Five-Step in Data-Based Decision Making Scenario

Challenge assumptions. Don't take things as absolutes.

It’s no surprise to see more organizations intend to adopt analytics in guiding decision making. But what’s the best way forward, what’re the practices, processes or technologies in leading data-based decision making?

1.   Culture Shift is Crucial

No two organizations are alike; there is no easy or quick way to achieve advanced analytics. It requires a cultural shift in a company that is not used to this concept. For organizations that are accustomed to either guesswork or intuition for decision making, it may require a "company culture" shift to start becoming more of a data-driven organization. It definitely would be helpful if the C-Level executives are supportive of the data strategy efforts.

• Get to know the organization’s culture and people (data is easy, people are hard). Start with familiar concepts, data sources, and methodologies. Introduce new concepts, data sources, technologies, or methodologies slowly. Get buy-in wherever possible for the above. Invite open and constructive commentary to support an "analytic culture:

          - At all decision points

          - Educate on how to "action" insights

          - People and process — as well as technology

            -Wash, rinse, repeat… 

2. Identify Decision Points & Low-Hanging Fruit

Analytics works best at the strategic level and then the existing customer relationship part of the organization can benefit from these predictions. The customer service organization culture has to be already to benefit from analytical capabilities. Talk and listen to the clients, understand their pain points, identify the "low-hanging fruit" where there is significant value for at least one group but the relatively easy implementation of the solution, then promote that initial success with other groups to build momentum.

• The first thing would be to identify clearly how and where you can use analytics in business decision making in business. Firms would invest time and money in analytics when the goals and benefits of using analytics are clearly defined.

• Start with a problem that will allow you to do one of two things or both: 1) data-driven discovery or 2) theory-based exploration. Use that problem definition and then assemble a very skilled team to do a Proof of Concept. But, be very flexible to the "what if" analysis that is capable.

• Challenge assumptions. Don't take things as absolutes, especially as the data invariably has discrepancies in it. Grab the data from as close to the underlying production systems as possible as that usually represents "the truth."

• Amplify the best Practices: Oftentimes, this internal marketing may involve doing separate demonstrations and presentations to numerous groups to help them become aware of the potential benefits, and then listening to them for new potential use cases. Not all the business problems can be solved by analytics, so it helps to build credibility to offer the best solution even if it doesn't involve analytics.  

3. Get Data Ready

Essentially it comes down to where the company is along the analysis sophistication spectrum.

• The following are some of the important things to look at before even thinking about analytics
  a. Ensure enough historical/real-time data is available
  b. Data quality is a very important aspect.
  d. A Clear understanding of the senior management efforts required as this requires an extended duration to achieve results. Management should be ready to invest time and effort. 

• Get data standards agreed upon upfront as it will cause the problem if the raw data is/was gathered and processed in a manner inconsistent with good BI practices. Start with the easiest to implement that will convince the company that this is the way to improve their business 

• Use an interactive, visual analytic tool/environment in which allows you to do deep data inspection as well as scenario building. Prioritize the findings into some level of ROI or impact on the business. Push a team to validate and/or do root cause analysis of findings. Use those findings to drive business decisions, then as a team takes action. If you don't take action, then it's just interesting data - not analytics. For the POC, including at a minimum a really good analyst, a data subject matter expert, and a business process expert (or someone familiar with the current business processes).  

4.    Implementation Scenario

Building up successes one step at a time, rather than invest in an initial huge, highly visible project which might take a long time to deliver but might not have any clear benefits in the interim

• Management MUST be open to transparency. Outlining a fresh vision and strategy based upon the adoption of critical thinking, highly effective communication and analytic methods may facilitate a robust change more effectively than making smaller changes. Sometimes, any lesser commitment really represents no commitment at all.

• Starting small and finding champions. Have a champion at the top who is convinced about this technique. This is since you need a significant amount of data to run an analytic technique. This requires investment in data management technology and analytic talent. Moreover, it’s only over a period of time that the results can be acted upon creating a collaborative analytic environment or even an embedded analytic system (fraud management system, revenue assurance system, commission analytics, and customer analytics) which are repeatable and drive consistent business value, for more mature companies

5.    Measure the Right Things in Improving Decision Making

It is important to make sure that you are using the right inputs and a model that adequately fits the problem to carry out the analysis. Otherwise, the recommendations may not be optimal, make sure to measure the right things, and pass the "does this make sense" test.

• It’s both drive and measure to improve decisions. When focused on operationalizing analytics, it means to implement predictive analytics results in operational systems in real or near real-time, analytics can 1) Drive (automate) decision making, and by monitoring those decision results analytically;  2) Measure and 3) Improve the decision and therefore the overall system and business performance over time.

• Analytics can be very useful to measure "success" or improvement between different scenarios. Once more, it is important to be sure that the right things are measured to come to correct conclusions about the performance. Run old reporting and analysis side by side with the new comparing the two to show a change in the results where applicable.

• Data Speak: The business clients might not be interested in the actual technical details as to how analytics generates insights for decision making, but the actual measurable results should always be able to win over believers. 

Properly done analytics should drive decisions. Properly done analytics will give you information that you wouldn't have otherwise. Decision making is both science and art, it takes both data analytics and intuition in order to make effective decisions; analytics is important, but do not forget common sense. 

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EA as Business Capability Producer

The value that EA brings to the table is not just the collection or creation of artifacts, it is not just aligning business and technology, it is not just business improvement but in fact a combination of all of these factors and more.

A business capability is the ability to conduct the business of a particular organization in a particular way, meeting predefined requirements derived from the business model of that organization. As such, a business capability is then a feature of the operating model of the organization. Capability uniqueness would start with – “What the organization does with Distinction which differentiates it from others in the same market place or industry” - as the basis for formulating business strategy. EA (Enterprise Architecture) as an agent of strategy, which role it plays in orchestrating business capabilities?

1. EA as Capability Observer/Orchestrator. A capability is a set of business processes strategically understood. And competitive success depends on transforming a company’s key processes into strategic capabilities that consistently provide superior value to the customer. Though capabilities are inherent in the system, EA's first role is to observe them and report on them. EA's second mission is to get someone ELSE to improve specific capabilities, in a specific order. 

2. EA as Capability Facilitator: Enterprises in essence consist of a portfolio or matrix of capabilities that are used in various combinations to achieve outcomes. Capability is the quality of being capable; to have the capacity or ability to do something, achieve specific effects or declared goals and objectives. A Core Competency is a deep proficiency that enables a company to deliver unique value to. Doesn’t EA have the capability to create EA related artifacts like models, Metadata, and architectural designs to facilitate capabilities? 

3. EA as a Communication Tool in terms of concrete capability implementation: An instance of a business capability consists of a combination of certain organizational patterns and positions, processes, people and their competences acting in the organizational positions and process roles, as well as technologies supporting the work of these people. EA needs to be able to characterize the maturity of such business capabilities. Climbing up in maturity, a rough order could be:
   - State of intent communicated
   - Plans made for implementation
   - Resources (people, funding, technologies) committed to executing the plan
   - Feedback like metrics or KPIs in place for monitoring the performance
   - Feedback systematically analyzed and processed for continuous improvement  

4. EA as Sustainable Capability Framework, that continued to mature, develop, and move forward with the times and enables the business to:
   a) avoid re-inventing the wheel
   b) ensure EA efforts were value-adding
   c) provide a sustainable approach for clients         

5. EA as Capability Life Cycle Manager: Within that portfolio, a capability will be transient unless managed and maintained over time. Therefore, a typical capability lifecycle spans needs, requirements, acquisition, in-service and obsolescence/disposal phases. Once the EA program has been adopted and implemented, wouldn’t its capabilities contribute to lifecycles; help manage requirements and acquisitions, etc, quality, and efficiency of capability is measured in the context it’s used

6. EA Provides Capability View: There are two views of capability: A Strategic View, and A Resource View. And the capability-based strategy will be crafted to not just set up the strategic choices, but also following the realistic process-driven actions. Would it be fair to say that architects can select a set of capabilities and flag them as "strategic" if they support competitiveness along the lines of a particular strategy?  Would that also mean that you could start with a set of 20 strategies, and 500 capabilities, and each strategy may light up some set of capabilities? Would you agree that upon completion of this exercise, the business would have a set of capabilities that are necessary for the complete list of strategies 

7. EA as Capability Producer: Enterprise is the sum of capabilities. Process "step" is close to capability but more "broader" including inputs and outputs (information + material) and quality. There is a very practical question that what is the size of a business capability and how many of them should a certain organization have. Frankly, this is not built into the definition, and it should not. An organization soon realizes that not everything that moves should be called a business capability. The concept should be used with caution, bearing in mind that the management has a limited capacity for such animals. Only a small number of operating model features can be developed at the same time. Skill + Capacity + Tool = Capability      

In conclusion, the value that EA brings to the table is not just the collection or creation of artifacts, it is not just aligning business and technology, it is not just business improvement but in fact a combination of all of these factors and more. EA needs to be change agent, the capability producer and the complexity master.

Read more about EA roles in the digital enterprise:

EA as Complexity Master

EA as Process Conductor

EA as Capability Producer

EA as Change Agent

EA as Strategy Steward

EA as Innovation Enthusiast 

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EA as Change Agent

EA (Enterprise Architect) is responsible for defining, implementing and refining the overall architecture on a continuous basis, from current state to target state, from gap analysis to change management, which phase of EA (Enterprise Architecture) is more time consuming or should invest more time?

The answer is perhaps situation driven, It depends on the position in which the organization is at business life cycle and the level of EA maturity. Mature enterprise architectures would spend more time on Change Management.

1. 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. While Enterprise Architecture does and should include the "whole" enterprise, the "as is" models need only to be appropriately scoped to determine starting state, measure magnitude of desired change, and enable/validate the road maps. However, 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.  

2. The most important task of EA (EA as a management function, not as a set of artifacts) is to enable and make the most of organizational change. EA has a unique position to provide innovation to the enterprise, because it comprehends process change as well as emerging technologies. This combination allows EA to both reduce the risk, and improve the reward, of all scales of organizational change (for example, whether a fairly straightforward process improvement effort, or large scale transformation). All of the other aspects of EA (communication, analysis, technical rigor, business alignment, etc.) are necessary to achieve this most important task. 

3. Change management is Focal Point. The time and effort devoted to communicating in creating, refining and delivering EA artifacts has always been time consuming. Doing EA at higher levels of abstraction, the effort on current vs. future is very dependent on the particular enterprise and the degree of stability in their business model / business strategy. For most of organizations, Change Management needs to be a focal point, as it is where the true value is derived. In essence, EA is also about the roadmap or GPS for business to implement a good strategy, which includes a few key steps such as: Problem Diagnosis (current state), set up policy/guideline (gap/impact analysis to define where & how), cohesive actions (Change Management), and Future state.  

4. EA is Chief Designer for Change: The greatest need that calls out for EA is that of Enterprise transformation. The ability to change organizations so that they better fit and serve their context. The process of how organizations change draws on many disciplines from psychology and behavioral science to engineering and systems thinking. The underlying principle is that change does not happen in isolation. It impacts the whole organization and each individual associated with it. 

5. The Ultimate Goal for EA is to make the enterprise more agile and responsive to changes. Some EA think Current state is most time consuming, as most enterprises (particularly those large ones) embarking on building an EA face the daunting task of identifying, discovering and cataloging the current systems estate. This can be really challenging if you have business functionality duplicated across multiple systems. Doing this at an agile environment; each of these states would be included in iteration. The initial as-is does not have to be "excruciating”. At the end of the day, EA is considered as successful only if it can reduce complexity and enable maximum reuse of assets.

In a perfect world, there would exist an accurate current state architecture. That is rarely the case when starting on the path of EA, and when achieved through moving through the levels of EA maturity will require less time with each step. Change needs to be EA’s focal point, and EA is organization’s change agent.

Read more about EA roles in digital enterprise: 

EA as Complexity Master

EA as Process Conductor

EA as Capability Producer

EA as Change Agent

EA as Strategy Steward

EA as Innovation Enthusiast 

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Innovative

Go for the digital rule of Decision-Making:  Assuredness + Confidence + Due Diligence + Consensus.

Both business and the world become over-complex than ever, making decisions right is both art and science. The biggest mistake some people make is limiting the definition of "decision making" to the decision itself. 

The definition should include the entire process including understanding the need, engaging key stakeholders, ensuring effective communication, assessing alternatives, developing consensus, planning, communicating, executing, and following up on the decision making. In other words, decision-making is a process, not an event. Decision making is an art only until the person understands the science (process, analytics. etc) Here are multiple reasons why decision-making is so hard?

Decision making is hard when Unsure of Priorities

It's very hard for people to make hard decisions because they do not take the time to think about what they believe, or what they stand for... You can't make up your mind because you are not fully committed to what you believe and in what you know to be right. Decisions are not hard for those who have taken the time to establish their values and what they believe.

A decision is arguably a choice between two or more options. The greater majority of these options are circumstantially provided. Even with the best systems and processes, there are no guarantees that you will make good decisions, indeed the fact that something requires a decision will mean that there will be a bunch of associated risks to manage. That’s why the true leaders are born with the passionate thought process, walk the talk and demonstrate the habitat by energizing the team. A real leadership decision is an outcome of providing solution as a consultative demonstrator rather than destructive dictator

Fear of Failure

Decisions can have Unexpected & Unintended consequences. The strongest impediment to decision making is fear. Fear of making the wrong choice, if you make a bad decision or things just turn out badly. The second thing is nothing is in a vacuum, decision-makers have to realize that a decision may well impact other decisions already made or people in unexpected ways. Proper preparations and dissemination of information are part of the due diligence in making decisions. 

Indecision is based on fear of failure. When the "stakes are high" and "failure is not an option,", leaders become afraid to "do the right thing" or fail "to seek to understand” before being understood." This is a reflection of a leader falling back on being a manager and ensuring everything runs right regardless of how circumstances impact anyone else. Decision making becomes immediately easier when leaders remember the following:

1). The best outcome is to make a good decision in a timely manner.
2). The second best outcome is to make a poor decision in a timely manner, find out that you're on the wrong path, correct it and move on.
3). The worst outcome is to make no decision or to delay the decision to the point of ineffectiveness.

The Pressure Involved

Taking a decision means taking ownership, thus exposing you to possible criticism, and people would like to avoid as much as possible being in that place. The pressure involved, which nobody likes and everyone stays away from it if given the chance. The real issue that you might consider addressing is the percentage of bad decisions that are made. That, of course, is closely followed by the second significant issue, why do good leaders make bad decisions. It is not that they are not capable of making decisions, but it's the cultural environment they are in, which makes a firm commitment to a goal, target or action politically risky. Avoiding or delaying decision making is in itself a decision - and very few people take into account its impact. There are two fundamental reasons why decision making is so difficult for leaders

1) They are afraid of repercussions not necessarily related to the "wrong" decision
2) They do not want to accept responsibility for the decision if it is the "wrong" decision.

 Identify the Source of Bias

The decision complexity lies in the type of decision and the role of the person playing in his/her domestic or professional grounds. If you study this process, you will find that leaders make decisions largely through unconscious processes that neuroscientists call pattern recognition and emotional tagging. These processes usually make quick, effective decisions, but they can be distorted by self-interest, emotional attachments, or misleading memories. A good decision needs to use both intuitive mind and rational analysis.

The paradox of decision is that sometimes you have to sacrifice to save and sometimes you have to disable one thing to enable another. Decision-making is an ability that is learned or unlearned and can swing both ways (making decisions or avoiding) depending mostly on upbringing and cultural circumstances. Often challenges are: 

• When the options are too close to each other in similarity 
• The outcome of each option is either unclear or undesirable. 
• The circumstances leave no visible options. 

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 a bad decision. 

The lack of clarity usually surrounds the context of the decision to be taken. Nothing is clear or concise. At the strategic level, therefore, the decision is not about good verse bad outcomes - they can be taken by lots of people; frequently it is about making a decision that has 'less bad' outcomes. In other words, it takes the least harmful decision within a multi-complex environment. The decision is therefore directly connected to the impact on employees and business outcomes.

Information is Key

The best solution is a combination or analytical/logical thinking up front, that is, to make sure you're including the right information and looking at all the possible options, then, to select the best decision. The issue is that decision-makers sometimes do not know where to get the information needed to support or disprove propositions.

Go for the 70% rule: 70% assuredness, 70% confidence, 70% due diligence, 70% consensus. The more important the decision, the more you need to have all the data, perform all the preparation, an increase of confidence of success but the search for perfection is the enemy of decision-making. The more perfection you seek, the more you risk falling into the trap of analysis paralysis. The figure of 70% is not absolute and is only a metaphor for setting a level at which you feel you can take your decision as a calculated risk.

Situation Awareness 

Under these conditions, the determinant factor is the decision maker’s situational awareness. If (you or anyone) are unclear to the conditions or the goals or how the conditions affect the goals, then decision making becomes a problem. People don't want to try anything out of the box because they want to be in comfort zone. A comfort zone can't give a rational decision. A good decision maker should follow process and delegate responsibility according to skills.

The decision making is situational. The process of decision making and even the decision may differ in a different situation. The clear leadership issue is how well and at times how fast, the leader understands the situation and connects with - 'as it is'. Decision making is hard to many people because:
a. They are not clear about the desired outcome
b. They are not clear about where they are in the situation currently
c. They have not defined the gap between the current situation and the desired outcome
d. Organizational dynamics- conflict, politics, etc.
e. Fear of making the wrong decision, which comes from not being prepared to make good decisions.

 Evidence-Based Decision Making (EBDM). The concept can really be used by one person teams all the way up to Large Organizations. Obviously, the more robust the associated data, the richer the process can become. Yet sometimes too much data can be a handicap. The simpler the process, the better for decision making. Be cautious of paralysis from over-analysis
1). Define the problem
2). Develop alternative solutions
3). Evaluate the alternatives
4). Choose an alternative
5). Implement the alternative 

Whether it's in life or in professions...Professionally if you have sound knowledge complimented with good experience, common sense and better judgment of the situation, then decision making is not so hard.

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Twenty Golden Rules of Analytics

"Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted."  -- Albert Einstein

Data Analytics is new gold mine every organization is digging now, however, analytics is art and science at the same time, perhaps not so many businesses understand these golden rules of analytics:

1. Question is more Important than Answers

2. Accurately defining the problem is half the game won.

3. Tell the story with analytics. Analysis is for effective decision making

4. Don't expect automated tools to provide an optimal solution. There is no substitute for an experienced data analyst

5. Correlation does not imply causation

6. Never trust your data! Consider it always dirty and in need of extensive data preparation

7. The analysis has to tell a story people understand and is relative to the problem.

8. Right Navigation Order: ‘Why’ precedes ‘What' proceeds 'How'.

9. Garbage in, Garbage out; fighting for clean and the right data never ends and understand your data quality & accuracy

10. Follow ‘KISS’ Principle: Keep it simple! The end-users must see, understand and follow it.

11. Brilliant analytics does not trump bad decision-makers 

12. Your model should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. (Einstein)

13. The only thing that is certain is there is no certainty, probably

 

14. Find a regularity in a chaos, and recognize a chaos in a regularity

15. The actual model building (although critical of course) is the least important compared to business understanding, data understanding, communication and adoption 

16. Data analysts can just find evidences. Who find answers are who asked question. 

17. Information is worthless, unless it has the power to change a decision
18. The Three most important features of your data are metadata, metadata, and metadata.
19. Observable variables are not the same as Process variables
20. The continuous learning and improvement is available for all involved in the process from the data collectors to the analysts to the decision makers. Proper feedback mechanisms built into every analytical plan can be as informative as the results of the analysis.

"Most people use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than illumination."  -- Mark Twain

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EA’s Role in Agile Projects

Given current popularity of Agile development methodology and concomitant need for enterprises to have an architecture. "Grass roots" approaches are good but they need to occur within a larger, overall structure to the garden. If not, as a whole you wind up with an expensive mess. What looks like a thing of beauty within and to the individual Agile project team, might in fact be - when looked at more globally - an unmanageable eyesore. Even for individual Agile project, software quality is more often caused by poor design and architecture than coding. Thus, what’s EA role in Agile project, should they have a specific person assigned as the architect in Agile team? Should such architect role be shared between different Agile teams in order to maximize his/her value? Or for larger projects with several Agile teams, should they also have a “Chief” EA over the other software architects? If so, what are his/her responsibilities?

1.   Software Architect at Project Level

To be successful, there is a need for a project level "architect" who comes from within the Agile project itself - who is a member of the development team. But that person needs to work well with whichever architects are responsible for the larger scope.The Agile project must live within the constraints defined by the larger architecture, the design of the whole garden, not just one corner of it. 

Scrum masters are responsible for the communication with what is called the Product Owner. A Scrum Master (or project manager) in some organization only covers one product, The Product Owner decides the features and overall priorities and stands between the Agile Teams, the client and the business executives. The role of Software Architect is covered mostly through the process and across roles, since the idea of Agile is to stay away from refining things top down and decide on exact approaches as a team only for each Sprint or each iteration. 

• Ideally, a Software Architect is one of the best in the team and should be involved from day one, minimizing risks by building early on in the project and setting out Architecture directions and coding directions. But then, most important is that the Software Architect keeps on involved and CHECKS if his/her directions are followed and being involved in planning too as at first he/she knows the qualities of the team members and also he/she is the person to make the trade-off between time, money and architecture.  

• Typically, Agile methodologies such as Scrum or others call for a Sprint / Iteration 0, which is where typically the design for the rest of the Sprint / Iteration is done. Architects should be the primary drivers of this phase and serve in consulting roles throughout the rest of the Sprints/Iterations. So what's the role of the enterprise architect? It is to advise the Product Owner during Sprint 0 of what architecture items are needed on the project backlog, and to help everyone understand during sprint reviews how well the project is conforming to the architecture. The architect should also be available to the Team as an ongoing resource to help accomplish the tasks the team defines for itself.  

• The Software Architect should have this role because his/her colleagues see him/her as the Software Architect, meaning he/she is well respected, has leadership qualities to align people and above all he/she is knowledgeable because he/she develops and has made mistakes in the past that he/she has learned from. Software Architect work well in large projects with multiple scrum teams that each work on a different aspect of the product, and on one-team projects. 

2.   EA at Enterprise Scope

In order to have a scrum team follow or contribute to architecture, there must be a clearly pre-defined Enterprise Architecture in place. And the EA, or more likely, the Business Architecture component of the EA. As the problem with democracy, though, is that it must be applied universally. That is, the Business Architecture must be built and endorsed by democracy based governance process representing. Scrum requires a major cultural shift by an enterprise that does not already entrust decision making at the lowest levels of the organization is a valid pursuit for the Product Owners. The Product Owner must be committed to the architecture that a project needs to follow. That only works when the architecture is owned by a governance body representing the Product Owner.

• At enterprise level, a seasoned architect can really set the direction of the technical efforts as well as having an overarching vision, and you should have the development methodology that best fits the project, and not try and cram every development effort into the scrum box because it is something 'new and exciting' And more software architects under an "Enterprise architect" working closely with each project team acting as a liaison between the team and the Enterprise Architectural function. 

• The architecture function on a company level should be an independent entity, allowed to work outside the Agile team. In order to maintain consistency in a companies product lines with respect to architecture frameworks, coding guidelines, end-user documentation, GUI look and feel etc,  then it is important to have a set of standards both the teams and the top managements' backup and respect. Enterprise Architect (or Systems architect depending how you understand the different types of architectures) will continuously keep track of the product backlog (looking for potential new technical spikes) and also follow up major technical concerns (such as reuse, compliance to reference architectures, alignment with business and so on). 

• Having clear, well defined ("well" does not mean reams of useless of paper) reference architectures provided by the Macro Architects - as well as having meaningful designs/models exposed by the Agile team for sign-off at appropriate junctures. The point is not to review the internals but the subsystem interfaces, technologies, standards adherence, etc, Although it will certainly evolve, ideally some kind of minimal design is worked out, exposed, and reviewed up-front toward the beginning of the project.

3. Agile Approaches Rely on Evolutionary Design

The problem that arises in software quality is lack of responsibility for the architecture and design. Regardless of the methodology being used, proper design and architecture practices should be followed. Agile approaches rely more on evolutionary design but without being grounded in proper architecture guidelines and best practices, they tend to fail.

• Agile is only an optimal engagement strategy in the right environment - it is a productivity tool to an experienced development team and with a willing / understanding / sophisticated customer. It is pointless to 'scale up' a team until there is a common foundation of

 1) architecture / framework / standards
 2) process / methodology / standards / configuration management etc
 3) and sufficient stable backlog of the domain requirements  

• Communication is key: Depending on the project, but above all it is important that Software Architects talk to each other, and perhaps even do peer reviews. The right level of empowerment (tools, business process adherence and insight) allows architects to work across and track projects concurrently without compromising required rigor. 

• EA Quality: Enterprise Architects who have a good balance of technical and business skills are best positioned to provide tactical governance during the Scrum process without compromising the strategic enterprise architecture vision. So EA is more focused on enterprise level integration, security, infrastructure, and business process concerns and will only have peripheral involvement in software development (setting constraints to which a new bespoke system must conform). EA will require specific business domain experience as well

Overall, Agile methodology takes balanced approach to establish a software development environment with "creative tension", design thinking and enterprise architecture are critical in building Agile project portfolio at enterprise level, and Enterprise Architects need to play significant role in providing design principles, governance practices and enforcing technical standard.

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The Enterprises IT Ten-Roles and Beyond

IT is a conductor to integrate/optimize/orchestrate business processes. 

IT becomes so pervasive these days, exemplary proficiency in planning, building and running IT is just for openers. Even when this is the case, the IT community must close the business-IT gap to clearly articulate its contribution to business results. Here are ten IT roles in the enterprise.

1. IT as a nervous system: IT can be both the connective tissue and nervous system to the business' blood, bone, and muscle. If you relegate IT to "computers and servers" you’re basically not engaging a core part of your body that is critical for growth. Managing computers and related hardware should be a small part of the IT world, and the rest served as process & business engineers. IT role helps pave the roads for the business to operate as they need to grow or sustain, as well as smoothing the road to make it better 

2. IT is the value creator to provide benefits to all of the stakeholders: For the shareholders, IT improves profitability. For the customer, it cuts prices and optimize customer experience; for the staff,  it makes life easier and job fun to improve productivity.  None of these are unique to IT. The same applies to any aspect of business change; it must produce a net benefit to one or more stakeholders. IT must impact both business bottom line and top line.

3. IT is the lubricant to a well-designed business machine: Software and hardware by themselves will never make a profit if a company’s products, people, and processes are not good and strong enough to compete in the marketplace. IT is no longer simply about infrastructure and applications, but the wide spectrum of integration of services (such as Cloud), business intelligence, connectivity to customers and suppliers, and indeed the agility to cope with an ever-changing business logic. 

4. IT as a conductor: It helps integrate/optimize/orchestrate business processes to facilitate the business outcome. Usually through technology or data in and of itself for the paving. For the smoothing, enhancing daily life and use of systems and data for the business through process improvements, new systems, and new technologies or designs. IT role is also to be a facilitator to business processes and 'service broker' to align business strategy and goals with automated solutions. 

5. IT as a business catalyst: IT as a business Enabler/Catalyst for any organization to achieve their business goals and toning ecosystem. Hence, it has to enable the organization by increasing profits, reducing cost and increasing value for shareholders, customers or consumers, employees, and business partners. The challenge for the IT Leader is to acquire and deploy appropriate technologies and services with the help of the available ecosystem and resources to achieve these significant objectives.

6. IT as a change agent: Retool organizational culture and reboot collective business mindset. The Role of IT in any organization should also be attuned to the business lines and help the organization achieve its business goals, cultivate culture of innovation, also enhance risk governance process; and, foster a risk- and value-aware culture are more likely to achieve long-term success in the business, which allows it to present new dimensions constantly. However, if you want the change to happen,  you need to prove that the benefit is higher than the cost not only for short term but also for the long run. You have not yet done that satisfactorily,  re-examine your proposal and find more evidence to support it. 

7. IT as a ‘Solutionary’: Understand how the organization works and then give solutions that will increase the functionality to lower cost and, if applicable, increase output. This means a higher profit. IT should do two things for every organization: (1) make better, faster and cheaper. (2) do profitable things for the organization otherwise, it can't do. 

8. IT as a business data/information steward: To put it simply, assuming IT still stands for "Information Technology," the mission of IT is to get the right information to the right people at the right time. While the mission may sound simple, execution of the mission may be challenging. In many businesses, it is not enough to provide users with access to the information, they need information to be consumable, summarized, aggregated, and presented in a meaningful and usable way. This is why the business and IT need to collaborate closely so they can define how best to deliver information to those that will make effective use of it. When the corporate organization invests in information technology resources, it entrusts the IT organization with the stewardship of that considerable investment and the responsibility of providing good governance and operation of that investment. 

IT as an innovation engine: Enterprise leaders are increasingly looking to the IT function to introduce beneficial change into their business model(s) to improve strategic performance, achieve and improve operational excellence, enforce customer intelligence and to position the enterprise for future industry leadership etc., due to its cross-functional business view and its knowledge of emerging technologies. IT organizations that are able to push away the urgent for the important and drive to simplifying their IT foundation; create a comprehensive value as innovation incubator

10.  IT also as a lever: The purpose of IT is to move the business forward. Technology and its associated methodologies and practices are parts of that leverage mechanism. Still, IT is the means to the end, not the end. IT role is critical to operational business success, but it is ever more important for business strategy. 

IT role is even going beyond above role,  to be a thought leader, a pioneer of sorts, and an energizer for the business. IT can play these roles since it changes very fast with new technologies always emerging,

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Top Ten Enterprise Architecture challenges

 A mature organization is a base to start a successful EA program; on the other side, an effective EA program improves organizational maturity. 

Compared to many industry practices, EA is considered an emerging discipline which still takes time to mature, in the last two decades, there are many challenges literally EA programs face, organizations need to analyze them and understand the underlying causes

1. Fitness for purpose. Consistent definition and understanding of EA as a discipline adds to challenges. Most organizations stand up EA to "fix" an organization without giving it any purpose. Often, consultants/contractors try to sell the Titanic of EA before they can prove a sailboat that can float. This is what often results in annoying the clients and has lead to the view of EA being shelf-ware.      
       
2. Senior executives buy-in and continuous focus and support upon the EA program. This is like a chicken and egg issue. Executives would have continuous support if EA can deliver value,  but EA needs to continuous executive supports to show value. EA is in a domain where you don’t find too many quick wins. In addition, a successful EA would often lead to corporate culture change. Without strong senior executives’ commitments, corporate culture change just won’t happen. Many feel that time and money are being wasted until they start seeing in the results. 

3. Understand Stewardship and Ownership differences. Too often an EA attempts to take ownership of a business process and ends up getting blamed. An EA is a Steward to practice strategic EA Leadership & Operational Stewardship --> alignment of execution with Strategy is extremely critical for EA success. 

4. EA Maturity: EA engagement model and governance. This gears toward corporate processes, politics, and people issues. Enterprise Architecture is simply a heavy burden to a lot of people and projects if EA engagement and governance model is not efficient and effective. Somehow, a fragmented EA engagement model and governance process are very common at the workplace. It seems to take forever to streamline. In other words, Governance and Compliance inward are extremely important.  

5. Organizational Maturity. A mature organization is a base to start a successful EA program; on the other side, an effective EA program improves organizational maturity. Too many organizations try to institute an EA program when the organization is not prepared to do so. Often, leadership hears or gets the pitch that EA will save the day and they start a program, without supporting the program, thinking that "doing" EA will fix everything. EA requires wide preparation and active participation. 

6. Business/Architecture Alignment --> This has to be earned by EA Team and should not be considered a blank check or entitlement, as this would require relationship management and transparency in delivery to match the business priorities. PMO and Architecture team are critical for earning and establishing the trust.  

7. Move from Vendor/Group/Institute-centric EA to Customer-centric EA. Advance from just being DNA or “enterprise genotype” (a full nomenclature of enterprise artifacts) to provide a formal link with “enterprise phenotype” (a set of observable characteristics such as performance) and business ecosystem.  

8. Constant jockeying with "tactical project savings" vs. "sustainable strategic advantage" argument...(classic misalignment of project team goals with architecture team goals!).  Starting too big,  that the EA initiative doesn't get success as originally intended. It is extremely important to start small and produce results to gain trust. Plan and prioritize some quick wins to demonstrate what change a complete EA can bring to an enterprise. Though it is very difficult since it can backfire at times. Still, EA needs to demonstrate directly quantifiable ($$$) value - contribution to the company's bottom line or direct savings as a result.

9. Mature EA Team: The EA team doesn't just believe in Framework and Technology but also has the capabilities to carry the business with them and got a thick skin to sail through politics and policies Staff. Also, it is not about the "Chief Architect," it is about the team of architects/support staff, a mature EA team. 

10. EA Skills/Talent: Architecture is more of an art than a science and requires more skills than certifications. Enterprise Architect requires broad knowledge from many aspects of, business domains knowledge, technologies project management experiences, and organizational skills. There are many channels to mature as an Enterprise Architect. Enterprise Architects with different maturing paths may see the same organization with very different challenges.

Hopefully, by collecting enough EA challenges, organizations can do more analysis to come out with useful action plans and solutions, continue to brainstorm the next generation of EA and mature EA next practices.

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Is Culture Superior to Strategy

A great culture can support a weak strategy, but a weak culture cannot support a great strategy.

Culture is the way, behavior; attitude or approach to work adopted by or embedded among a group of people in the conduct of business. Every organization has a culture - defined or not. Actual culture is a function of actual leadership, starting at the top. While the strategy is a set of choices set by business leaders, following with a series of actions to compete for the future. We all heard 'culture eats strategy for breakfast', does that mean culture is more important than strategy?

1. Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast 

Culture may be rooted in values, but it is expressed in practices and behaviors. The culture of an organization is comprised of many intricate and interconnected parts, including corporate strategy and related strategic goals, job roles, business processes, core values, communications practices, corporate attitudes and business policies. Culture therefore is or ought to be very dynamic - changes constantly.

• Culture should be mainly generated by the organization's values and vision and the strategy is about how to take a position that allows it to deliver missions that move the company along the never ending road to delivering the vision. As such, the culture will only be as strong as the behaviors of the senior execs and the way they use these to demonstrate their commitment to the vales and vision on a daily basis. When this is done poorly, the real culture (as propagated by the employees, who out number the execs) is often misaligned with the fancy organizational statements and mood music.  

• The right culture is a prerequisite foundation for implementing strategy. Culture precedes strategy. An organization's cultural orientation forms the basis for initiating and improving on strategies and sustaining it. In as much as both culture and strategy are important to an organization, it must have evolved its brand culture and strategy overtime to maintain it as well as improve upon it. Culture is like a brand, while the different components of the brand are aggregated to becomes the strategy for keeping that brand/culture unblemished.   

• A great culture can support a weak strategy, but a weak culture cannot support a great strategy. Culture is one of the main factors that affect implementation of strategies. While successful strategy should also take account culture into enterprise even around the enterprise. A too strongly infused culture affects changeability negatively. A too weak culture infusion affects the ability to walk in one direction, and fill in the gaps when formal artifacts - such as strategy, processes and org charts - are not good enough. That doesn't mean culture always shapes strategy. Strategy leads an organization to success according to a clear vision, a strong ambition, a right analysis of all issues and parameters with culture of course. So the two elements are correlated with each other. When conditions become grim, it's culture (ingenuity, innovation, perseverance, helpful vs. competitive) that will carry the day. A diverse, open, and questioning culture will produce a viable strategy. On the other hand, a great strategy in a corrosive culture is doomed. 

• Culture represents the 'ethos' of the organization, as it has evolved since its inception. Strategy represents the direction the leadership chooses to consider for future growth and orientation. Well-meaning strategy, which does not take into account of the organizational culture, cannot succeed, unless the intended changes in direction are also expected to influence culture. Culture brings speed to market, competitive advantage and defines your brand. Once that culture is established as part of the DNA of the organization then strategy can be implemented. A great culture can also help shape strategy, but you have to WANT to listen.

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• "Culture eats strategy for breakfast” Did Drucker told us that culture is "stronger" than strategy? Why it's stronger is because people have accepted the culture internally, by definition, and it drives their actions. If they didn't identify with it, they would probably leave. And culture is more important because you can recover more quickly from mistakes in strategy if the culture supports these changes than you can from the culture that is maladapted to the evolving needs of the business or industry. Of course strategy can guide changes in culture. Since in established organizations this can take a long time, culture could be the place for a strategy to start. A key to effective strategy implementation is to achieve the same level of internalization and sense that this strategy is part of who we are. Then, the actions will also align with the strategy.

2. Strategy and culture are inextricably linked 

Being fully aware of the culture and its underlying values enables the strategy to be input to, validated and executed across the organization. When the strategy is developed with the insights of people/stakeholders in the organization then culture becomes the vessel that drives the ownership and alignment needed to guide the strategy. You can't guide a fluid book of business if culture and strategy are not inextricably linked. Culture is part of the strategy.

• Strategy drives the business and also "defines" the culture you need to achieve strategy. Culture is the one thing that other companies can't copy quickly - it gives you competitive advantage, it fosters safety, it generates innovation, it encourages leading across boundaries, etc. Strategy doesn't do any of those things - simply calls for them. Thus, focus should be on mobilization. 

• Effective Mobilization addresses Strategy and Culture, together as one. It combines the structure and direction of top-down strategy with the pragmatism and wisdom of bottom-up insight. This feedback loop reduces the resistance to change and the proactive participation allows the strategy to be rapidly and efficiently implemented. 

• Strategy development requires understanding the current environment including the organizational culture. It requires an assessment of how the various factors (including the culture) help or hinder efforts to move to the desired end state. A successful strategy must account for culture's impact on implementation efforts if the strategy is to succeed. Stated another way, culture may dictate the methods and resources needed to implement the strategy. Also, the desired end state will include a culture, either the current one or some new one necessary to succeed in the new environment. Strategy implementation methods may have to deal with culture change as part of achieving the new end state. 

• A strategy is very important but will only be successful if it is embedded into a company’s culture and if the culture is designed to implement the strategy successfully. Conclusion: a company must have a strategy that is focused on serving its markets/ segments with the defined services/products and a strategy to mold the needed culture accordingly while culture is certainly part of the environment in which an organization operates, it represents the 'box' in which actions and decisions occur. When an organization makes a logical decision to 'move outside the box' then cultural change is certainly part of the equation. However, if cultural change is not part of the strategy defining the change process, then there are limits to the execution of desired change, and what normally happens is a sub-optimized result. Strategies fail because they often do not address tough issues like culture. 

• Some organizational strategies set the tone for the culture they want to develop. Other organizational strategies ensure the culture is continued. .Every company has a strategy - implicit or not. Culture must match strategy.  In the "Age of Discontinuity" strategies can shift, but culture must provide some continuity. So either you build a very strong culture that naturally evaluates and adopts presented strategic variables, or – if such a culture is not established – over and over again present and go through the key variables with all employees. But, of course, nothing beats the combination of a nurtured, functioning and good working organization culture with sound and well defined strategic variables. 

3. Strategy can be changed quickly, Culture can Take Long Time to Change

There are interactions between the strategic fundamentals, the style of the leadership, the systems of the management, the structures of the organization, the culture understanding, and the shared knowledge. Culture is tough and can take a long time to change because it may require leadership and change management practices. Strategy, on the other hand, can be regarded as the means to attaining and maintaining a position of advantage over adversaries through the successive exploitation of known or emergent possibilities rather than committing to any specific fixed plan designed at the outset. 

• Culture can take a long time to change.  Culture change is like any other change – sometimes it is welcome, sometimes it is not, by people in the organization. For example, a high avoidance culture – it is a cultural profile that is hard to change because the very behaviors that need to change, the avoidance behaviors, generate avoidance of changing them. The challenges are: (a) analyzing and understanding the existing culture; (b) assessing the effectiveness of the culture; (c) understanding what changes need to be made in order to support the new strategy. It is imperative to understand what is/isn't working before attempting any changes 

• Anyone deciding on changes to strategy in an organization need to ensure they are either (1) Consistent with the current culture, or (2) making a knowledgeable decision to buck the culture and move in a new direction. If you decide to buck the culture, you really need a strong leadership team supporting your effort, or you will lose. Strategic success without cultural agreement is nearly impossible. Short-term change may occur, but the 'silent majority' in the background will immediately begin to find workarounds, and wait for their time to simply revert to their normal comfort zones. 

• A strong bond between these two elements will lead to success by goal attainment,. A strategy is the vision for how the goals or the “why” of an organization are achieved. Culture is the language in which it is expressed. A vision that cannot be effectively communicated will, ultimately, fail. However, culture without purpose is like an unbroken stallion. If those who are strategizing on change understand the culture clearly, and can estimate how that culture will evolve over some period of time, then they can use that timeline to their advantage in assuring successful change. In that instance, the effects of culture are not antagonistic or even competitive -- rather they become complementary, and should enhance success. 

Thus, culture and Strategy are inseparable. Without dynamic positive organizational culture, no meaningful achievements can be attained with any Strategy. A successful organization will create a symbiosis between these two elements to develop a cohesive realization of goals and communication of purpose. If there is no symbiosis between strategy and culture, the organization will not realize its goals. Worse, it may have difficulty in understanding why. Essentially; they are both equally important. And what is absolutely critical is that they are a matched pair.

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What is the Highest Strategic Priority?

It takes a logical approach to considering the trade-offs between operational excellence, product leadership (paralleling your innovation category), and customer intimacy.

Contemporary businesses today have quite many strategic goals, from Human Capital to Customer/Client Relationships, from Innovation to Corporate Brand Reputation, from Operational Excellence to Corporate Governance, If only pick one, what is the highest strategic priority though? 

1. Strategy Focus should never be One Dimensional

A good strategist pivots between the External and Internal drivers, and frames a systematic strategic change agenda that addresses all the corporate priorities. The guiding vision and mission should dictate the focus of the organization and sets out the proper order of priorities.

• The approach to strategy is multi-dimensional: As a strategist, one cannot think in terms of single thread serial actions alone nor can one give undue priority to areas that are covered by the tactical implementation of the strategy, the approach to strategy is multi-dimensional with one main goal in mind. Most of people may give an answer based on importance rather than thinking about priority. This changes the answer substantially 

• Systematically addressing the strategy agenda is forged by Alignment, the critical pivot point, bridging from Developing the Strategy to implementing it. This involves aligning the Metrics (and Targets), Initiatives, Resources and Operating Plans with the Strategy’s Goals & Objectives. There are people, priority, plans, processes, culture and organization structure...(4 P's, C and O).

2. People are the Weakest Link, Innovation is the only Light

Though strategy is multi-dimensional, it’s no surprise that human capital and innovation catch more attention as strategic priority because:

• People are the weakest link: Human capital is the base on which Innovation, Operational excellence, Customer/client relationships, Corporate/brand reputation & others are built on. Without the right people, excellence cannot be achieved. Human capital makes or breaks a company therefore should be given highest priority 

• Innovation is Light: If people are the weakest link in business, then innovation is the only light all businesses need to pursue now, as innovation touches broader aspects of organization such as culture innovation, business model innovation, process innovation to directly impact operational excellence and customer satisfaction. Innovation with new concept, technology and novels views help substantially to leave a different mark and stand in better leading position always. 

• People Plants Innovation Seeds to make Strategy Fruitful: Human Capital, as talent plants the innovation seeds, as such, the efficiency innovation will improve operational excellence & business governance, and "disruptive" or sustainable innovation will improve customer satisfaction and business brand.  

3.  Depend on Which Areas are most in Need of Improvement

It takes science and analytics to make a good strategy. Strategy is about people, process, technology and vision. You need to let the fact pattern tell you what it needs. Not force fit an arbitrary assumption about what priorities must be.

• It’s situation-driven: The "right" answer about the highest strategy priority is that it depends on which of these areas are most in need of improvement in the organization in question. If they have an excellent human capital program, then putting human capital as the top priority won’t make further improvement, because, as a strategy, nothing changes.  

• Mutual Effect: Human capital seems to be getting the most attention. However, even the deepest and most invigorated talent pool will quickly be undermined by chronic inefficiencies in an organization. Alternatively, a group of stead, if underwhelming talent in an excellent organizational hierarchy, should accomplish a great deal more. That said, you can have the best people, but if the organization does not have a growth mindset, the culture of learning, these people will not be properly utilized. If an organization is looking for excellence, it will incorporate the other areas of importance by virtue of pursuing excellence. 

• The Trade-offs of Different Dimensions: It takes a logical approach to considering the trade-offs between operational excellence, product leadership (paralleling your innovation category), and customer intimacy. While it is important to be "good enough" on all three dimensions (and depending on the nature of your industry, good enough might be a very high bar), a company can not pursue leadership on all three simultaneously because of trade-offs in the allocation of top talent (human capital) customer confusion about what the company delivers (brand and reputation). Amongst other dimensions. 

•  A strategy pyramid: Innovation as a key strategic differentiator and the lifeblood of any business operation, and place it on top of a Pyramid, with Customer/ client relationships and Human Capital in the middle, then Operational Excellence and Corporate/ Brand reputation at the base. the argument: is that innovation needs to drive your business to be able to develop and compete effectively, Customers are the reason for your operational existence while Human Capital are your asset to reach critical business targets, and as enablers for your operations, you need Operational Excellence and a sound Corporate/ Brand Reputation.. 

• Investors should then evaluate allocating capital based on

1) The management's vision as stated through the mission statement and strategy

2) Whether the product/service set and road maps are consistent with this strategy,

3) How effectively the strategy (and plans) has been articulated internally and externally,

4) Employees' ability to execute consistently over time (allowing for the occasional hiccup

5) Valuation based on financial metrics and projections for future revenues, cash flows and income.

An effective strategy is always multi-dimensional, and the strategy priority setting is about the right people, doing the right things at the right way, by first-things-first priority, within a culture and organization structure specifically designed to fulfill the right mission and achieve the right long-term objectives

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