KES: A transformative role for Enterprise Architecture (EA) in today's dynamic Enterprises

TRANSFORMATIONAL

ROLE OF ENTERPRISE

ARCHITECTURE Enterprise Architecture’s Role as the Change Enabler,

Alignment Keeper, Complexity Manager and Innovation

Facilitator for Organizations

Fru Nde www.linkedin.com/in/frulouis/

Abstract

This article articulates and offers a summary of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the transformational role it can play in today’s dynamic enterprises. It also makes recommendations on how a successful implementation of an EA practice can help companies do the “right things right” by facilitating rational decision making, and allowing them to easily respond to disruptive forces such as change, alignment, complexity and innovation.

TRANSFORMATIONAL ROLE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

TRANSFORMATIONAL ROLE FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

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© 2013 KES, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... 1

Enterprise Architecture’s Transformative Role ....................................................................... 2

1. EA’s Role as Change Enabler ................................................................................... 3

2. EA’s Role as Alignment Keeper ................................................................................ 5

3. EA’s Role as Complexity Manager ............................................................................. 7

4. EA’s Role as Innovation Facilitator ............................................................................ 9

Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 10

Results Oriented ................................................................................................. 12

Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 12

Index Terms: Enterprise Architecture (EA), Business Process Management (BPM), Cynefin

Framework, Cyclomatic Complexity, Essential Complexity, Amdahl's Law, Enterprise

Ontology, Taxonomy Repositories



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ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE’S TRANSFORMATIVE ROLE

Due to the rapidly changing nature of businesses today, i.e. mobile, web, social, cloud,

outsourcing etc., decision makers in companies are finding themselves increasingly being

asked to do more with less. At the back of their minds, the following questions are being

asked:

Right things: Are we doing the right things?

Right Way: Are we doing them the right way?

Well: Are we getting it done well?

Benefits: Are we getting the benefits?

At the core of these questions is the challenge that

companies are always looking to do the right things

right.

Over the years, Enterprise Architecture (EA) has

proven itself as a competent solution to helping

companies do the right things right. Unfortunately,

even when there are people, processes, or practices like

this that help companies do the right things right, it

remains stubbornly true that nobody ever gets credit for

fixing problems that never happened. And this reality

has posed great challenges for investing in EA.

The accepted modus operandi in the industry has

always been that an EA practice provides no intrinsic

value upfront. Even according to John Zachman, the

pioneer of the Zachman EA Framework, it is not

possible for one to really justify the cost for investing

in EA as EA when implemented usually does not save

money in the current accounting period.

So the question becomes why should one build out an Enterprise Architecture Practice if

the ROI can’t immediately be justified?

Interestingly, the answer to this question is neither art nor science. In the analysis below, we

would make the case that EA has the capacity to play a transformative role in helping

companies understand their DNA. In so doing, EA can help companies do the right things right

which equates to better managing change, reduce complexity, keep alignment with the

business strategy and also drive innovation.

No one would knock down

walls in a building

indiscriminately without

understanding the building

architecture.

You could make apparently

small changes and the whole

building potentially could

collapse.

Similarly, you could make

apparently small changes to

an enterprise and if you

didn’t understand the

Enterprise Architecture, the

apparently small changes

could potentially render the

whole enterprise

dysfunctional.

John Zachman

Change



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1. EA’S ROLE AS CHANGE ENABLER

One of the most predictable factors in modern organizations is change.

Everything changes, both business and circumstance.

Companies change either in response to Crisis Situation,

Mergers & Acquisitions, Internal & External pressures,

new SWOT landscape (Strengths, Weaknesses,

Opportunities, and Threats), New Technologies, Change

for the Sake of Change, or Change for Experimentation. Enterprise architecture (EA) is a

discipline suitably equipped for proactively leading enterprise responses to change situations

by identifying and analyzing the change factors and then executing a strategy to deal with

them.

Change is usually disruptive and seldom welcomed. Unfortunately, when companies are

looking to change, either voluntarily or by compellation, they embark on training or

communication as a means to manage the change.

But, while training and communication are effective levers, they aren’t usually good enough

to get to the finish line.

Successful and sustainable change requires skill, planning, and a tailored approach to the

sought after outcome, and that is where Enterprise Architecture comes in.

In a transition process, what gives people and organizations the courage and energy to change

is their commitment to a compelling imperative for the change. This imperative can take the

form of a story, outlined as the vision, mission, values or goals to be achieved. This story

otherwise called a "change story" must be sufficiently rich enough to communicate the need

for change to all levels of the organization i.e. from C-level executives to workers in the fields.

Why, what, who, when, how questions must be asked and answered. The answers to these

questions provides that compelling imperative (change story) that everyone in the organization

can buy into and work towards achieving.

“It is not the strongest

or the most intelligent

who will survive but

those who can best

manage change.”

Charles Darwin

Adaptation “The only thing that is constant is change”

Heraclitus



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EA's role as a change enabler is therefore to identify the change story for the business and work

towards making it happen. To do so, the EA team must set out on an expedition to answer these

change questions:

Why should my company move from an "as-is" state to a "to-be" state?

When should my company move from an "as-is" state to a "to-be" state?

Who should move my company from an "as-is" state to a "to-be" state?

What is required to move my company from an "as-is" state to a "to-be" state?

How should my company move from an "as-is" state to a "to-be" state?

The answers to these questions helps the EA practice in creating informed, clear roadmaps

with tangible artifacts, models, activities, and execution strategy, that the company can follow

to implement a change story.

Such models developed by the EA practice facilitates change by allowing queries to determine

impacts of change variables on the complex business and technological solutions of the

organization.

If the impact of change can easily be quantified and understood, then companies looking to

adapt or change will find it easier to do so.

In medicine, we know from history that it is possible to diagnose and treat a fractured bone

without an X-Ray, but the process is a lot easier for doctors if they have an X-Ray scan in

hand. Same conditions apply to decision makers in today’s organizations.

The factors that necessitate change will always be present. The value EA provides is to do an

overall X-Ray of the Enterprise. The outputs from this X-Ray exercise can then be analyzed

by decision makers who are looking to build adaptive capacities into the core competence of

their business.

Once adaptive capabilities are built into the enterprise, the resulting adaptive enterprisei can

then more easily respond to change factors from the external and internal environment and also

can allow for an easier response to those inevitable disruptions that cause enterprises to

fundamentally change.



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2. EA’S ROLE AS ALIGNMENT KEEPER

More often than not, Business Needs in most Enterprises are difficult to ascertain, hence

causing great disconnect and miss-alignment between business and IT stakeholders. This

primary and sometimes devastating disconnect between business and IT priorities is often cited

as the primary driver behind the failure of most enterprise initiatives. Fortunately, EA has the

capacity to remedy the situation by providing the enterprise with a very broad perspective that

not only bridges the alignment gaps between business and IT, but also ensures total cohesion

between the two. Bernard Scott ii (pg. 30) elegantly

captured this idea of cohesion when he wrote the

formula in his book that:

A corollary from Scott’s formula is that an enterprise

cannot succeed on Strategy alone. Neither can it

succeed on Business alone, or Technology alone. All

those three must come together and work in synergy to

guarantee success in the enterprise. So, one of the most

important goals of an Enterprise Architecture Practice

is therefore to bring alignment and cohesion between strategy, business and Technology.

The role of technology in today’s business landscape is changing and is becoming increasingly

salient. In the past, businesses had an IT department (consisting of geeks and nerds usually

secluded off in the basement or some darkly lit room) because they wanted to. Today,

businesses have an IT department because they have to.

With technology now playing an increasingly sophisticated role in business process, it becomes

very important for leaders to ensure that IT remains aligned with the business. Without

alignment, IT easily gets out of sync with the business or becomes nothing more than a delivery

engine for business projects. Or even worst, IT goes off its own tangent acquiring and or

developing the latest and greatest technological gadgets, which are cool in as of themselves,

but have little relevance to solving the business needs.

Here’s what your typical

CEO says to their IT team, “I

have spent a lot of money in

IT but I don’t think what

you guys are doing with that

money is in line with the

plans I have for the

enterprise.” When your CEO

thinks this way, something

is seriously wrong.

John Zachman

Alignment

EA = S + B + T

EA = Strategy + Business + Technology



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Because of this potential for misalignment, it is extremely important for EA to play the role of

referee and keep both IT and Business ambitions under control. And, that ability for EA to

keep alignment between Business and IT in an organization often hinges on the EA team's

capacity to craft a roadmap for the organization.

By working with both Business and Technical liaisons, the EA team can ascertain the vision

of the business and produce roadmaps documents with one, three, five or even ten years plans

of how that vision will be implemented.

These Roadmap documents are important for reaching a consensus amongst stakeholders, thus

guaranteeing alignment. Once all parties have reached an agreement, the roadmap becomes a

planning tool that depicts how the business can utilize IT to execute on its intentions.

Another piece of the puzzle is the management of the technology portfolio. It is essential for

the Enterprise Architecture Practice to manage the company’s portfolio and keep

documentation of all aspects of the enterprise i.e. business processes, applications,

infrastructure, and data.

This documentations help the enterprise in managing costs and also assessing any potential

technical gaps within the enterprise.

Without EA to play referee between Business & IT and delivering a solid portfolio or business

process management (BPM) solution, it becomes easy for costs to spiral out of control – a

frequent source of angst between Business and IT leaders in most enterprises.



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3. EA’S ROLE AS COMPLEXITY MANAGER

The basic tenet of Entropy states: “A closed system if left alone would tend to move from order

to disorder; simplicity to increased complexity.” Organizations are systems, albeit closed

systems. Hence they are bound by the law of entropy, with an inherent tendency to gravitate

towards the state of VUCAiii (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous).

Sophisticated frameworks like the Cynefin

Framework iv or Thorngate’s postulate of

commensurate complexityv have been developed to

provide a typology of context for describing

organizational systems. But still the problem of

complexity in organizations remain a wicked one.

Whether Essential or Cyclomaticvi, Complexity of

any form is something that cannot be ignored and

must be dealt with head on.

Complexity in organizations usually results from:

Growth, Mergers and Acquisitions, Security needs,

Change in business strategy, new technology, spin-

offs, e.t.c.

As Einstein once said, any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes

a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Complexity is

certainly not scarce in organization and it usually starts small and grows out of control due to

the culture in most companies.

Often a company’s culture and current employees are more focused on the project at hand

rather than looking at their environment from an enterprise standpoint. Because of this, small

localized problems and deficiencies quickly spiral out of control because no one is thinking

about solutions strategically.

Furthermore, when companies make calculations on investing, they spend much of their

investment money towards fixing symptoms as opposed to addressing root cause issues.

Because of this simple miscalculation, once simple problems that could have been dealt with

easily then become complex over time.

Even worst, as the complexity in organization grows, and the symptomatic problems become

apparent, many Companies unfortunately honker down and dedicate more resources towards

Architecture enables you to

accommodate complexity

and change. If you don’t

have Enterprise

Architecture, your

enterprise is not going to be

viable in an increasingly

complex and changing

external environment.

John Zachman

Complexity



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fighting fires, solving short term tactical solutions and not developing the long-term strategic

plans for dealing with complexity that a good EA

practice requires.

EA, with its strategic thinking and long term planning

capabilities is suitably equipped for dealing with the

ever growing complexity in the companies. EA role as

the visionary vanguard is therefore to evaluate the

complexity of the business and technology platforms,

and other factors to effectively determine the "as-is"

state and forge the "to-be" state.

To achieve any degree of success in this goal, the EA

practice must command a thorough understanding of not only the business processes, but the

technological capabilities as well.

With this understanding, artifacts, models, blueprints and roadmap documents are then

produced to serve as a repository of knowledge for the enterprise.

Generally, we know that knowledge and complexity are inversely proportional. The more

knowledge people have of their systems, processes and outcomes, the less complex it becomes.

So, EA’s role is therefore reduce complexity by analyzing and increasing the overall

knowledge in the systems.

“A closed system if left alone would tend to move from order to disorder; simplicity to increased complexity.”

The Law of Entropy

Entropy



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4. EA’S ROLE AS INNOVATION FACILITATOR

The business world is a complex adaptive system that is becoming increasingly volatile,

uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). In the face of such wicked problems, companies

are realizing that innovation is not just a strategy that

is encouraged, but is almost required.

The innovation required in today’s business

environments is not just limited to revolutionary bold

leaps in Enterprise Business processes or value

stream, but includes augmentations to the sustainability and resilience of the business model.

For ease of analysis, Innovation herein is broken down into two types, viz: Evolutionary

Innovation and Revolutionary Innovations.

Evolutionary Innovation is the stepwise change and response to market forces that companies

must do nowadays to stay afloat the stiff competition they face. On the other hand

Revolutionary innovation constitutes the bold and transformative leaps that fundamentally

changes a company’s business model or the industry at large - Think Apple with the iPod.

The marriage between EA and Innovation is arguably a match made in heaven. But this happy

matrimony only happens if companies can correctly manage the critical success factors and

other contextual issues that support innovation. If not managed appropriately, companies

seeking revolutionary innovation through EA may find themselves embroiled in a turf war with

brutal bureaucracy and structural anarchy of epic proportions.

This tension of innovating through EA happens because EA is often seen as the antithesis of

Innovation and both sides usually have competing goals. EA which naturally produces

artifacts, standardization, and conformity is quick to avert overt risk taking. On the other hand,

Innovation (both revolutionary and evolutionary) naturally subscribes to a risk taking culture

in an organization. It thrives on freedom, minimum standardization/conformity and more risk

We can simulate

performance of airplanes in

3D, why can’t we do it with

enterprises? This is where

we should be heading - a

stage where we can actually

simulate how certain

changes or decisions will

affect the enterprise.

John Zachman

Impact

“Don’t tell employees what to do. Rather,

tell them what needs to be accomplished.

Let them figure out how to do it. More likely

than not, they shall devise a better way than

any manager can think of.”

Management 101



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taking. Unfortunately, the culture in many companies is generally skewed towards risk

avoidance or mitigation - hence reducing the chances for innovation.

But this is where EA comes in. First, it is

fundamentally wrong to see EA as the epitome of all

things wrong with standardization. EA promotes

standardization, but standardization is not all EA does.

Broadly, EA helps creates services, standards and an

architecture with repeatable building blocks that

increases both the effectiveness and efficiency of the

business.

The outputs, artifacts, models and road map

documents produced by an EA team helps reduce

unnecessary redundancies and increases reusability.

Once the EA team has been engaged to help define and

implement an architecture for an organization, then

individual business units within the organization

merely have to see where they “plug-in” to it to get

their work done - as opposed to trying to reinvent the

wheel all over again. The time and resources saved

from re-inventing the wheel, is valuable time and

resources that can be dedicated towards innovative and

risk taking initiatives.

Secondly, EA helps creates standards, which may seem a hindrance to some who are looking

to innovate. But as mentioned earlier, standards in an organizations is not the antithesis of

innovation. According to some Gartner publications, in companies that have standards,

especially in the IT arena, support costs are drastically lowered, allowing the IT staff to do one

thing, and do it well vs. having to support a wide-variety of systems, but doing none of them

particularly well. Standards also makes outcomes predictable and repeatable. Hence reducing

overall uncertainty and potential for huge fundamental errors.

Finally, contrary to what many people believe, Innovation in enterprises does not have to be

serendipitous. Innovation is something that companies have to actively pursue. To do so,

companies must first de-emphasize EA’s role as being solely focused on standardization and

instead looking at it more holistically as EA being a discipline that enables consistency,

repeatability and reusability of patterns – and these are all factors that foster innovation.

CONCLUSION

Few enterprises today have

descriptive representations

that depict how the

enterprise works.

Therefore, change can only

be accommodated by trial

and error. As complexity

and the rate of change

increase, risk of trial and

error increases.

Architecture provides the

structure to predict the

impact of change, reduce

the risk and maintain

enterprise viability in a

changing environment.

John Zachman

RISK



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As we seen above, EA has a vital role to play in organizations when it comes to change,

complexity, alignment and innovation. As Karl Weick, an organizational theorist and one of

the leading thought leaders in business theory put it:

While agreeing one hundred percent with Karl’s

perspective would not be the most constructive stance

to take, but by looking in the viewpoint of EA as

being the Change Enabler, Alignment Keeper,

Complexity Manager and Innovation Facilitator as

espoused in the analysis above, one clearly sees there

is a great need for EA in today’s business

environments.

Again, as Warren Bennis, the great American

organizational theorist once put it “Leadership is the

capacity to translate vision into reality.” Today, many

decision makers have visions for the companies. They

are also looking to translate their visions into reality

and are out in search of tools to help in that effort.

When successfully applied, EA can play the transformational role and drastically help

companies translate vision to reality by providing the following competencies.

Create Models: Ability to create models that serve as the Enterprise compass for

effective diagnosis

Taxonomy Repositories: Better taxonomy repositories that serve as reference for

better understanding the Enterprise anatomy.

Enterprise Deficiencies and Opportunities: Offer insights into various Enterprise

opportunities or deficiencies that adversely affect the running and managing of the

Enterprise and possible reasons behind them.

Change Impacts: Ability to model and predict change impacts on the overall

enterprise.

Evolution and enterprise

architecture are very much

related. From a cynical point

of view, you could say that

the forces of evolution have

shaped most enterprise

architectures.

To quote one famous

analyst2: “Most of you have

an accidental architecture. I

mean, I can only hope you

didn’t deliberately design

what you have in place.”

Frank Buytendijk

EA and Evolution

The effective organization is “garrulous

clumsy garrulous, clumsy, superstitious,

hypocritical, monstrous, octopoid, wandering

and grouchy”

Karl Weick



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RESULTS ORIENTED

EA’s goal is to provide pragmatic, objective, unbiased and prescriptive feedback for companies

looking to undertake transformational changes to business i.e. going from vision to reality. But

despite the possible transformational benefits of EA outline herein, decision makers looking to

adopt the practice have to remember that “Enterprise Architecture” is not a time bound project

or initiative and hence not treat it as such. It’s almost

by nature that companies have a tendency to get

complex and loose alignment with business

objectives. This is the primary challenge faced by

companies today and the situation is even amplified

by the accelerating pace of technology change.

The direct benefits of implementing an EA practice

abound, but to be successful, Enterprise Architecture must be embraced by the enterprise as a

journey undertaken with the business, and not a project that produces only technical artifacts

or UML diagrams as it output.

Also, it might be useful to mention that EA itself is a maturing field/discipline that

unfortunately comes in too many flavors. Significant efforts are still needed to standardize the

discipline of EA for the specific needs of individual businesses. (See the effort conducted by

"LEADing Practice"vii, The Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professionals (FEAPO)viii,

et al.).

Because of this potential diversity in the implementation of EA, decision makers must

approach the EA journey with a sense of cautious optimism – investing generously and

demanding results even more generously. There are lots of choices to choose from, but the EA

journey they choose to embark on must engage the enterprise in a way that is sufficiently rich

and expressive enough to make the transition from the vision to reality as easy as possible.

When successfully applied, EA has the capacity to reverse the fortunes of a struggling team(s),

prevent decision deadlock, extract results from a bunch of touchy superstars within business

teams, and fight constructively with top-management colleagues, all in an effort to present

business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and

steering decision making towards the evolution of a desired future state. This is the Holy Grail

of enterprise performance and this is what Transformational EA is about.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schekkerman, Jaap. Enterprise Architecture Good Practices Guide: How to Manage

the Enterprise Architecture Practice. Victoria, BC: Trafford Pub., 2008. Print.

However beautiful the

strategy, you should

occasionally look at the

results.

Winston Churchill



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http://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/Enterprise%20Architecture%20Whitepaper

-1-23-03.pdf (pg. 9 - 13)

http://www2.mitre.org/public/eabok/pdf/three_schools_of_thought.pdf

i Adaptive Enterprise: http://www.adaptive.com/products/adaptive-enterprise-architecture-manager/

ii Bernard, Scott A. An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture. [Bloomington, IN]: AuthorHouse, 2005. Print. (Pg. 30)

iii Living and Leading in a VUCA world. http://www.thunderbird.edu/article/living-and-leading-vuca-world

iv More about the Cynefin Framework can be read at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin

v More details about Thorngates postulate is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorngate's_postulate_of_commensurate_complexity

vi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_complexity

vii http://www.leadingpractice.com/frameworks/

viii http://www.feapo.org/