One of the key findings is that participants of the survey saw Enterprise Architecture as a capability that was core to their business and inherently part of their organization's crown jewels. However, given the daunting set of activities that most Enterprise Architecture functions have to execute today, the opportunity to work with ESPs and enlist them to execute some of these activities is real. In other words, some activities (the more tactical ones), can be outsourced to a strategic vendor partner.
]]> Gartner has reiterated this in their research note (subscription required to view the note) this week. It is comforting to see that they see the same conclusions from the data as we have - there are specific activities that one can engage ESPs on, but don't wholesale outsource the capability.We have engaged with multiple organizations to execute select EA activities in a collaborative model, with the objective of ensuring that the EA function focuses on core activities such as business engagement, business alignment and strategic IT planning.
We are therefore seeing truly mature EA functions recognizing what is core vs context in their operating models and leveraging partners as necessary, to deliver even more business value cost effectively.
Next month’s Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit in Las Vegas (Dec 10th-12th) will be one to watch. The real value of EA and its agility will be put to test in the next few quarters and years. How it ties back to this month’s Master Data Management Summit in Chicago (again by Gartner) will be even more interesting given that the set of analysts have very little overlap
]]>Form an Architecture Governance Team
Identify and implement common services for the enterprise
Factor in scalability
Plan business continuity orientation early
Reduce TCO
Consider shared vs. owned and virtual vs. physical
During the past few weeks I got involved in an interesting activity: analysis and review of responses to the 2008 Enterprise Architecture survey that Infosys has been conducting annually for the past few years.
This year, we invited technology leaders from our client base and the global IT community to participate. 207 respondents from a cross-section of industry verticals, geographies and organizational sizes completed a web questionnaire of 24 detailed questions. A preliminary analysis of the results indicates a few trends, including:
My colleagues and I brainstormed on the findings. One school of thought was that though the findings were surprising, we shouldn’t emphasize the discovery on Outsourcing since it may be perceived as trying to interpret data to fit our business model. I can see an argument here: we are a software service firm and our business model does centre on outsourcing and offshoring. On the other side, people like our practice lead in Europe, Sohel Aziz were equally vocal on why we should publish the finding. Sohel argued 'some of the data does indicate that organizations are not thinking of outsourcing elements of EA. If we go back 5 years, we were not thinking of outsourcing testing…now it is one of the fastest growing IT segments globally. Back then IT orgs thought they needed to do all this in-house too…. I see an opportunity to take the tactical elements of EA (such as solution architecture governance) and technology R&D out of the picture and getting that as a pay-as-you-go service. So that the EA’s spend more time on the REALLY important stuff such a business engagement.” I couldn’t have summarized it better.
For those interested, here’s a plug: My colleagues from Europe plan to be at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit next week. Copies of the summary of the survey [“Enterprise Architecture Expands its Role in Strategic Transformation”] will be available at the summit. The more detailed analysis of the finding will be published online soon
]]>In my last post, I talked about the movie The 300 Spartans and the lessons it held for Architects about doing the right thing, courage under fire, looking for alternatives etc.
My Cousin Vinny (Year of Release: 1992; Director: Jonathan Lynn; Our Architect: Vincent Gambini, played by Joe Pesci; Architect's Character: Lawyer handling his first case for his cousin).
‘My Cousin Vinny’ is the story of a lawyer who finds himself defending his first cousin on the charges of first degree murder in his first ever trial. He has no experience as a lawyer and has never even attended the court as a lawyer, is totally unaware of the process or the protocol. He learns on the fly, makes silly mistakes on his first case, is excited by the trivial stuff, but makes a solid come back using his fundamental skills and saves his cousin from an almost certain seat on the electric chair.
A few important lessons that this movie can provide us are:
• Never to let go of our fundamentals
• Acknowledge and know what you do not know
• Handling tough customers
Scenes to look out for:
1. There is a scene in the middle of the movie where Vinny thinks that he has built a connection with his prosecuting lawyer and as a result, got access to all his case files. When he tries to show off how smart he is to his fiancé, she points out that the prosecution is bound by law to share the case files with the defense lawyer, otherwise, it could lead to a mistrial.
First inference that we can draw from this scene is to know the law of the land before you get in to a project. Do your home work; find out what works and what doesn’t. Try to get any historical inputs about a customer if any precedence is available. If it doesn’t make you look smart in front of your customer, at least it will not make you look stupid. This is of particular help if your organization has had a tough history with a customer.
2. The second theme that flows throughout the movie is how Vinny manages the judge in whose court he is arguing the case. The first two times that he pleads the case, he gets himself arrested for the contempt of court. But he learns from his faults and by the end of the case, he makes a fan out of the tough magistrate.
Personally, I like working with tough customers. They bring about a point of inflection in your career which makes you improve just to be able to survive. At the end of a tough assignment, you come out with a new level of maturity and invaluable experience in the form of a few burnt fingers. Secondly, it’s usually the tough customers that can help take you and your organization places. Experiencing the way Vinny manages the magistrate, gives you good insights into how to manage tough customers – understand what excites them and what does not.
Current issue of the New Scientist magazine has a very interesting cover story on “Seven reasons why people hate reason”. Now, that is a guide I would have loved to have alongside during some rather difficult stakeholder engagements, when I couldn’t stop thinking “If only they could be reasonable…”.
]]>The above cover story is developed through seven micro-essays written on each reason by a separate neuroscientist. It summarises a number of issues about influencing others that we have learnt either by experience or through the practices of organisational change. Practical techniques such as Storming, norming, forming and performing provide us a tool for systematically influencing groups.
At a summary level, seven reasons why people don’t like reason are:
When an EA project sponsor entrusts you to work with his or her stakeholders, they are asking you to lead part of their organisation’s journey from one way of thinking to another. Those of us who have attempted this many times know that the success rate is less than 100%.
What is your experience in this regard? What techniques have you settled on? Is storming-norming-forming-performing enough?
At another time, I will talk about recent thinking in economics about "a society of minds", as described in the book "Origin of Wealth". But for now, I will like to know your experiences in the area of influencing individuals and groups during enterprise architecture engagements.
]]>In my last post, I talked about the movie Swades and the lessons it held for Architects about giving back in the form of teaching budding architects, publishing papers etc.
The 300 Spartans (Year of Release: 1962; Director: Rudolph Mate; Our Architect: King Leonidas, played by Richard Egan; Architect's Character: The Greek king of Sparta who is up against a stronger Persian army)
‘The 300 Spartans’ depicts the invasion of Greece by the Persian army and the role of King Leonidas, the king of Sparta, known for its proud, bold and courageous army. The story deals with a number of issues – the role of the senate, the mammoth scale of problem at hand and the values of a team, in this case of a state.
The lessons that this movie offers for architects are:
• Doing the right thing – aligned with our own personal and moral values.
• Courage under fire
• Setting an example to ignite other minds.
• Persistence
• Looking for alternatives
• Attitude!
For this movie too, I will skip talking about any specific scenes because it makes its point through the whole storyboard. There are a lot of lessons that we, as architects, can pick up from this movie. The most important one being – develop the right attitude and use it! The second most important thought that this movie provokes is to introspect ourselves to see what are we made of? What are our values and how do we prioritize them.
Values are something that take the form of our signature in all our work. You can tell from the work of an architect that he places higher premium on technology than on business, or if he confronts issues vs. sweeping them under the carpet. Values form the torch light which show us the way when all other light is swept away. They can push us to do the right thing and doing the things right.
]]>A very common occurance is to use a lot of buzzwords. I once encountered an architect who said "issue A and issue B are orthagonal". He meant A and B are independent of each other. Architecture patterns too - be they singletons or facades - can be confusing explanations to IT management and customers.
]]> The main issue I wish to raise is that does our language need to be so threatening to outsiders. No wonder many times architects are described as out of touch or too abstract.My experience is that messages to people outside the architecture community need to be in simple language. Business executives who often are sponsors of IT work, and hence of architecture projects, business operations managers, IT project managers are all interested in understanding the recommended course of action and the rationale for it.
While the rigour of architecture formulations is a necessity, very often architects use complex language to impress each other. Over a long period of enterprise architecture engagements, I have settled on simple and clear working and final deliverables that do not require translation before being tabled to the stakeholders
I will like to know your experience. What parts of the architecture speak, in your opiniion, are complex by necessity and need the relevant rigorous terminology? Do you or people you work with use long words just to impress each other? Or, as in the words of my above mentioned architect friend, need and practice are othagonal to each other?
See you around.
Rajeev Arora
Melbourne. Australia
]]>In my last post, I talked about the movie Padosan and the lessons it held for Architects about observation, analyzing the non-obvious, taking care of your team, knowing your priorities etc.
Swades (Year of Release: 2004; Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar; Our Architect: Mohan Bhargav, played by Shahrukh Khan; Architect's Character: A Music Director by profession, US-based research scientist with NASA, of Indian origin).
‘Swades’ is a story of Mohan Bhargav, a research scientist with NASA. He has Indian origin but is settled in the US with a nice job and comforts of life. He makes a trip to India to see his grandmother when leads him to a village. During this trip, he gets a firsthand experience of life in rural India and how far behind they have been left from the ‘progress’ made by towns of the world.
There are three important lessons that this movie can teach architects:
• Giveback
• Giveback
• Giveback
I will refrain from going into the specifics of a few scenes for this movie, as the message is spread across the whole movie in bits and pieces.
As architects, we often forget to take a breather and give something back to our community, to our industry which has given us the fabulous opportunity to work and make living doing the stuff that we love enough to do for free.
At the end of every year, an architect should measure his/her success by the number of things he/she has given back in that year. The 'giveback' can take form of a class that you taught to budding architects, a paper that you published based on your experience to spread your knowledge or a novel item that you invented to aid the industry.
]]>In my previous post, I talked about the extending role of Enterprise Architects at services firms into Marchitects. This ‘selling’ of architecture services is no different from what our peers in client organizations undertake too.
Enterprise Architects, many of whom report into a CIO/CTO organization are also under continual pressure to ensure that the organization derives an optimal ROI from their IT investments, which means they need to ‘sell’ the value of robust, scalable architecture, planning and roadmaps to their stakeholders, some of whom may be focused on the tactical: ensuring that the quarterly targets are met, budgets balanced and operational challenges addressed. Even the ‘strategic’ focus may sometime involve reacting to external trends (read between the lines: it is the economy, slowdown etc)
]]> But back to the challenge of selling that Enterprise Architects at service firms face:Clients have an opportunity (and perhaps responsibility) to ensure that the high-end consultants they engage continually provide unbiased inputs. In a sense, the challenge faced by consulting Enterprise Architects is an opportunity to you, the client. You can efficiently leverage their ideation, selling, persuasion and presentation skills to help your internal Enterprise Architects and CXOs sell the ideas and strategies to your businesses and stakeholders. By doing so, you let consultants gain the privilege of being trusted advisors, which in some cases may lead to additional downstream and business for their firms.
]]>In my last post, I talked about the movie Remember the Titans and the lessons it held for Architects about leadership, change, how to get people from diverse backgrounds to work together etc.
Padosan (Year of Release: 1968; Director: Jyoti Swaroop; Our Architect: Guru, played by Kishore Kumar; Architect's Character: A Music Director by profession, Guru always has a solution for all problems and never lacks innovation)
This is one of my favorite movies. It is witty, sharp and outrageously comic. Our architect is the character of Guru (Vidyapathi) played by the legendary Kishore Kumar. Guru has a flock of 4 friends that he is really close to and is always available to them in the role of an advisor, a psychiatrist and above all a friend. He has solution for almost every problem that you can throw at him. Most of his solution look awkward, but they all work beautifully! The outline of this movie is how Guru helps his friend, Bhola (played by Sunil Dutt), who has no knowledge of music, to capture the heart of a dame, Bindu (played by Saira Banu), who is obsessed with music.
Scenes to watch for:
1. There is a scene in the middle of the movie, where the whole gang tries to spy on Bindu and her music teacher – Master Pillai (played by Mehmood). While spying, most of the other members of the team are obsessed by how beautiful Bindu looks and some are totally angry with Master Pillai for his bold movies. While all this is happening around him, Guru, using his keen observation skill analyzes that in reality, Bindu has no liking for the teacher per se, instead, she is fascinated by his musical talent and respects him for that. This single observation shapes up the remainder of the movie and becomes the key instrument in getting Bhola, his life’s love.
Although it sounds very simple, but keen observation is a very rare skill. Unfortunately, it is also one of those skills that you cannot pick up in a class. You need to practice it by opening your mind and trying to look beyond the obvious. The architects who master this skill are automatically promoted to a different league than their competition. They have long lists of satisfied clients and are up to their neck with repeat business.
2. At one point during the movie, when Bhola loses faith in Guru’s strategy and approach, he grows dull and erratic. In this scene, Guru cheers him up by pointing out the silver lining and giving him a projection of what future could hold. At the same time, he also addresses his immediate concern by justifying his approach and elaborating on why he is doing things the way he is doing it.
It is a very common problem with us as Architects. We usually get carried away with the details of the technology and assume that our team and the people sitting across the table understand the reasons and rationale, right? Wrong! It is quite important for you as an architect to explain your decisions to the people around you – in the form of architectural decisions documentation or one-on-one discussions - whatever works. The flip side of this aspect is that if your team does not understand why a decision has been made, they will not be able to sell it on your behalf to others. In fact, it can also happen that they come back from meeting convinced that the decision that you have made is wrong. And the problem keeps on snowballing …
3. In general, throughout the movie you will notice that our architect never gives up. He is always on the lookout for alternatives, for other things that may click … for a plan B. During the first half of the movie, upon learning of Bindu’s fascination of music, Guru tries to teach Bhola the fine art of music. After failing miserably at that, he comes to terms with the fact this approach is not going to work and let’s go of the approach. While he is pondering over what to do next, his mind picks up the faint sound of a radio playing at a distance. One thing leads to another and not a long time after, he decides to work with Bhola as his playback singer. A pure, master stroke of genius!
This scene can teach us the value of keeping our eyes, ears and mind open. The next big idea can come from anywhere and at any time. There are lots of corollaries available outside the technology world which can give us insights into how to tackle the most complex of IT issues. Another important lesson in this scene is to understand and appreciate different talents available in your team and come up with ingenious ways on how to put them to best use. You have dead weights in your team only because you have given up on figuring out how best to use the skills available.
While reading Andrew Manning’s blog entry on “Enterprise Architects: Time for more job titles?” I began thinking about a barbeque I attended at a friend's place few weeks ago where colleagues and peers had gathered. It was interesting to observe that folks who had gathered were finding it hard to pick on neutral topics beyond the day’s weather and the difficulty in maintaining the lawn, using the host’s backyard as a case-in-point. It was not hard to see why. A few were from the ‘sales’ side of our business – account managers, engagement leaders and the like – and others from the consulting side - IT architects and consultants. And not surprisingly, it was the few Marchitectects in our midstwho were trying to find an icebreaker.
Enterprise Architects with service firms juggle the above challenges, along with their day-jobs of helping clients architect robust, scalable technology and business solutions. Which brings us back to where I started: the delicate balance between Architecting business and technology solutions - which architects are skilled at – and the business of architecting technology solutions (read ‘selling’ architecture as a service) which is a skill Architects try to acquire. Now, this yin-yang has another dimension to it: measuring the ‘value’ that a consulting Enterprise Architect/Marchitect brings to the table. …
I will continue the line of thinking in my next post
]]>In my last post, I talked about the movie Lagaan and the lessons it held for Architects about selling ideas, negotiations, leading change etc.
‘Remember the Titans’ (Year of Release: 2000; Director: Boaz Yakin; Our Architect: Coach Boone, played by Denzel Washington; Architect's Character: Chief Coach of the first mixed race football team) is set against the time of segregation. Then the Government abolished segregated schools and gave the right to all students to enroll in any school. The movie focuses on one such school - T C Williams High School in Virginia which has been educating white students but has now opened up to black students too. There is an atmosphere of tension and apprehension on all sides. In the midst of all this turmoil, Coach Boone lands up as the head coach of the school’s new football team.
The lessons that an architect can learn from this movie are:
• Leadership Qualities
• Acting as Change Agents
• How to get people of diverse values & backgrounds to come together as a team
• Maturity to appreciate when usual rules do not apply
• Improvisation
Scenes to watch for:
1. There is a scene during the initial rounds of practice when a black team mate is confronted by the captain, who happens to be white, on how he is not playing for the team. The captain goes on to describe this player as a waste of God gifted talent and criticizes his attitude. To this, the black player replies – “Attitude reflects the leadership, Captain.” He further substantiates his statement by pointing out how some of the white players are not playing the game in the correct spirit, right under the captain’s nose and how that does not bother him.
This is one big, big take away from this movie. In our world too, attitude of the team that we are working with reflects the attitude and approach of the leader. This particular scene teaches us the value of being fair, treating every team member with respect and impartially. It also emphasizes the importance of seeking feedback from the juniors who work with you directly. This can happen informally, over a cup of coffee or a beer. What differentiates a good architect from a great architect is the latter’s ability to be open to criticism and adaptability to change.
2. After the end of a very trying training camp which lasts for a few weeks, Coach Boone congratulates the selected team by saying – “I am not going to talk to you about winning or losing. You are all winners in my book already. Because you did not kill each other at the camp”.
The very simple gesture of appreciation can go a long way in boosting your team’s morale. And yet, we don’t see it happening as often as it should. This is doubly true for high risk, high stake projects because everyone gets so engrossed in the day to day work that there is hardly any time for appreciation. Regardless of the nature and complexity of the project that you work on, do remember that you are working with people; people, who are not machines. Appreciation is a nice gesture that should be displayed whenever the opportunity arises. For complex projects you should list it as a to-do item in your task list to look for opportunities for appreciation the same way you find out time for reviews.
3. In the concluding scene of the movie, there is a dialogue by one of the coach’s daughters – “People say that it can't work - black, white. Here we make it work every day. We still have our disagreements, of course, but before we reach for hate, always, always, we remember the Titans.” That, kind of, sums it all up!
Gives you a true picture of how team with diverse backgrounds can come together and achieve wonders under the architect’s leadership. Need I say more?