims that smaller units are unlikely to deliver value for money or clinical excellence.
Opponents of these closures point to the indirect effect of these closures, including the likely consequences on non-emergency healthcare services at those hospitals that will lack accident and emergency provision, as well as the wider social impact on the local community.
The example given in the A.T. Kearney article is the French postal service, and the authors assert the indirect value of the village post office, using an almost untranslatable French term l’animation du territoire, the “animation of the territory”.
The Kearney article identifies three types of business network, which it calls Production, Service and Distribution, and eight elements of network management which must be optimized together. It calls these KNOTs, which stands for Kearney Network Optimization Tools, and asks us not to think of them as merely a laundry list of best practices used to build an optimal network.
The article illustrates the concept of indirect value in terms of the cross-over between physical and online retailing. If a customer views a product in a physical store and then orders it online, the physical store is providing some indirect value to the retail operation as a whole. It is therefore makes sense to optimize the entire online/offline network as a whole, rather than regarding them as two separate networks. See my post on Showrooming and Multi-sided Markets (December 2012).
When is Bike not a Business Rule.:
It’s an unexceptional and foundational principle that governance is about behaviour.
But behaviour is about intentions.
Governance machinery that focuses on behaviour to the exclusion of intentions destroys value.
A…
When is Bike not a Business Rule.:
It’s an unexceptional and foundational principle that governance is about behaviour.
But behaviour is about intentions.
Governance machinery that focuses on behaviour to the exclusion of intentions destroys value.
As this great story of the little bike that wasn’t, from Tom Graves illustrates so well.
I saw a story on CBS about Wally Boot who has worked at the Steinway factory for 50 years. He was born on Steinway Street and has learned how to make every part in a Steinway, but what he makes is so much more. At the end of the story, Charlie Rose says “there is […]
I saw a story on CBS about Wally Boot who has worked at the Steinway factory for 50 years. He was born on Steinway Street and has learned how to make every part in a Steinway, but what he makes is so much more. At the end of the story, Charlie Rose says “there is […]
The post “Making Pianos” or “Being an Artist” appeared first on Mike Rollings.
The previous post on ‘Money, price and value in enterprise-architecture‘ was kinda long, so here’s a (somewhat) shorter summary: Background It’s fundamentally important that enterprise-architectures should incorporate the following assertions: there are many other forms of value besides money in…
To my mind, the way that most people seem to handle the relationships between money, price and value in enterprise-architecture and EA models is, frankly, an utter shambles. So let’s get a few things straight here: there are many other…