EA is a paradox to uncode the paradox of business.
Indeed, EA itself has
paradoxes, in the strategy process; there are three paradoxes that are also
some of the fundamental paradoxes in EA.
1. Logic vs. Creativity
The main responsibility of enterprise architects is to have
a holistic picture of Business Logic of the whole enterprise, mostly not in the
level of part of the organization. Without that whole picture, separate parts
of the organization will care for their own part and maybe for interfaces and
not more, such business logic can underpin business processes and enforce
business governance.
However, EA goes beyond the business logic, it’s also a structure
for innovation management. Innovation is equivalent to sustainability and
resilience for an increasing number of hyper-connected enterprises and
industries, not just for recovery but more importantly renewal. Enterprise Architecture
can support such innovation only if it undergoes a paradigm shift.
EA has a unique position to provide innovation to the enterprise because it comprehends process change as well as emerging technologies. The combination allows EA to both reduce the risk, and improve the reward, of all scales of organizational change EA may support the innovation by developing the Structural Capital and ensures that the enterprise is always fit for purpose of achieving its vision, mission, and strategies.
EA has a unique position to provide innovation to the enterprise because it comprehends process change as well as emerging technologies. The combination allows EA to both reduce the risk, and improve the reward, of all scales of organizational change EA may support the innovation by developing the Structural Capital and ensures that the enterprise is always fit for purpose of achieving its vision, mission, and strategies.
2.
Deliberateness vs. Emergence
EA manifests the ‘AS IS” & “TO BE’ state of the organization. There is one side pressure for EA to be holistic and
comprehensive. Therefore, a number of concepts in the meta-model as well as the number of
artifacts should grow.
On the other side, there are requirements to EA to be simple
and easy as the world becomes more dynamic, EA contextual problem space is
that of a complex adaptive system that exhibits emergent behavior, made up of
customers, products and services, cash-flows, etc.
To balance such paradox, it is resulting into the necessity to use many reference models and other accelerators. It also leads to splitting of EA into layers with different level of information granularity, where upper layers are holistic (covering all concepts, such as enterprise ontology and vocabulary) and lower layers are comprehensive - covering all attributes needed but for selected concepts only (such as application architecture).
To balance such paradox, it is resulting into the necessity to use many reference models and other accelerators. It also leads to splitting of EA into layers with different level of information granularity, where upper layers are holistic (covering all concepts, such as enterprise ontology and vocabulary) and lower layers are comprehensive - covering all attributes needed but for selected concepts only (such as application architecture).
3. Revolution vs. Evolution
EA should be the tool for CHANGE, though it means a lot: the
communication tool, the process optimization tool, the governance tool, the
knowledge sharing tool. So the other paradox in EA is about which change it
should focus on, incremental improvement or leapfrogging transformation,
culture evolution or eco-system revolution?
Actually, they are not polarities really, because there you
can have either or part in there. The paradoxes, however, will each time
produce a different outcome and the outcome is no right or wrong, which also
makes them different from polarities.
EA can become the link between change and transformation: Look to the edge-cases of roadmaps
and transitional architectures and attempt to find the intersections between
those incremental steps and disruptive leaps in technology or business strategy
innovation activities are championing and that's a powerful convergence of
drivers.
EA can also become
the link between Change Inspiration and Change Implementation. The most
observed, planned and developed in the change management is called change
inspiration. The more people on board, informed and even inspired about the
change, the smoother change can occur with great effectiveness and
efficiency.
A reactive EA may
tolerate a silo culture, but an optimized EA should breakdown the silo culture,
and EA program is used as a media to change a silo mentality, EA can even
become the culture analyzer and designer in pulling up the resources and push
up the business evolution.
An effective EA should have capabilities to deal with fuzzy logic but not with outright inconsistency, to do so, you need to allow for partial truths or coexisting conflicting truths, at high-level maturity, EA is a master to deal with such complexity and paradox.
An effective EA should have capabilities to deal with fuzzy logic but not with outright inconsistency, to do so, you need to allow for partial truths or coexisting conflicting truths, at high-level maturity, EA is a master to deal with such complexity and paradox.
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