Innatearchitecture

By leveraging architecture as a strategy compass, what is needed in strategy management is understandability, consensus, organic, and maturity for improving the success rate of strategy management.

During volatile or dynamic market changes, Architecture is like a GPS to define the means for the strategy and enable the organization to implement a good strategy. 

The architectural views are any aspects of the enterprise concern to a stakeholder, representations of which can be linked to “planning & development, enhancement, and improvement" of strategy planning-implementation continuum.

Planning & development: Strategic planning is based on architecture components and is executed as part of the architecture process of transforming the enterprise from the current to future states. Generally speaking, architecture does not do strategic planning for you, it is about bridging strategy and execution. It describes all crucial components of the enterprise and their relationships to consider in strategy design and execution. It also defines how to implement the business strategies in a structured and systematic approach and develop the roadmap for driving changes.

The architecture of the enterprise, with an integrated blueprint and associated information, offers a solid base for road mapping, planning and strategy specification and execution, includes policies, principles, standards and guidelines for business processes, information, applications and technology to implement a strategy. A solid architecture discipline implies an acceleration mindset, captures the organizational structure development needs, sets the scene for a process to achieve well-defined goals and reach the next level of the growth cycle and business transcendence.

Enhancement: Due to rapid change and business dynamic, the "right" strategy can't be completely defined by the planning space; it is clarified through initial actions and timely adjustment. It is easy to look like you are making progress by focusing on tactical issues, but it’s much harder and requires courage and skills to really tackle what is wrong at the strategic level. Architecture is an effective tool to enhance governance disciplines including business rules, legal requirements, operational requirements rules, financial compliance, etc. It also helps to enhance strategic alignment and synchronization to catalyze change and accelerate strategy implementation in the long run.

In practice though, too much architecture focus is on dotting all the information using various framework approaches which encourage one to focus on completeness and rigor. Strategy execution is an iterative continuum propelled by both visible and invisible enablers such as process, resource, culture, etc. Strategy execution will keep the speed at sync, strategic planning and execution should keep both long term views with short-term urgency. Effective governance as a critical component of architecture can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many business issues that are captured at the different levels of the organization, focusing on optimization, agility, and overall business maturity.

Improvement: Nowadays, strategy management is not linear, but an iterative planning-implementation continuum. A successful strategy execution needs to have well thought-out plans, prepare “what if” scenarios, analyze impacts on customers and competitions, and plan for multiple forks on the road for the speed to react promptly. The purpose of architecture is to enable strategy implementation and business improvement. Without architecture, there is no context, framework, blueprint, roadmap, etc.

Strategy execution will almost always change the way the organization operates, such change will always provoke some measure of resistance, particularly if the organization is large, traditional, in order to align it with the defined strategic direction, strategic planning. The architecture should be about business process and contextualization, not a morass of details. Architecture and organizational change need to be used, together, for what they are, facilitate continuous dialogues, make improvement on the way.

Enterprise Strategy should be driven by customer’s needs, marketplace demands, and more importantly a practical way to sustain competitive advantage in your product or service offerings. By leveraging architecture as a strategy compass, what is needed in strategy management is understandability, consensus, organic, and maturity for improving the success rate of strategy management.

Posted in: EA,Strategy