Translation needed

Week 6
Traveling in Japan, I am reminded of the difficulty of living in an environment where you don't understand what is happening around you. Especially when both the language and culture are unknown. It's easy to feel lost and confused. It can be very difficult to get what you need.

Unfortunately, the dialogue between business leaders and IT leaders can be similarly difficult. Yet the ability to understand true business needs is crucial to business success. At the same time, to get the most out of technology investments, the business must trust their technology partners to make the best make the best decisions.

Enterprise architects have the opportunity to play the role as translator between the business and IT. If we take the time to understand the strategic direction, we can help the business express the business needs for technology. If we build out depictions of the technology future state, we can help IT express to the business their plan of attacking gaps in achieving the business strategy. However, we have to find clear terminology that works for both groups. Getting everyone on the same page takes a lot work. Success in this translation can make your company truly successful.

When you say bed and chair, is this what you have in mind? Even when you use 
the right words with the same basic meaning, you can still get unexpected results.

Enterprise Architecture to help when the world is changing

Week 5
On June 23, the UK will vote on whether to remain part of the European Union (EU) or not. Understanding the impacts on my industry, asset management, will be important. In the shot term, market volatility may be very significant at the end of this week. This will be true regardless which way the vote goes. The markets do not like uncertainty. Both the Pound Sterling and the Euro are likely to weaken. Equity markets may drop as investors move to more stable investments such as Gold and US Treasury bonds. 


In the long run, there are two main issues for asset managers: no longer being allowed passporting and the requirement of equivalence. 

Many asset managers conduct business in Europe through a presence in London, this is called passporting. If passporting is no longer permitted, asset managers will have to conduct business directly from within the European Union. For companies that currently service EU countries from Switzerland via London, this will also no longer be permitted, since Switzerland is also not an EU member. These change will require significant infrastructure change in physical location, legal and corporate structure. There will be a need to relook at the entire organizational structure.

Equivalence requires that a non-EU country who want to do business in the wholesale asset manage business within the EU will have to show that their countries rules are at least as strict as EU rules. This could require significant additional regulatory requirements for asset managers. 

Both of the issues will need a concentrated effort to resolve. Companies with a robust Enterprise Architecture program will have an advantage in organizing their response strategically, rather tactically dealing with each issues. 

Enterprise Architecture, connected to the business - or not?

Week 4
Everything we are readying about in this class emphasizes the need to include the business in all Enterprise Architecture deliverable creation. I completely agree with this idea. If the business isn't included in the creation and use of these artifacts, they will not be useful. However, I find that the language used in Enterprise Architecture can be very difficult for a business person to understand. 

For example, in Lesson 3, there was a great article by Gartner called "Advancing the Common Requirements Vision Deliverable." The article explains the need to "describes the link between environmental trends, business strategy and the overarching requirements that the EA must meet to satisfy the business strategy." The article goes into detail in how to create a common requirements vision together with the business. But in describing all of this, the article uses an astounding number of acronyms. How can anyone who doesn't use this jargon on a daily basis keep track of all of this? 

I think that Enterprise Architects have to be careful to use more common language, or at least clearly identify the meaning of acronyms with a glossary in order to include the business in Enterprise Architecture efforts. 

Here are some statistics on the use of acronyms from the thirteen page Gartner article (word-count used for statistics):

Only 2 of the 9 terms included the full term more than once in the article. Some of the acronyms in this article were include in the text before the term was introduced. In one case, the term Business solutions requirements (BSR) was first used as a acronym on page 3 and was only first spelled out on page 7.




  

Standardization - Key to success

Week 3
In our book, Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, the author notes that standardization requires defining exactly how processes will be executed. It also usually means replacing good existing systems and process to be replace by those that will provide the new standard. This can be a painful process. However, process standardization delivers efficiency and predictability across the company. 

The BPM Institute has an interesting article on the topic of standardization (http://www.bpminstitute.org/, "Standardization or Flexibility- Partners or Enemies?" 
 vs flexibility. I think the key to remember is that over customization makes it impossible to react with agility to new and changing business environment. I work in finance, so if nothing else, the regulatory environment will force significant change that we must be able to react to quickly. 

Part of what can help to determine where standardization can work and where it can't would be the Common Requirements Vision (CRV) which provides linkages between business strategy and Enterprise Architecture future state requirements. However, often the CRV can be hard for business people to tackle (Gartner, "Building a 'Fast-Path' Common Requirements Vision", 2006). 

The both the full and the fast-path CRV versions recommended by Gartner include the following topics:

1.0       Introduction

2.0       Environmental Trends

3.0       Enterprise Business Strategies (EBSs)

4.0       Environmental Trends/Enterprise Business Strategies Matrix

5.0       Initiatives (full version only)

6.0       Business Change Requirements (BCRs) (full version only)

7.0       Business Information Requirements (BIRs)

8.0       Enterprise Business Strategies/Business Change Requirements Matrix

9.0       Information Technology Requirements (ITRs)

10.0     Information Technology Requirements/Business Information Requirements Matrix

11.0     Information Technology Requirements/Business Change Requirements Matrix (full version only)

12.0     Business Solution Requirements (BSRs) (full version only)

13.0     Future-State Architecture Vision

14.0     Next Steps

The sample Common Requirements Vision Matrix provided by Gartner is interesting, but it is complicated, and I think it would be difficult to get the business to understand it at this point.  Therefore, I think the fast-path method would be helpful. Also, the Business Anchor Model recommended by Gartner seems like an easy to understand document that could help clarify the core value chain business functions. This should be a fairly straight forward document to complete, but would help provide a solid foundation for understanding. 

The point of any of the EA artifacts is to hep both IT and the business define the strategy of the company and understand the impacts for the enterprise. The enterprise focus helps everyone stay out of the minutia, and I believe it will really help our company get clarity on where standardization can be implemented without jeopardizing the overall strategy.