Strategy - the only way to succeed

Week 11

This weeks lesson highlights the importance of strategy. Technology investment is often the biggest budget line item for a company. It certainly is for my company. Investment Management is driven by technology. And the ever changing regulatory environment requires continual changes to technology to keep up. Enterprise Architecture (EA) can really be at the forefront of ensuring that the dollars spent on technology go farthest towards reaching business goals. However, without a strategy, even EA will not ensure that goals are met.

Kit racing the field in search of a hide

Strategy can also be useful in other areas of life, even for simple things. This week I am at a nosework camp for dogs in Big Bear, CA. We compete with our dogs every day to find specific scents that are hidden. These are called hides. The events are timed and you often don't know how many hides there are. One of today's events was to find 8 hides on and around an outdoor basketball court. You got 45 seconds to find the first hide, and then 30 seconds for each of the remaining hides. You get 1 point for every hide found. If at any point, you go past the 30 seconds without finding the next hide, you time-out and get zero points. You can also stop at any time by calling "finish" with the points for each of the hides you found. 

Kit working hard to find the hide

The first part of strategy is what direction to go. Everyone has the same starting point, but as long as you stay in the area, you can go any way you want. Do you let the dog run free and follow, zig-zag around, circle the parameter first and then go inside, up one side and down the other? I decided to let the dog choose either left or right, but then circle all the way around the court before going to the middle. 

The next strategy is timing. My dog Kit found the first hide in 9 seconds. We then had 30 seconds to find each of the next 7 hides. She found the next two very quickly as we moved around the court. Then there was one spot where she seemed unsure. I was pretty sure a hide was there, but rather than spend more time to figure it out, I had her continue on. She found the next hide before 30 seconds was up. After the 7th hide I called finished. We got 7 points, and didn't time out. We didn't win the competition, but we placed well. The strategy worked.

Evie found a hide hidden somewhere on one of three cars in 9 seconds.

Evie takes first place. Happy Mom, 

Governance is Key

Week 10

Enterprise Architecture (EA), like most real change, requires strong governance to be successful. As we can see from both the Democratic and Republican parties in the current presidential race, if you don't have a unified front in governance, it can be very hard to get your message across. It can be even harder to move anyone to change if you don't have a clear message. 

One way to ensure that Enterprise Architecture is enacted as intended, is to have a clear Architectural Review Board (ARB) that has the power not only to review projects for EA compliance, but also enable to ARB to enforce compliance with EA requirements. I have seen this work very effectively at my company. I am a business representative on the ARB. My responsibility is to ensure that they architects understand business impacts to any recommendations made by the ARB. I think both the architects and the business have benfited from having this connection within the ARB. 

Enterprise Architecture helps the National Parks Serive

Volunteer crew around a sequia

Week 9
If you asked the National Park Service if they used Enterprise Architecture for their project, they would say no. However, if you look at what they are doing, there are a lot of similarities. Firstly, they have clear principles and guidelines for what they want to accomplish. They create a future state vision for what they think the park needs. And they create a project plan using technology to help them.

Working in my safety vest in front of Grizzly Giant

One project currently underway is in the Restoration of the Maraposa Grove in Yosemite. The National Park Service has been trying to do a restoration project since the 1980s to save the giant sequoia trees.  Sequoia's are the largest tress, actually the largest living organisms, and can live to be 3,000 years old. Unfortunately, sequoias meed a lot of water, and because the root systems are shallow, they are sensitive to ground compacting around their base.

Wild roses

The environmental impact study (EIS) of the Maraposa Grove found that the parking lot and roads were shunting of precious water away from the trees. The tram system used to take visitors to see the tress was creating further damage. The trams were getting too close to the tree bases, and the area that the concessioner used to work on trams block some of the most beautiful trees to visitors. And only 10% of visitors actually used the trams. Finally, the paths around the trees no option for the disabled.

The plan has required clear information from the EIS. Communication with the government, local residents, and visitors to the park has been extremely important. Much of the funding has come from the Yosemite Conservancy. Awareness of sources of funding for the project is important. The project needs to ensure visitors can see the sequoias while still protecting the tress. The National Park Service is following the lead of others who have created a raised walkway that will allow people to see the vegetation without touching it. The walkway will also be ADA compliant. There will continue to be a trail to the upper grove, this will allow people to walk all the way up. And using the latest technology for low impact roadway material, the park will still be able to get maintenance vehicles to the top of the park without water run off or compacting of the soil around the tree roots.

Here is a better picture of the Grizzly Giant
Those ant looking things at the base are people

A well led assessment with a clear understanding of the end-state and guiding principles can ensure that any project delivers the best possible outcome for the lowest possible cost. whether it is a system implementation at work, or a National Park Service Restoration project.

A year of Violence - New or a repeat?

Week 8
One really great thing that we do in Enterprise Architecture is to promote conversation and understanding between diverse groups of people. This is a skill in short supply. I wish we had Enterprise Architects helping the political discourse in America.

Tonight I participated in an event with Cokie Roberts, political commentator for National Public Radio (NPR).  If you are not familiar with her, she co-anchored ABC's This Week program with Sam Donaldson from 1992 - 2002. She was appointed by President George W. Bush to service on his Council on Service and Civic Participation. Her father, Hale Boggs (1914-1972), Majority leader of the House of Representatives service on the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas Texas in 1963.

The audience asked Cokie questions about the current political environment. One theme that came up was, how similar is today's environment to that of the US in 1968. For those of you not old enough to understand what was poignant about the comparison with 1968, here is a brief timeline of that year. It was an exciting year of great technological advances: Boeing introduced the first 747 Jumbo Jet and Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon. There were some difficult international incidents: North Korea captured a US Navy intelligence ship, captured and tortured the crew and North Vietnam launched the TET Offensive in a devastating attack that caught the US military off guard.  Changes in the culture were occurring: For the first time an interracial kiss was shown on TV when Captain Kirk kiss Lt Uhura. Before you dismiss that as a big deal, remember that interracial marriage only became legal in the US in 1967 with the Loving vs Virginia case. Two American Olympic athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith,  protested the killing of black men in America by saluting Black Power with black gloved fists while standing on the Olympic podium. Finally, tragically both Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated only two months apart from each other.

The similarities to this year are in the both the assassination of law enforcement officers in Dallas and violence against black men at the hands of the police. The violence and following protests of 1968 caused significant political change. Republican Richard Nixon was elected President as a law-and-order candidate. Will the same thing happen this year? Donald Trump's campaign message is to restore safety and security to the people, siting a new to "restore law and order." Clinton is calling for gun control and for people to come together across racial divides. President Obama called the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile "symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal-justice system."

The question is, "Is anyone listening?" Is 2016 at all different from 1968? 1968 witnessed race riots in Detroit, Michigan, Newark, New Jersey and Watts in Los Angeles following incidents of police brutality against African Americans. President Lyndon Johnson established the Kerner Commission to understand the violence. The commissions first draft, called "The America of Racism," explained the riots as an unsurprising reaction to racial oppression by the white power structure. The 1968 report explained that institutionalized racism was enforced through segregation and poverty. The commission argued that the solution included stricter political conduct guidelines, an integrated police force, and reductions in automatic weapons and machine guns. None of the recommendations were implemented largely because President Johnson did not believe that he could get congress to enact any of the recommendations. Instead, the country followed candidate Richard Nixon who argued that the answer to the problem was, "decent and law-abiding citizens of America to take the offensive against the criminal forces that threaten their peace and security, and to rebuild respect for law across this country." The riots stopped. However, the underlying issues were still, are still intact.

So what will we do in 2016, when structural racism remains a constant issue with blacks disproportionately imprisoned and a Congress is unwilling to allow any changes to be made into law? Hillary Clinton has not done much to deal with institutionalized racism, nor has she taken a strong stance for changing the criminal-justice system. Donald Trump has at best been dismissive of the Black Livers Matter movement and is more likely to increase the reach of the justice system than he is to reform it. So our politicians aren't likely to help.

However, if the people of America can agree that there is a problem, we can change things. Ross Douthat of the New York Times stated that 2016 bears "echoes and recurrences linking this difficult moment to the American berserk of two generations back." Yet he points out that we are reminded by people like Jonathan Chait of the New York Magazine that 2016 is not 1968. Conservative writers such as Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller and Leon Wolf of RedState are stating that while the vast majority of police officers are trying to do the right thing, "police brutality towards African Americans is a pervasive problem." Both writers point out that our justice and political systems can only be effective if the people believe they work and our minority communities are unable to believe right now. People of all races have come together in Dallas to support the slain officers, so we know can agree on what is right. Paul Ryan recently complimented President Obama on his remarks about the situation and talked about the need for peaceful protest. In the 2008 election, then candidate Barack Obama talked about the unity of the nation. He said,

Democrats, independents and Republicans who are tired of the division and distraction that has clouded Washington, who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable, who understand that, if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that stood in our way and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there is no problem we cannot solve, there is no destiny that we cannot fulfill.

Whether you are a Hillary, Donald or Bernie supporter, let's take this opportunity to talk together to find real solutions to the institutionalized racism that pulled our country apart in 1968 and could bring us down again. I don't know the answers, but I do know that study after study has shown that we are smarter and make better decisions when we bring diverse opinions together. So let's take advantage of the fact that we don't agree on everything and try to solve to solve this one thing. Let's make it a better country for all of us.

Business Architecture to understand Process Debt

Week 7
My team has recently got agreement from our business leaders to try a new way to help improve efficiency. Whenever the business agrees to a new capability or a new process, they will have business architecture and process optimization work with them to evaluate the new processes.

Business architecture will look at the people, processes and technology to see if we have something existing that makes sense, or if we need something new. Our process optimization team, which is also part of my team, will then evaluate the efficiency of the new process. If they process proposed is one that we expect to be the on-going process, we will document it and add it to our process library. If it is not the optimal process and would require, such as one that requires either new skills or new technology to be optimal, we will document it as process debt.

The business is excited about this approach because it will help the explain where and why they need to make expenditures in either additional staff or in technology. Management is excited because it really increases the focus on efficiency. My team is excited because the business is now even more likely to pull us in. Very promising. Hopefully this will lead to real efficiency gains.