Welcome to our blog, the digital brainyard to fine tune "Digital Master," innovate leadership, and reimagine the future of IT.

The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief infrastructure officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Inspiration Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. The future of CIO is entrepreneur driven, situation oriented, value-added,she or he will take many paradoxical roles: both as business strategist and technology visionary,talent master and effective communicator,savvy business enabler and relentless cost cutter, and transform the business into "Digital Master"!

The future of CIO is digital strategist, global thought leader, and talent master: leading IT to enlighten the customers; enable business success via influence.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

KPIs or CSFs for Data Architecture

Try to look at the organizational values or the architecture principles in general, and work outward from there.

Considering that data and the structural quality thereof as a major corporate asset, the importance of data architecture is often overlooked, despite in many organizations data being the true business jewels. Applications come and applications go, ‘Big Data’ is hot, ‘small data’ is helpful, but do you have solid data architecture as a foundation, is there proper data management strategy, how should you measure Key Performance Indicators (KPI) or Critical Success Factor (CSF) of  DA effectively?

1. Data Management Strategy & Data Architecture

Data Management Strategy is an integral element of overall IT strategy which is also critical ingredient of business strategy, A solid data strategy must be both practical and extensible. This has to include data flows in & out of the organization and under what circumstances use of standard file systems is considered permissible. And how well does this strategy allow for changes to the business or new technologies.

Four Perspective of Data Architecture: For data-architecture, the non-functional (qualitative) requirements are usually more important than the functional ones. Obvious examples include security, privacy, and data quality management, and all the usual compliance checks. Any applicable law or industry-standard implies a performance-indicator of some kind. There are four perspectives that any architecture must keep in mind and those are
-Performance
-scalability
-risk/governance
-availability/fault tolerance  

2. Data Reference Architecture, Framework & Standards


Data Reference Architecture: The chief data architect is the steward of an organization's information base and data flows. This requires a foundation for allowing others to classify the nature of the data in question and understand how to apply that sources of data to the overall data management strategy and reference architecture. 

Framework: The rules and procedures for implementation/integration/etc of data resources must have clear and extensible rules for maintaining the strategy and reference architecture. The framework must include procedures for altering the above, or otherwise submitting proposals for doing so based on local requirements.

 Standards: The data architecture should have clearly defined sets of tools, rules (best practices) & requirements for usage, and standards for implementation at a detailed level to ensure consistency across the organization. This helps reduce costs in so many ways, especially with training new hires, or transferring resources from one department/project to another.

Flexibility: to be added as necessary. In general, consistency is a virtue in data management, but there has to be enough flexibility to allow new technologies and deliverables for analysis, design, construction, and administration of data that should be clear and evident. 

3. KPIs for Data Architecture 

Try to look at the organizational values or the architecture principles in general, and work outward from there. Every principle (such as transparency) implies an architecture-principle (design for transparency) that implies a KPI (or perhaps non-key performance-indicator) of some kind. You could derive a suitable unit of work/output for the enterprise group. And there are two levels of delivery.
1) the entities and relationships
2) the attributes and metadata/descriptions. 

Generally speaking, there are two or more groups to work on the data: 1). One group is responsible to define the enterprise data entities 2). And another group is responsible to use the entities to develop the Logical & Physical Data model. How could you measure the performance of these two groups together? 
1) 1st group: as some things will be more complex than others, so you need to factor in all three elements
-the number of entities as a measure of business complexity
-the number of relationships as a measure of the architecture complexity
-a number of attributes as a measure of granularity.

2) Theoretically, the second group outputs are reuse,
-number of models as a measure of reuse
-number of entities as a measure of business complexity
-number of relationships as a measure of the architecture complexity
-number of attributes as a measure of granularity. 

3) Could the items mentioned below be critical success factors for both the groups combined?
- Percentage of Enterprise Data Entities being identified & used to design Data Model
- Percentage of Data Entities that are assured to be identified for a project by the Service while delivering the Logical Data Model.
- Anything around the scalability of the data model by the architects?
- Anything around design for performance by the architects?
-Are the models for the Data Architecture current with the business data model?
-Is the Data Architecture documentation up to date?
Is data redundancy minimized to n %?
-Are the DBAs skills current with the current IT Operating Model

4) KPIs at transaction Level (DBA):
a) transactions/sec (performance, scalability)
b) mean-time of a transaction (performance, scalability)
c) mean-latency time for a transaction (performance, scalability)
d) daily mean-latency time for a transaction (daily average, scalability)
e) transactions-per-day (scalability)
f) daily mean-latency time for a transaction per transaction ( d / e, scalability)
g) total failed logins per day (security)
h) total failovers per day (availability)
i) daily mean-time for failover to secondary service (availability

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

CIO's Agile Practices in Managing IT Complexity

Agile is the practice for both eliminating unproductive complexity, and enforcing productive complexity.

Businesses become over-complex and hyper-connected today, agility is the ability of an organization to sense opportunity or threat, prioritize its potential responses, and act efficiently and effectively. More specifically, what does Agile mean for IT and business, how does CIO leverage agile in managing IT complexity?


  • Agile is the practice for both eliminating unproductive complexity, and enforcing productive complexity: There are two types of complexity: unproductive complexity and productive complexity as well: Unproductive complexity includes such as bureaucracy, silo walls between functions, and confusing matrix designs, resistance to change, workforce constraints, slow decision-making, complex administrative processes and competing incentives; growing misalignment between the needs of the organization and the processes supporting it.etc. Whereas productive complexity includes such as design complexity or highly productive complexity --employees interacting as they create value from intangible knowledge-based assets, invisible but powerful learning agile culture, and cross-siloed business collaboration, or make macro-systematic complexity such as regulations more value added. 
  • Agile is focused on the practice of complex human responses to complexity in social environments: So the promise of its application outside requirements capture and programming sprints in software engineering are much greater than that of the mathematical approaches to physical systems.Agile could be seen as the social practice of complexity theory, and as such there are two aspects of the same reality and contributions on two complementary levels to dealing with the same issues. Respond to customer requests quickly and Make sure problems are really resolved. 
  • Measure IT customer satisfaction, IT performance and take action based on the measurements. Well design the right set of KPIs to make complex IT services accordingly, the goal is to present IT value, not confuse customers; business-focused, rather than internal IT-driven, Practice Agile for iterative communication and continuous improvement. Establish Service Level Agreements (comprehensive, but not overly-complicated), that are highly responsive to the needs of customers, business and external customers and make sure the SLAs are consistently being achieved under both clouds and an on-premise environment.
    IT projects are complex and costly, IT leaders need to build a strong relationship with the entire senior management team via agile principles -iterative communication and cross-functional collaboration, so that they understand and support IT for resources needed to support the business effectively, as you can't be agile when you don't have the right resources, as well as removal of organizational impediments and issues to agile adoption. IT is complex, practice Agile to ensure that IT is continuously talking with customers to understand and respond to their problems and requirements for applications, hardware, networks (access, response time, etc.). Provide a customer-centric business solution, IT customer training, communications with IT customers, etc. enables customers to perform their jobs effectively and improve overall organizational agility.












Enterprise GRC Concept Clarification: Systemic Risk vs. Strategic Risk?

Systemic risk is more foundational whereas strategic risk is more intentional.

Systemic Risk is a Macro/ helicopter view of the entire system or significant chunks thereof. The strategic risk, however, usually involves distinct entities, organizations, firms, etc... As they continue on their long term but separate paths. More specifically: 
  • Systemic risk is more foundational whereas strategic risk is more intentional. Systemic risk is a flaw in a system. Strategic risk is knowingly assuming a risk because it is believed that the potential reward outweighs the potential downside. Systems can create self-reinforcing modes that become ingrained and therefore almost impossible to change. Worse, those modes gradually become viewed as the norm to such an extent that people don't even notice them. However, these ways of doing things can create stresses so large that the system fails. 
  • Systemic risk is the risk to a system. Systemic Risk = The possibility of risk being cascaded to all entities in a given industry, function or partnership. Strategic risk is the risk of a strategy. Strategic Risk = Risk associated with specific long term goals or objectives.
  • Systemic Risks are risks external to the organization, such as political environment, geographical environment, industry, etc. Strategic Risks are the risks associated with the strategies of the organization/firm, investing heavily in new products/services. Strategic risk is broader involving many unknowns and unknowable because it is about the future. 
  • Systemic risk is not confined to the finance system; indeed a culture or behaviors can contain systemic failings and risks to objectives. Strategic risks are those which exceed a certain pre-defined threshold as having a material consequential impact to an entity and its objectives; regardless of their origin or type. 
  • Systemic Risk can be measured, or the methodology can be used in different contexts, ecosystems, energy complexes, political systems, and the productions thereof, etc....Interdependencies of unknown quantities and therefore effects; on the contrary, the strategic risk ought to be confined to specific moves within the game and the risk of not achieving goals/objectives...to win. There are overlaps between the two. 
  • Systemic risks concern the external factors that can affect the delivery of any set of objectives; strategic, operational, etc. They tend to be removed from the direct control of the affected stakeholders. Strategic risks are the uncertainties, inherent variability and the unknown interdependencies among sources of risks that could have an effect on the delivery of strategic objectives or plans.   
  • Strategic risk is confined to scope while systemic risks are market or regionally defined. An overlap between the two is possible but a good compromise will be to regard systemic risks as affecting the "setting" and strategic risk affecting "scope". Project novelty, low learning curve position, ignorance, absence of a flexible and responsive feedback format, lack of objective data and lax governance contribute to strategic risk given that each may negatively impact the robustness of strategic plans. 
Systemic risk is an intrinsic risk that is always present when using a certain type of system. Systemic risks are those born of a system or even culture - regardless of their type. The risk has become so ingrained as to be 'systemic'. Its origin or type is irrelevant. By contrast, a strategic risk (which may or may not be systemic in nature) is that which poses a threat to subjects, strategic objectives. Nothing more, nothing less.







Monday, September 2, 2013

CIO as Chief Insight Officer II: How to Build an Analytics-Based Culture.

To make analytics pervasive within an organization, analytics needs to be used as a way of reducing, not eliminating, or explaining uncertainty in the daily decisions.  

Modern organizations are over-complex and hyper-connected, traditional command-control, gut feeling decision-making style is losing its steam, analytics is at top agenda of CIO in any forward-thinking business today, however, what is needed to make Analytics as much as part of the corporate culture? 
  • Try to understand the audience you are dealing with before you try to build an analytics program. Leaders got where they are doing what they do. When you use analytics and data and facts to contradict what people "know", you could run into a situation where your audience feels that if facts are contradicting accepted belief and theory, then maybe the facts are incomplete/wrong.  It is so easy to lose executives in the technical side as well as in the politics and multiple truths. To make analytics pervasive within an organization, analytics needs to be used as a way of reducing, not eliminating, or explaining uncertainty in the daily decisions.  
  • Then try to get the team on the same page with the "why, what, how" thinking to ensure that the point of analytics is not just to run the number, create new algorithms, etc., but to provide new and unique insights that drive decisions and strategies. Everything needs to be framed in terms of how business objectives/goals will be achieved. Few get excited about multivariate analysis, linear regression or star schemas. They do get excited when you talk about ROIs, efficiency gains, market-share, and ability to select the most profitable customers, managing risk, and identifying new profitable niches. Your task is to demonstrate how analytics can deliver those benefits. Only then will you be able to talk about buying those expensive tools that take you beyond reporting. 
  •  “Think big, start small" is critical to advancing analytics in most organizations. The small successes and efficiency gains can position you for advancing to the next levels of analytics (forecasting, segmentation analysis, predictive and optimization). The long term plan now has credibility because of those successes and there is trust that the employees will individually benefit which leads to the company benefit. And then the funding you need will be easier to attain as it will be the support to push forward.  
  • Make analytics more accessible. The problem with traditional advanced analytics solutions is that they are not accessible by decision makers.  The key is to understand the business processes. Think like the user and then develop back to the sources. Analytics uses algorithms, reports use visualization. Visualization should not be a static report. It should be an interface for both steering analytics and seeing analytical results. The difference in reporting and analytics is like this: Reporting focuses on the known and the past; analytics focuses on the unknown both past and future. 
  • Build a 3-tier Analytics model of "Visibility", Understanding", and "Guidance". Almost all stats methods and analytics business questions can be broken down into one of those three groups (or at least a combination). Make reporting the base level type of analytics. "Reporting" would fall into the Visibility category. It answers all questions about "what is the state" of something, or "where are we at" with something, or "how much" of something.... It doesn't give you deeper insights ABOUT anything or PRESCRIBE a recommendation which analytics should fill the gap. Also, analytics is not about getting to a 100% certain outcome. But rather it needs to be used as a tool for reducing uncertainty in business. Whether that uncertainty relates to possible strategies, operational processes, or improved decision making.  
  • A truly analytical organization not only measures the right things at the right time to facilitate quality decision making but also measures for the sake of improving the business not punishments or rewards. However, the causes companies to shy away from analytics are "technical complexity". 
Ideally, the handy analytics tools are like GPS devices, permeating business's daily life, tell you where you are, how you get there, what is your heading, speed, and final destination. The good data visualization is central to Analytics. The logic steps also help embed analytics into business culture seamlessly. 






Connecting the Enterprise Dots: BPM-PMO-EA

Regardless of their physical location, either under the same roof or reside in a different structure, the point is that they (EA, BPM, and PMO) are inter-connected, the holistic view and management discipline will improve overall business maturity.

Enterprise today is extremely complex, the functional structure provides a certain level of business efficiency and management discipline, but it also creates silos and wastes resources, with the emerging digital technology trend leading enterprise more inter-connected than ever, what are the optimal structures to manage processes and projects?

For instance, should you combine BPM functions with the PMO, EA, or strategic planning? Did you see the trend of merging BPM with PMO to form the enterprise PMO? How to connect the enterprise dots in achieving high-performance and reaching high-level organizational maturity?


1. BPM vs. EA vs. PMO

  • BPM vs. PMO: BPM is to manage knowing from the flow. The maturity methodologies are underpinned by the contention that the BPM initiative is a “journey” that does not have a finish line. On the contrary, one of the key principles of project management is that a project is an initiative with a clearly defined “beginning” and “end”. No wonder traditional PMOs are struggling to incorporate process “projects”. The single biggest factor limiting the value of the PMOs to manage process projects is that it limits understanding of different methodologies and their applicability in different situations so they seek to impose their narrow view of projects to process work which often results in frustration for both sides: “If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.”  
  • EA vs. BPM: Considering that EA does a great job in describing the “enterprise genotype” (enterprise artifacts or assets) and “enterprise phenotype” (a set of observable characteristics such as performance), then the BPM with its executable models of relationships between artifacts can form the bridge (an enterprise executable model) from the “enterprise genotype” to “enterprise phenotype”. BPM and BA always go hand-in-hand, whereas BA is a subset of EA, EA can become such an effective tool to guide convergence, enhance communication, standardize the process, and assess process maturity.  
  • EA vs. PMO vs. BPM: EA helps to optimize all aspects of the enterprise to increase profitability. EA is an actionable, risk-reducing method for modeling organization change by communicating impact. PMO is there to ensure the effective execution and delivery of projects, not the definition of requirements/ priorities (PMs vs.BAs). BAs (Business Architects) in the business/ BPM teams need to validate the value proposition and define the detailed business requirements. The BPM team can then work with the IT Project Analysts to transform the business requirements into detailed functional requirements. Once the project scope and solution are defined then the PMO can take over, kick off the project, and manage all the deliverables.  

2. The Holistic View to Business Effectiveness

The purpose of a holistic view and management experiment is to improve the project success rate, share resources, reduce waste, enhance overall business capabilities and increase business effectiveness and efficiency.

  • The trend to integrate the related functions or at least not think them as complete silos might help to unify the business process view/capability view/architectural view/case manager view, the truth is that enterprise is a complex entity needs to be perceived through the varied lens, also needs to simplify, highlight and optimize the key processes to reduce waste as well.  
  • Consider the integration trend as an attempt to find an "enterprise sponsor" for BPM among existing "enterprise players". EA/ Solution architects/dev IT units tried BPM without adopting the process-centric view which led to the misuse of BPM. One of the main purposes for EA is to define and optimize business capabilities, to lead a business journey for continuous improvement, therefore, experimenting on integrating these functions will help to achieve the same purpose: to build up a high-performance enterprise. BPM and EA can marry together if EA organization is mandated and empowered by top management to lead Business Architecture for the enterprise. Otherwise, nothing will move forward positively. 
  • Building an enterprise intake/prioritization framework, along with a Business Process Architecture/Governance frameworks within a BPM Program will enable an organization to grow its business process maturity and corresponding capabilities. This will in turn enable businesses to move up the maturity model and become the agile and effective organizations they are striving for. Such an intake/prioritization framework can bind these groups together and create a common set of priorities that support customer/business goals. This provides a key linkage between Strategy and Execution and is an activity that BPM should facilitate. This cross-functional group brings the enterprise perspective, it is critical to bridging functional silos and is essential to building/maintaining/improving enterprise business processes such as CRM.  
  • PMO is yet another try, a recent trend whereby the central PMO is working to gather project requirements and prioritize strategic projects. Also, the smarter PMOs go further, they link related projects and sub-projects to discover and remove overlaps and gaps, they align the timelines of seemingly unconnected projects: A project to increase staff capability could be related to a product quality improvement project and also a technology project – each promoted, funded and executed by different parts of the organization. The integration of BPM with PMO works fine when PMO covers both PM elements: (1). Project, program, and portfolio administration; (2). Project, program and portfolio competence management and coaching (be the source of process knowledge in that area) 

 3. The Complexity of Integration


  • Diverse Methodologies:  BPM projects may use BPMS, business analysis, maturity assessment methodologies, CMMI, or some other home-grown methodology, etc.. These and other process methodologies don’t easily map to recognized project methodologies. 
  • Skill Gaps: Most people in PMOs have no experience in dealing with planning and tracking consultancy projects and some inexperienced BPM practitioners get caught up in EA modeling and lose sight of the end business objective- so there are skill gaps which will cause ideas failed to deliver when combining these relevant disciplines 
  • See it as a close collaboration rather than "merging" or "combining" different functions. BPM can't live without BA.BPM can't really work if not aligned with the Strategic Plan. And eventually, all of these functions are conducted through the PMO. Tactically, a social platform can help improve such cross-functional collaboration to well align people, process and technology and manage them all holistically. Agile methodology provides another way to enforce communication and cross-functional collaboration. 
  • The Process Center of Excellence. Build the process CoE that embraces the combined activities of Quality, Compliance, and Process. Its role is multi-faceted and includes: Management of Process architecture, custodianship of the Quality Management System, Governance, Program and Project oversight, Improvement Methodologies, Training, Tools, Maturity assessment and Best Practice assessment etc. Well-align all of the activities of the CoE directly with the business strategy. Methodologies are appropriate and lean. Activities are complimentary, inclusive, and effective. Responsibilities are clear. Business agility is improved through the evaluation of proposed change against the process architecture and the ability to act fast in situations where change demands a rapid response. 
Regardless of their physical location, either under the same roof or reside in a different structure, the point is that they (EA, BPM, and PMO) are inter-connected, the holistic view and management discipline will improve overall business maturity. 

Sunday, September 1, 2013

600th Blog to Celebrate Labor Day: Sow Innovation, Overcome Mediocrity

Culture precedes strategy, the culture of mediocrity will lead to “so-so” strategy execution. 

Labor Day is the symbol of upcoming Autumn -the harvest season; it’s also a great time for business to look around, dig through, what did you sow -innovation or complacency; and what will you harvest-stellar performance or mediocre result? Organizations are facing the expedited changes, however, the culture inertia always drag them down: How to break through the complacent mindset and how to overcome the culture of mediocrity?   


1 What Drives Mediocrity? 


If  look at business results, there are THREE types of performance: poor, mediocre and great. Mediocre is the largest category. What drives mediocrity? Organizations themselves or individuals? All the systems thinkers say it's the organization or the way it's designed, and the leaders are responsible for the design of the system. But who created the systems, the people. 
  • People are the weakest link to cause mediocrity: Organizations, as a social milieu made of individuals, may encourage or even drive mediocrity. A system has neither accountability nor responsibility. A system cannot provide leadership. Individuals must be made accountable and responsible including giving into mediocrity. The systems never have saved the world but individuals did. You need first and foremost people who value working to the best of their ability, willing to cooperate and communicate effectively under conditions of mutual trust, to achieve a common goal, 
  • You also need the appropriate hierarchical structure of people, with the appropriate skills and accountabilities to make decisions and exert managerial leadership authority at the right levels to organize, manage, and do the work that needs to get done. This also entails that worker roles and responsibilities are able to be defined and delineated and that each person is committed to doing the work required of them in the context of the larger whole. Workers also need to know how the work they are doing, and the work of others, is connected to produce goods or services that create profitable customers. A highly motivated and professional individual can lose their organizational commitment and will to perform in the absence of the right supporting organizational dynamics - structure, support, reinforcing culture, etc.
  • One can begin to see the complexity and great achievement required, in having a group of people come together and raise them as a group above mediocrity and into a high-performing organization capable of profitably pursuing their mission. The properties of the system are the product of the interaction of the parts, not the parts taken separately. Therefore, a system cannot be divided into independent parts. The performance of a system depends on how the parts interact, not on how the parts perform separately         

2. Culture Reflects the Quality of Leadership 

“The spirit of organization is from top" -Peter Drucker

Mediocrity in most of the time is used as a tag word. There can't be a definite answer. One thought could be not letting anybody to reach his or her true potential in the current organizational structure. It's about keeping faith in one's abilities and potentials. In other words, it concerns how well you know your team and associates to carry out a project in the certain direction. Does the manager really understand his/her team's potential? And it's about taking chances and following beliefs and instincts....it’s about the quality of leadership. 
  • The "organization" is a direct reflection of its leadership team and contributors. Strong leaders do not settle for mediocre performance to their business Goals & Objectives. Business culture reflects energy, passion, commitment, and other performance-enhancing team characteristics. Therefore, if you have an organization with mediocre performance then you have a mediocre leadership team or organization. 
  • People can be brought to improved levels of engagement, commitment and performance under the right leadership. Personal outlook and values are important individual factors for performance excellence. Effective leadership, and all it entails is the key differentiator for organizational performance. If mediocrity is average, then mediocrity is driven by the normal statistics. As far as organizations are concerned, organizations are made of individuals. Because the organization and its individuals are relatively inseparable, it follows that when an organization's leaders have accepted mediocrity as the standard, then mediocre results will generally follow. 
  • Leadership attitude drives or discourages mediocrity. It may turn out that the majority of individuals belonging to an organization driving mediocrity are, per se, mediocre. If this is the case then top management's leadership and attitude towards mediocrity may be a key factor in letting organization drive or discourage mediocrity. Don't you think that the best leaders are able to get stellar performance with ordinary individuals? As long as an individual is honest, hardworking, and able, any leader ought to be able to achieve stellar performance with such individuals. 
Culture precedes strategy, the culture of mediocrity will lead to “so-so” strategy execution, only those organizations or individuals that sow the seeds of the culture of 21 century such as innovation, learning agile, inclusiveness, risk-awareness, analytics., etc, can expect an abundance of inspiration and the blossom of harvest.


Tough Choice for CIO: Shadow IT - Problems or Opportunities?


‘Shadow IT’ has existed for a while, it generally refers to the systems and solutions built and used inside organizations without IT approval, and there’s mixed feedback upon it. So the question is what you do with the fact that IT has little control over a myriad of apps that are penetrating the enterprise. Perhaps CIOs face another tough choice, Shadow IT: Problems or Opportunities?


  • Part of the issue is that there is usually no coherent strategy, that all business leaders buy into, coupled with a true understanding of IT spends. Business problems that benefit from technical solutions are complex; the components required to address those requests are similarly complex. IT and the business must work together to be successful, as information continues to be a growing asset for organizations, ensuring that information is delivered reliably, accurately, and securely is a critical factor to success and that cannot be achieved in a vacuum.
  • Shadow IT exists for real reasons, some subjective (lack of trust, turf games, etc.) and some objective (the way budgets work - sometimes there is no money/resources for it in the IT budget, but there is more than enough in the BUs budget, etc.). Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing is beside the point. The fact is that it is happening, and probably at a much larger scale than you realize (hence - Shadow). Keep in mind that the great proliferation of SaaS happened when business managers in large enterprises started procuring cloud based solutions with or without the consent of IT. Is cloud catalyzing shadow IT phenomenon?
  • A shadow IT can cause multitude of problems. Shadow IT is a band-aid for an organizations ineffective prioritization and utilization of resources that will not be replaced until the entire process is re-evaluated. Again the key is who manage what and how, plus IT need to be faster to take decision , visualize IT today is really complicated because its changes/evolution currently are much faster than decades ago.
  • Shadow IT may improve productivity, but cause risk concerns. Is Shadow IT caused by business mistrusting IT or frustrated by IT? Business said: shadow IT is growing because IT often fails to deliver solutions that meet actual requirements, or push packaged solutions which on top of being expensive also don't meet actual requirements; IT said: Shadow IT is also growing not only because IT does not provide a solution but even because that people don't want to ask/pass through an IT Department, with ignorance of GRC issues for long term. Shadow IT does exist because of failure to meet requirements, but the blame cannot be put on IT alone. Building meaningful and complete requirements is an art, not a science and requires significant efforts from all involved, IT, business and hopefully BAs in between. 
  • Shadow IT can bring Innovation opportunities: The key is to use technology that can be easily integrated into IT eventually. Shadow IT has to be always there as you need to balance standard with usability and flexibility. The fact is that "Shadow IT" is a reality and is a deeply integral part of the iterative process or cycle of technology change for a given organization. It becomes less relevant for those companies that possess a culture of innovation than in those that are inherently risk averse. One would think that those companies that have identified IT critical to executing their core competencies and mission objectives would be those companies that have a culture of innovation, but that does not always hold and there're companies that depend on shadow IT to push enterprise IT to innovate.
  • IT resources should be optimized to prioritize what will provide maximum value,  for IT to do the job, it needs the right amount of funding, be fully involved with business and be seen to drive and support innovation. The challenge is how to align IT correctly and one of the ways of doing this is to understand the gaps between what IT has the capacity to deliver and what the business is looking for, so it was not only about the customer getting what they want, rather than what is best overall for the organization taking into account.

  • Overall, eliminating or brighten Shadow IT comes down to a very high-level conceptual component and then having regular agreement on tactics: 1). Have strong alignment with the C-level on how the company will balance common IT trade-offs around reliability (quality), responsiveness (speed/agility/ flexibility), and cost. 2).At the tactical level, IT and the business must agree as each need comes up on how best to seek a solution in an area. If a company is fine having a more diverse application portfolio to best fit requirements then it can likely respond faster at incrementally higher cost to assure reliability of a more complex environment. 
The purpose of technology in a business is to drive value and results, to balance the speed with standardization, innovation with governance, only through better communication and management practice, CIOs can make a right choice in lifting IT performance and value position.  





EA as a Decision Influencer

EA provides knowledge management, framework, and architectural perspectives to enable decision making with transparency and coherency. 

In many business circumstances, EA does not “own” the decision, neither is EA all about how the decision is being made. Which role does EA play? Is it a decision influencer? Can such influence be measurable? Should it be accountable for the decision outcome?
the decision is arguably a choice between two or more options to tackle the issues


  • EA Provides the artifacts to understand the Problems: What EA practices enable to do is to describe the current architecture in views using artifacts that enables the stakeholders to understand the problem, and then provide them with different alternatives to tackle it. In cognitive psychology, the term problem-solving refers to the mental process that people go through to discover, analyze and solve problems. This involves all of the steps in the problem process, including (1) the discovery of the problem; (2) the decision to tackle the issue; (3) understanding the problem; (4) researching the available options and taking actions to achieve your goals. 
  • EA needs to be a key influencer in strategic decisions. EA is one tool that can be used in the strategic planning arena, to help determine what needs to be done for the enterprise to reach its strategic goals. EA helps to evaluate the impacts of different strategic decisions, but it is not really responsible for how those decisions are reached. EA needs to articulate what the pros and cons of each investment option are both for today and the proposed tomorrow. EA needs to present this "strategic" look to maximize the business's benefit from their investment; not to maximize their investment based on the latest and greatest white papers. It’s great for presenting at conventions but isn't meeting objectives of consumer, employee and investor value.
  • EA can provide the best possible decision framework/process. Decision making is so hard, when unsure of priority. The greater majority of these options are circumstantially provided. but even with the best systems and processes there are no guarantees that good decisions being made, indeed the fact that something requires a decision will mean that there will be a bunch of associated risks to manage. In most organizations, decision making happens in silos. EA by its very nature needs to change that. Whether decisions are made and owned by EA or cooperatively the eventual goal is to break silos & make decisions (technology, process, business) that benefit from the enterprise level considerations. This requires a change in the way stakeholders are used to operating and also the culture they are used to work in. 
  • EA owns certain decisions, it should accept responsibility for the part he/she plays.  There is a difference between 'take ownership' and 'take charge". In some organizations, there are decisions that are specifically set aside for an EA to make: What should the principles be? What reference architectures should we prefer? What processes will be used for architectural oversight? EA needs to own the architecture-related decisions. The EA may not get everything he/she wants. The EA may not be given the entire budget to do what needs to be done. The EA may not have dictatorial powers. However, the EA must accept responsibility for the part he or she plays, and the EA team must have some ownership in the end result. As such, the architect is morally responsible for the recommendations. Assuming the architect is any good at his or her job, many of those recommendations will become the road-map, which the company should attempt to follow. That means morally EA has ownership in those decisions.
  • More often than not, EA does not have decision-making authority but it is more in an advisory capacity. Most  EAs don't own the budgets or the revenue goals or the contribution margins. Therefore, the decisions on how to impact those important drivers cannot be "owned" by the EA. EAs are influencers, hopefully, trusted advisors, in those situations, and those are the ones where EAs can see the greatest contribution to the ability of the organization to meet its business model intent. For EA to have an enterprise-wide impact, beyond the realm of IT, it needs to be working with decisions that it cannot reasonably "own, such as: Should this business unit invest substantial effort and money in making a change to their products and services, even though doing so will increase the complexity of the enterprise or the cost of doing business in the long run? 
  • EA is decision-making facilitator. EA provides knowledge management, framework, and architectural perspectives to enable decision making with transparency and coherency. So EA is the knowledge repository which enhances and enables the executives and stakeholders to make decisions and then measure their success based on some quantifiable outputs/metrics. The essence of business architecture can help improve enterprise performance; lubricating enterprise integration; enhance enterprise adaptability as well as accelerating strategy execution

  • EA has adjusted to calling themselves 'influencer' and 'team builders' via 4-step 1) create a shared understanding of the current and intended enterprise which means that more people have the capacity to contribute to and influence decisions not less. 2) Resource-awareness: Any decision made needs to be applicable in a timely manner. This requires resource awareness. Resource limitations are significant and decision-makers who are not cognoscente of what they can or cannot do will always make bad decisions. EA as a KM tool in the enterprise may fill the resource gap. 3) Situation Awareness- If you are unclear about the conditions or the goals or how the conditions affect the goals, then decision making becomes a problem. EA can provide the decision framework to help define, develop and evaluate solutions.   4) Complex problems require a co-ordinate solution: The increased visibility of inter-dependency of capabilities means that there is a reducing number of decisions that can be taken by one person. The EA must use influence as much as possible to get others on board with the plan. The EA must also co-ordinate efforts and create an inclusive world.