Three Aspects of Enterprise Architecture Governance

General Enterprise Architecture is the only business steering instrument which is developed from the architectural school.

EA governance is a coherent set of rules defined up-front, if possible all decisions are taken by the consensus otherwise it is a choice of the chief architect. But what’re the correlations of Enterprise Governance, EA Governance and IT Governance, and how to achieve high performing business results based on high mature governance?

1. Differentiation of the various "types" of governance

* Enterprise Architecture governance deals with how the architecture is developed, managed, shared, monitored, verified, updated, version management, checked for standards compliance, etc. - so governing the EA has nothing to do with governance components in the EA, such as business rules, legal requirements or IT management governance.

* Governance as components of the EA, includes business rules, legal requirements (such as data protection), operational requirements rules, financial compliance - so governance in this instance is items that influence the architecture relationships or other components options.

* IT governance is mostly associated with controlling and managing IT in an enterprise - so specific rules that apply to how IT is deployed, serviced, sourced, implemented, etc. It would direct and guide information technology decisions (selection of technologies, use or reuse of functionality, models, and frameworks for analysis and decision making within IT, etc)

2. EA, EA Governance & Business Steering Instruments 

The most common specific area of EA is that EA is about the interlinking pin between all other (sub) architectures. So it's about the interrelation of all objects which are part of all (other) sub-architectures. So a value chain is made up of one or more parts of business processes, a business process uses several information sources, these information sources are available through one or more applications, which on their turn runs on one or more servers, which are finally hooked on a network.

Enterprise Architecture Governance (EAG) is a discipline that teaches how an Enterprise ensures or enforces its accepted Enterprise Architecture. The same relations are between EAG and EA Frameworks. EAGF is mostly about the organization of the Enterprise Architectural Transformation Process and underlying Business Process Development Life Cycle (BSDLC), former SDLC

To actually facilitate change or movement in a company, you need a business steering instrument. A lot of business steering instruments exist, like the Balanced Score Card, These business steering instruments have all a specific area in which they operate, like quality, policy development, policy implementation, management control. What we actually need is a business steering the instrument which starts from the top of an organization (mission, vision, goals, and strategy) and handles every new business problem from all the relevant perspectives (so not only IT, but also Finance, HR, Operations, etc,,,). Actually, it bridges the business steering instruments to the architectural frameworks/models.

General Enterprise Architecture is the only business steering instrument which is developed from the architectural school. It gives you a holistic view (business steering) a business problem seen form every relevant perspective and every perspective has a whole world behind itself to be described (architecture).  

3. ‘Double Inheritance’ in Governance 

A real enterprise-architecture is a top-down view of the whole enterprise. And IT is interwoven with most parts of the business in most large present-day enterprises, but it is only one aspect amongst many, and it should most certainly _not_ be the primary driver for enterprise governance. As EAs claimed, "an enterprise has an architecture even if it doesn't have electricity": enterprise-architecture governance needs first to reflect that fact.

A closer approach is to recognize a double-inheritance. But true, holistic business-driven EA will just incorporate business and IT governance as components.
1) EA governance devolves from enterprise governance
2) EA defines architecture principles for the whole enterprise
3) IT governance also devolves from enterprise governance
4) IT architecture governance is an intersection of IT governance and enterprise-wide architecture principles
5) IT architecture governance includes service-architecture, solution-architecture and technology-optimization architecture

IT Governance vs. Enterprise Governance: If IT leaders take a relaxed approach to other elements of governance, like demonstrating that value was realized or driving for a rigorous and consistently developed business case for IT investments, then they will have no tolerance for a governance model of architectural decisions that are considerably more rigorous and demanding. On a maturity model, if overall IT governance is at a level 1, then the governance of architectural decisions cannot sustainably exceed maturity level 2. The rest of the organization will literally unravel any achievements that are too far advanced for their ability to manage decisions.

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Is Innovation Part of Strategy

Innovation is a change, but not all changes are innovation. 

With technological advances, businesses large or small have pressure to become more innovative in order to out-beat competition at today’s hyper-competitive business dynamic. But what’s the best scenario to practice innovation management. Does strategy include innovation or is there any additional need for a separate innovation strategy?

It’s situation-driven. A separate innovation strategy which is a sub-component of overall business strategy can be effective  1). If the company does not have Innovation as part of its culture. 2). If the current Innovation Program needs a significant boost, or the intention is to embed innovation in an organization as a new strategic initiative 3). If the company is under threat of becoming extinct due to the competition. But for organizations which have already embraced innovation, then it’s different as innovation is perhaps already a critical,  ingredient of strategy, it would be at the heart of everything they do and would run throughout the overall business strategy. But either way, innovation is a key element of business strategy; no matter it’s a separate sub-component of strategy or integrated ingredient of strategy.

On the higher level, the question regarding strategy is often its width or narrowness (‘too wide’ = no strategy, ‘too narrow’ kills innovation). Look at innovation strategy as the stepwise process, by which a firm gains some sort of competitive advantage over other innovative products, processes as the case may be, but for strategy including innovation, it is about how the organization creates new novel ideas or reacts to incidents from competitors. On the operational level, one has to think who is going to contribute to the creation process, and how they are going to do so.

Innovation strategy refers to the creation process: How does the company create. Innovation must be a fluid process inside any organization; therefore, it will be addressed as part of the main overall strategic plan. An "innovation strategy" would encompass a repetitive or iterative process to create. Different innovation (creation) strategies can exist, being top-down, bottom-up, user-oriented, internal, outsource, etc

Innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to build innovation into a corporate strategy. Innovation must be included in a strategy; otherwise, the company will fail in the long term. A good strategy will include where the company plans to focus its innovation efforts (product performance, cost-effectiveness, speed, business model, etc...), how this links to the rest of the corporate goals & strategies, and the action plans that must be put in place to achieve the innovation goals.

Put more C-suite people for innovation even when the company performs well, that make innovation more naturally become part of the strategy. Innovation should be embedded in every aspect of the organization, including strategy. So, the innovation-driven organization should not only pursue an innovative strategy but also have an innovation strategy (innovation business model) that holds all innovation initiatives. Even more operational, functional areas should move to a more strategic level if a company pursues sustainable growth. as it is business development. A company really needs to exceed traditional boundaries. A strategy built around some clear value perspectives (such as customer value) automatically provides a basis for innovation & business development.

Not all changes are innovation, but innovation is a change. In this case, embracing innovation is a change, so you need all the pillars of successful change management - a compelling vision and an effective strategy which addresses the following: committed leadership and team of champions, empowering employees, enabling collaboration across all the various functions, creating the right environment (culture), and providing the processes and tools to support innovation.

Either an innovative strategy or an innovation strategy, a good strategy takes principles, and practices, with the right metrics, to measure execution performance 

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Illustrategravitas

Look up the Sky, Imagine the Earth is just a little Blue Dot in the Universe 

Leaders today are facing many pressures to deal with VUCA-Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous business and social environment, from test to trial, 'trick or treat’,  there are many pitfalls on the road and numerous roadblocks on the way, therefore, a mature leader has such characteristic like ‘gravitas’. What is gravitas? Why is it important for a leader? Is ‘Gravitas’ the Characteristic for Mature Leadership

Gravitas includes the traits of discipline, consistency, strength, loyalty, power, duty, and steadiness - above all else it is an internal characteristic and innate character. With it, leaders can be steadfast in the midst of change or difficulty; without it, one may drift around and lose the focus.

The gravitas in a leader is like a karat in diamond. The value of the diamond depends on its karat, the “gravity” of leader comes from his/her character. Human beings are gifted with innate qualities that allow them to respond in different ways to the same circumstance, it is the response that defines the level of leadership being exhibited at that moment. Leaders develop at different rates and emerge as effective at the culmination of trust, awareness, practice/mastery and consistency. 

Gravitas can be defined to mean of substance, seriousness, or dignified demeanor, then it is important to both those who aspire to lead and those who allow others to lead them. Individuals who possess gravitas work to maintain decorum most conducive to achieving the desired results regardless of the situation at hand. Once mastered, implementation becomes second nature to the practitioner. The phrase “are you trying to convince me or yourself” comes to mind of an individual who feels compelled to inform every one of their gravitas prowess.

Gravitas is a mindset. It’s not about acting, it's about how you can generate a specific energy in yourself to help consciously create the authentic impact you choose. Gravitas is neither defined by external environments nor external pressures but is ultimately defined by the character traits that are refined by these external actions and interactions which make up processor journey.

Gravitas is an attitude, rather than a behavior. Behavior is just its way of exposing itself to the world it interacts with. It's a responsive element, in that attitudes receive influences from the outside and adjust, if each in their own fashion -- somewhat comparable to the "gravitational" considerations in Newtonian planetary physics that lent their name to the game.

Gravitas and humility have similarity, but also different. humility is more attitude driven, with such humbleness, but gravitas can mean, even more, it could be situation driven, it means consistency, persistence, steadiness, confidence or even a piece of pride, to be who you are and what you do. It takes the breadth of understanding of situation and depth of cogitative insight upon circumstances to have nature magnet to cause so-called gravitas.

It isn't something you have all, it is something you continuously work towards. The power of one's will defines much of one's "gravitas" and how it develops. It is a journey...a series of destinations.

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Can Culture be Measured

Culture Effectiveness: It is Easy to Tell, but Hard to Measure!

Company culture is unique and provides arguably the most sustainable competitive advantage an organization may have for distinguishing itself against the competition. Culture can make or break an organization. Talent is attracted because of Culture & attrition also happens because of Culture. It’s easy to tell whether culture is empowering or toxic. However, is it possible to harden the soft factor-like culture, to make it measurable, and how to nurture a high-performance business culture?


1. The Culture Traits 

Culture is an abstraction. It is determined by the individual and collective DOs and DONTs: fostered/ supported by the people who enjoy a place in the decision-making space or strategy-making space in any organization......Measurement of organizational culture can also present the purpose of showing a mirror.......How evolved management is? Will it determine the initiation of corrective action to create sustainable competitive advantages?

Culture is an Organizational Habit. Culture by this definition is not highly malleable and tends to be resistant to change, like a habit. However, Organizations can learn, benchmark against, competencies to improve business performance. Whereas the cultural aspect is an intrinsic factor that drives the organization's business longevity. An organization with an excellent culture is arguably capable of giving great results in their competencies. The highest-rated competencies could be very short-lived if the organization lacks the culture to rate and retain the value system beyond the business results

Culture is Process: Anyone that is educated and has been involved in a corporate cultural initiative would know that corporate culture is created out of the systems, processes, human capital (and associated continual development), organizational hierarchy, and strategy design of the organization. Through the design of the key company interdependencies and structure forms, the way employees will work, interact, and use their collective knowledge to the benefit of the organization. Since this method of addressing culture is based on systems and processes, it could be measurable. But HOW? 

2. How to Measure Culture 

Culture is difficult to "measure" because the measurement of culture is not only one dimension such as financial or a technical point, it’s a multi-dimensional evaluation. Though it’s hard to measure culture directly, there are logic steps in evaluating its impact indirectly:

First, gain an in-depth understanding: First, a sufficient understanding of the important elements that contribute to the way that the culture works to select appropriate measures. Culture is a unique characteristic of an organization that emerges from the combination of processes, best practices, synergies between departments and individuals, and other—often unidentified characteristics. It is tempting to circulate the current hot tool or metric in an attempt to capitalize on the latest management fad or to use industry benchmarks as a means of assessing organizational success. 

Second, choose the right instrument: Too often consultants, HR professionals, and other well-meaning individuals deploy their favorite instrument in an effort to understand something about the culture. These exploratory missions can be useful but should be approached with caution since every measure implies some commitment to take action based on the results. Sometimes organizations create their own measures with little understanding of how measurement works. However, there are tools and techniques which can help assess its impact:

(1)     Statement of values. This is to be articulated and communicated across the organization. 

(2)     Employee feedback. Holding Line Management responsible for improving concern areas in the Employee Feedback.

(3)     The degree of Process Transparency. What information is communicated and how frequently?
(4)     Degree of Empowerment: How much delegation is permitted. What is the decision-making freedom at various levels of Hierarchy?

(5)     Participation in Strategy and Innovation by Employees. Some organizations actively encourage everybody to comment, give inputs into these two areas in a secure fashion.

Third: Avoid the Pitfalls to Measure Culture: Culture is important, and it is supposed to be an inherent backbone of the organization. Cultural mismatch leads to separation. There are pitfalls when assessing culture only based on silo data, but not a holistic view.
(1) You are what you measure.
(2)     The value of measures is very low compared to the cost of measuring Culture.
(3)     It will be grossly misleading. A culture like economies, societies, and ecosystems, are complex adaptive systems that cannot be reduced to single metric perspectives. Singular reductionism approach vis-à-vis pluralism is a common flaw in approaching such constructs.

Fourth: there’s a preplanned commitment to take action: This is not to say that the exact nature of the action must be preplanned, but rather that the commitment to take appropriate action is needed before the measurement is undertaken. If this message is not followed up, it makes future measurement difficult and begins to erode positive aspects of the culture.

Though culture is difficult to measure, Leadership, Organization Structure and Employee Engagement are the key drivers to corporate culture, so you can measure those drivers of culture in an organization and use those driver measurements to see if you are creating the culture that you want, focus on culture vision, not habit myopia,  and further review it to nurture cultural integrity and improve cultural maturity.

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Is Agile a Methodology or a Set of Guidelines?

Agile is about being rigorous, the very opposite of rigid. 

Wikipedia states: Agile is a software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering, it is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system. 

Agile is both a methodology and a set of guidelines. Agile SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT refers to a group of software development methodologies, like SCUM, XP, DSDM, FDD, Crystal etc., each one of these methodologies follows standard processes and practices. The values and principles of Agile development should be embodied within a specific Agile methodology, since those are the key tenets of Agile development. The values and principles reflect the spirit of Agile, and the implementation is the methodology

The Agile Manifesto is an instrument to succinctly state the mission of Agile development. ‘12 principles of Agile’ described in Agile Manifesto can be used to assess the real agility of the methodology that you choose. One may also pick certain practices like scrum meetings, Domain Analysis, Backlog list, Continuous Integration, Just In time, Just do it etc. and develop their own set of processes that meets the requirements of Agility. Many organizations have implemented Agile by combining SCRUM and XP development methodologies, as SCRUM focuses on Management and XP on the engineering.

Some methodologies require practitioners to strictly adhere to the methodology, whereas agile methodologies tend to be more flexible. Humans are naturally creative, innovative beings and many of us bristle at the idea of applying methodology created elsewhere to our own needs and environment. But it's not like you have to start from scratch--you could use methodologies developed elsewhere as a base and adjust as a tailored methodology based on local knowledge and needs. Being agile is the capabilities to adapt to the changes.

Agile is a culture!. Because to really work effectively, in most cases you are talking about a Team, that is trying to adhere to those common values and principles, and ways of behaving and doing that embrace them. It is important to recognize that moving to Agile may require a significant culture change that affects the entire business. It certainly is NOT just a "development thing”

In order for any methodology to be truly agile, it must be adaptive. That is, there should be regular reflection and updates to the methodology to eliminate what does not work and try things that might. So the methodology is always evolving in a way so as to best deliver value to the customer while producing maintainable and extensible software.

So even if Agile were a methodology, any self-respecting methodology has features that prevent it from becoming a rigid and inappropriate bureaucracy: 

• It will be specifically tailored to the type of work that is really being done.
• It will be abstract enough to permit considerable leeway for professional judgment.
• It will be fully scalable (no, not just big, medium and small).
• It will include user-friendly mechanisms for granting exceptions and waivers.
• It will include wide-ranging but rigorous (the very opposite of rigid) ranges of options.
• It will be implemented through training and tools, techniques and templates that make explicit the team’s authority to vary, depart from or just plain ignore the ‘rules’. 

Agile is a both a methodology and a set of guidelines, so in order to be successful, it needs to become a way of life- all the way through the business - and that is typically the toughest part of implementing agile successfully.

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Innovation in One Sentence

Innovation is a story book that has intricate chapters, with serendipitous cover, which can be flipped over to the next level, but it is a book that never ends.

Innovation is Future.Without it, you lose sight of tomorrow. Innovation is - an Exceptional, Exclusive, & Realistic idea that separates you from others without a second thought

Innovation is Growth, which captures the essential element of any business and quality within every leader.When innovation outside your organization outraces innovation inside your organization, it is time to address factors influencing business velocity, business performance, profitability and customer preference. Look to and listen to your data, use it to help you drive innovation.

Innovation is to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels. Innovation is about reinventing the business direction and purpose at any time. It defines strategy, profitability and relevance at any given time... If you do not, you become commoditized and just like so many others who offer the same product or service. Innovation allows one to stand out and above the rest

Innovation is oxygen. As with humans and oxygen, businesses cannot survive without innovation. You must differentiate yourself in the marketplace. It is air we breadth, it is like water we drink, it’s a nature element to keep you alive.

Innovation is a double-edged sword, keep aware of it and use both edges to your advantage: Innovation is the creative idea or a quick, alternative way of solving existing problem with affordable price to customer. Innovation is also doing the conventional task in unconventional, simpler much more efficient way.

Innovation is converting a problem into an opportunity. The wheel was an innovation that converted the problem of weight lifting and transport into so many vistas of innumerable applications.

Innovation is the heart for improvement. Do something in a new way. Innovation is 'incremental value creation' leveraging simplistic or intricate ideas into reality. It’s the unexpected synthesis of an idea, followed by a lot of commitment.

Innovation is Life; a continuous journey of transformation. It brings new energy, forces you to be at your best at all times. It is alpha; it is the beginning of all things. It is also timeless - for our minds will never stop.

Innovation is Curiosity, Creativity, Urge, Inspiration, Intuition, Need and necessity, Instinct, survival of the fittest and larger good simple brilliance, boldness, logic, rationality, out of box thinking, etc. -- all contribute to Innovation -- from a new idea, to a new method, to a new product to a new way, a new business proposition, a new and better deployment of resources -- an other way to achieve better results....

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”   ― Peter F. Drucker

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IT Governance Effectiveness: Consensus or Dictate?

There needs to be both top-down and bottom-up (consensus) approach to IT Governance for it to be effective and accepted.

 IT governance is mostly associated with controlling and managing IT in an enterprise, so that specific rules that apply to how IT is deployed, serviced, sourced, implemented, etc. And IT governance is key to ensure the business vision is maintained throughout the entire delivery cycle of business change and project delivery. However, what’s the more effective governance ‘style”? Do you need to always reach consensus on approach and methodology with all key stakeholders, perhaps compromise the governance process too much? Or should governance be more by top-down dictate to ensure compliance...

There needs to be both top-down and bottom-up (consensus) approach to IT Governance for it to be effective and accepted. If governance is all top down or even dictate, you'll have a revolt on the ground and foster a culture whereby people look to bypass governance. If it's all consensuses, you risk herding cats and a scenario where IT is sub-optimized by organizational units with no holistic (enterprise) view. There is no such thing as governance by dictate - that is management - governance is a concept that applies to making decisions where multiple stakeholders need to be taken into account and the general management 'command-control' style is not effective. However, some senior executives are able to both dictate and generate some level of bottom-up consensus at the same time. It's more of an art than science and takes a lot of sensitivity and advance preparation. But the point is dictating or consensus need not be necessarily mutually exclusive approaches.

Most of the time you need a combination of both since it depends on people and culture. No system works without supportive members. The ‘style’ of governance may also depend on the business culture. Centralizing works fine if you think your team members prefer to follow you and will perform better that way. Delegate more if you think your team members feel equal and have the will to collaborate freely to reach commonly debated goals, so the management teams put the focus on the oversight of key decisions. 

Buy-in is the key to governance effectiveness. If stakeholders are those who support the implementation of the approach and methodology, you don't necessarily need consensus, but you do need buy-in – to make a commitment that they will all support the process, its decisions and outcomes, regardless of whether they agree with the content completely. It helps if the process accommodates a mechanism for open responses so all opinions are "heard" in one way or another. But it takes a certain level of transparency in the decision-making process, as well as ample mechanisms for all parties to have their voices heard.

An effective governance discipline is multi-dimensional practices with better tailored ‘style’, it should sustain the transformative change in business and steer organization at the right direction.

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Business Architecture and Future of Enterprises

The future of the organization is hyper-connected, always-on and border-less. 

We all understand that the rapid changes in the marketplace and technological advances provide growth opportunities for business to thrive, but also put additional pressures on organizations to survive. 

So which role Business Architecture needs to play in the future of enterprises, and how Business Architecture, as a discipline, can help design and manage such future organization.

1. The new Characteristics of Future Organization

From today's perspective, Future Organizations need to possess certain characteristics and capabilities to survive. They need to possess speed, flexibility, and adaptability to manage customer expectations and develop and deliver products and services to their customers and stakeholders while maintaining or improving their competitive edge. It would require continuous alignment and improvement of business strategy, business models, and operating models.

The emergent trends which shall shape the behavior of future enterprises and some have been happening already.  
- Disrupting Technologies - SMAC (Social, Mobility, Analytic Cloud )
- Digital Transformation (IT Consumerization)
- New Consumer Trends
- Next-Generation Worker & Multi-Generational Workforce
- Accelerated Shift to Multi-Polar World
- Agility & Flexible Service Delivery
- Work without Boundaries 

Thus, rapid business model innovation, digitization, consumerism, and many other factors are creating new challenges and opportunities for enterprises. They are also affecting business capabilities in many ways including but not limited to business relationship management, brand reputation, information management, and competitive advantage.

2. The Role of Business Architecture

What is the role Business Architecture may play to design and manage future businesses that can respond to such multi-dimensional factors impacting business model, business operations, and business reputation? Which skills the architect of the future should sharpen in order to design the future of business?

The emerging consensus is that Business Architecture can have two impacts: business model evolution, and business alignment. 

(1)     Business model evolution

In the business model evolution category, Business Architecture tends to focus on the use of verifiable data about the capabilities of both the enterprise itself and influencers in the ecosystem in which the enterprise operates.

•  In those cases, a broader EA approach is perhaps needed. In these situations, bringing an understanding of how the information of the organization is managed, and how the technology is managed, the EA can bring a unique viewpoint to key business decisions including business model conversations, product and service conversations, market segmentation, culture analysis, value proposition conversations, cost and resource model conversations, and service monetization conversations. 

• BA-enabled organization design and structure: The key and this is where a business architect can provide a unique and highly valuable viewpoint, is to help architect an anti-fragile or agile & resilient organization. In a paradigm-shifting business environment, this may be the most important result of BA involvement.

(2)     Business Alignment & Integration

 In the business alignment/integration category, Business architecture tends to focus on capability analysis, current state evaluation, gap analysis, and development of the roadmap to reach a reasonable target future state. More specifically:

·       Business Alignment: Business architecture can be very valuable for performing a wide array of additional services, including process measurement and optimization, segment analysis, strategic positioning, and a wide array of other business functions. Business Architecture should have the capability to transform the manual process and the business requirement to process design and process governance so that the organization’s mission, vision, and goal can be realized. 

·       Business Integration: Integrating customer experience with business design should be a critical aspect of planning and architecting future businesses. Only by aligning the outside view with the inside view, can you understand the needs of people but also the channels needed to support them? Customer satisfaction and customer reputation should be tracked diligently and managed continuously in this very interconnected world.

·       EA as 'Super-Glue': EA of the future will be positioned as the glue between the customer, the business, and technology as the business boundary has been expanded. For the EA to understand the social media aspects and understanding of the customer experience and all aspects of the service, from the customer's perspective has to be understood too. 

·       Skills of Business Architect: So the architect of the future may also require customer experience and service design skills too. Align these skills with the traditional business architecture skills and you will be able to create a true 360 degrees model of the business, which is designed around the experiences of your customers.

Business Architecture role in designing and planning future enterprise will be both interesting and challenging; from inside-out to outside-in, from static to dynamic; from industrial-segregation to digital modularization; and from legacy to modernization.

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innateanalyticsdotconnection

Analytics is the Link between Information and Knowledge; but What's the Link between Knowledge and Wisdom?

The evolutionary journey of data analytics reflects the trend moving from analyzing historical perspective into capturing business foresight, from operational perception to customer insight; from predicting what will happen to step further: What should you do upon it; or put simply, from traditional BI into advanced analytics; and from predictive analytics to prescriptive analytics.

Predictive Analytics is to predict future outcomes; Prescriptive Analytics goes one step beyond  and tell us not only what might happen (prediction) but also prescribes an action (Prescription) in order to convert the information into actionable knowledge.

Predictive Analytics is to win foresight: What will happen? Which customers are most likely to respond to your next offer? What do customers want for the next cycle of products/services? Prescriptive Analytics is to lead decision making: What should you do? Which offer should you make to customers? Though prescriptive analytics need not be confined to actions taken based on predictive analyses. One could prescribe many things analytically without predictive response analyses. 

Logic scenario from decision to action: You have your past data -> Model building -> Prediction based on your model -> Action based on prediction and its implications (Prescriptive Analytics). Prescriptive analytics is suggesting actions to benefit from the predictions and showing the implications of each decision option. Prescriptive Analytics defines a set of analytical capabilities that include:

- Define a preferred course of action

- By calculating expected outcomes of alternative decision options

Additionally, statistics combines analytics with a decision engine, that enables direct integration of domain knowledge into modeling, enables conclusions from models in terms of prescriptions, usually referenced as prescriptive analytics. You may create a model to predict when assets or machinery may fail and need preventive maintenance. Prescriptive analytics will provide you with the optimal order in which the work orders need to be serviced within the budget, time and other constraints. 

In any advanced analytics scenario, thinking and intuition will always be required. In fact thinking is inevitable! To do both predictive and prescriptive analytics, you have to ask questions whose answers are potentially actionable. And keep in mind, analytics is not the big ANSWER looking for the business problems, instead, how to frame the right question is the key.

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Five Characteristics of Next Gen CIO

The Magic "I" in CIOs' title is innovation, influence, intelligence, and beyond. 

IT is on the way to transform from a cost center to value creator, so does IT leaders, CIOs are no longer good enough to be tactical IT managers only, they have to play multiple leadership roles and wear the different hat to deal with business complexity today. So, What're the characteristics of next-gen CIOs as effective business leaders and "Chief Interpreter Officer"?

• Visionary is instrumental for the next gen CIOs: Being “Visionary" refers to taking the business strategy and having a vision of how the IT landscape, IT organization etc., will look like in mid or long-term and how to support those goals. Sometimes the business users don't have a sense for the IT roadmap, and a clarified vision helps them understand what the ultimate goal is. Showing them how different IT components work together and support their business processes is a crucial step in getting their commitment to all the projects that will lead there. 

• Business acumen with strategic focus: Having the strategic understanding of the business goals, the business acumen to implement them, the financial control to do it effectively and the technological awareness and skill set to provide a viable solution are all keys. It is all about understanding the business's essential requirements, why they're needed and what the benefits are, only then should the technological aspects come into play.  

• Technical expertise is critical as well: It is about striking a balance of management (processes), leadership (people) and technical expertise/IT skills. The CIO should have both broad business acumen and deep technical expertise, with the capability to speak both dialects fluently. A CIO should accept and understand what they have to offer and strive for what is needed to establish and maintain this balance. There are many other seats at the Executive Table which are composed of business leaders. The CIO must be able to translate technical expertise into business opportunities. There needs to be the constant voice and presence of a true technical expert at the Executive Table who also understands both technology and business intimately. 

• Innovation is another dimension to the mix: An opportunity for the CIO to add a lot of value in the C-Suite is helping C-Level leaders understand the possibilities of how new technologies can enhance the creation or improvement of products and services while balancing the technical and business risks, the investment needed, timing, etc. As the CIO needs to provide this "innovation execution" service to your fellow business peers. The concentration should be on what these technologies can do for the businesses, not on the technology itself.  

• Being dynamic: Generally speaking, due to the speed of changes, especially at technology arena, a CIO needs to be a dynamic person with open, growth and complexity mindset- with high ability to handle personal attributes, manage impressions, communications to suit situations so as to make things happen. As IT leader, his/her dynamic persona will directly influence IT and business culture as well. A dynamic CIO can take courage to challenge the executive team’s expectations, as the reason many businesses end up not delivering value or achieving optimal performance is that there are too few executives willing to constructively challenge things. 

Therefore, the next-gen CIOs with such five characteristics can become high mature business executives and tactical IT managers at the same time, with capabilities and capacities to manage the current portfolio of IT related systems, processes, tools, and people, as well as execute on innovation that creates value at the intersection of business and technology, with the goals to deliver greater and greater value to the organization.

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Is Innovation Reaching the Tipping Point to Next Level

In Pursuit of Innovative Perspective of Innovation. 

We all know innovation is important because it is the lifeblood of any business. But compare upcoming digital era to previous industrial era, is innovation becoming more important or less, does the content or context of innovation stay the same or be different, is innovation trying to reach the next level, but what is the tipping point?

Innovation has more enriched context today than ever: Innovation is the process that transforms novel idea or knowledge into business value. The output from the process is the innovation. The exercise of deciding  just what innovation is within each organization IS the single most critical activity of an innovation effort. Because how an organization orchestrates to generate ideas, manages the activities, measures the results, etc. is determined by how that organization has decided to craft the innovation effort. There are many areas within a company where the innovation process can be applied to create value, from communication innovation to culture innovation, from process innovation to business model innovation; from product innovation to service innovation, the innovation context goes beyond the traditional scope, and innovation is not just your R&D department's business anymore. 

Digital organizations reach the tipping point of the new level of innovation flow. Companies have always had a flow of innovation, a flow sufficient for the needs of the company at that time. What has happened is that the flow from "before" is no longer sufficient to address the business challenges of today. Hence, the importance of innovation has increased as business has the pressure to get more and better innovation. At the tipping point, the processes for innovation will catch up to the business need. By then the flow of innovation will have reached a new level, a level that can address the business challenges.

Innovation becomes simply "creating value by solving simple or complex problems." Opportunities for innovation tend to present itself when people are struggling with something. The luggage example provides a great example of a situation where people were struggling with their luggage while traveling; the new design of luggage with wheels is an innovation to solve such problems. Another example would be geared on a bicycle. In the past,  there was one gear, and it’s hard to get going uphill in the one gear. The innovative business person took that opportunity to develop additional gears, which made it easier to go uphill in lower or higher gear. As we can see, innovation can address both simple and complex problems we face today.

Why is innovation important or even more important whereas technology becomes more advanced? Because innovation is the core activity of human evolution to changing of the environment to reach performance for profit, for saving of resources, for the satisfaction of users, etc. The speed of change is expedited, so does the speed of innovation.

The relevant concept comparison: 

Research is the ability to transform any information into knowledge. The invention is the ability to transform any knowledge into technical performance. Innovation is the ability to transform any knowledge into society performance.

Today, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime; it expands both horizontally and vertically. It’s the state of mind to think and do things from a new angle, it’s business’s unique capabilities to gain a competitive advantage in the face of fierce competition and business dynamic. 

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What is the “Most Valuable” Value Stream in an EA Practice

When the little stream merges into the Sea, it is transcendent. 

Enterprise has many value streams, from ‘opportunity to vision’; from ‘vision to blueprint’; from ‘blueprint to roadmap’; from ‘roadmap to plan’;and from ‘plan to solution’., etc. But which value stream is most ‘valuable’ in an EA practice, and what is the difference between a value stream and capability mapping when planning a business transformation?  

 Opportunity to Vision

 Vision to Blueprint

 Blueprint to Roadmap

 Roadmap to Plan

 Plan to Solution

Value streams break into stages. Each stage decomposes into routing maps or can map to a process, process underpins capabilities (capability = people+ process+ technology) to deliver products/services and enable value stream stages. The value stream to capability mapping identifies the capabilities to be considered as you design your processes and stakeholder mapping identifies the roles required within that stage as input to process role definition. Finally, capability to information mapping provides input to information required by a given set of processes. A given capability can enable 0-to-many value stream stages. As capabilities are heat-mapped to determine if they are working well, not working, or non-existent. Capability maps to Business Unit (as part of organization mapping), Stakeholder maps to Value Stream (triggering stakeholder to stream and participating stakeholders to stages) and Process maps to Value Stream Stage. 

Vision to Blueprint is critical in business transformation: Articulating the vision alone may be of value because it galvanizes people who previously didn't share a common goal. When planning a business transformation, EA should consider all impacts of the vision to the business - such as what new or modified value streams, capabilities, processes, data, org/roles, locations, applications, technologies, etc. are required and/or which of these exit in the environment. And then use capability map as the anchor or hub for understanding the connected view of all of these. And then a roadmap is useful to determine how to get there from here, but it is a fantasy if the "there" and the "here" haven't been identified

Blueprint to Roadmap, Roadmap to Plan, and Plan to Solution, all the like are necessary to bring vision to life. Value is tricky because it's subjective - in the eye of the beholder. So it's hard to identify an event that is always of value. One thing about EA is that you have to understand your customer and what they value, and adjust your approach to accommodate them. It is better to provide the systematic approach that works regularly when you're dealing with C-level execs and other senior stakeholders. Ultimately an EA must be part of delivering something tangible where the consumer of the vision, blueprint, roadmap, plan or solution (or whatever mutually agreed outcome) is willing to invest in its development.

Fair to say, all value streams listed above are important, and the importance differs depending on the organization. Some organizations already excel with rigorous repeatable processes in one or more of those areas yet leave gaps in others. In those organizations, EA should fill the gaps, so the gaps become the "most important." 

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How to Evaluate the Success of GRC

The purpose of GRC is not to Stop the Enterprise Vehicle, but to Ensure that It Runs with Optimized Speed Smoothly.

The purpose of the GRC is to improve business performance through the creation of value to shareholders and other stakeholders. Usually, the factors considered for evaluating or measuring the successful implementation of technology, either GRC or some other area, are always contextual and subjective, as GRC is more as a state of mind, and it’s multi-dimensional practices.   

GRC is about managing risk and satisfying compliance obligations. It is a state of mind that must be achieved.  Products and processes are possibly counterproductive when they do not flow from a pervasive GRC mindset. As this mindset matures, however, there are benefits of a positive nature to be realized. Organizations that are able to flex the risk-reward balance predominantly through being risk- aware more effectively can achieve competitive advantage as they are better placed to walk away from high-risk situations or possibly transfer risk to lower cost. The point is that they are more risk-conscious and, therefore, able to make more informed decisions. Furthermore, building a reputation as an ethical, compliant, risk-conscious organization can in itself provide a competitive advantage within some industries. And GRC Awareness in the organization is achieved by way of training and other KM areas

One of the key measures of success would be the utilization. These systems can provide a lot of data or information, neither of which is valuable or useful if the organization doesn't utilize it. Not only is the implementation utilized, is it being maintained and what advancements are being made to the program. The repetitive practice provides individuals with the subject matter expertise to perform the required risk assessments, audits, and testing. Automation & monitoring of risks to implement governance & compliance can be achieved by way of GRC Tools, but whether it is actually being practiced across the organization can be achieved by way of people's awareness and training, and that includes training the mindsets to think in terms of GRC. Often the real return on investment doesn't occur until you reach the "pro-active" features, which reduce cost and increased impact on the enterprise. 

The bottom line of return on investment (ROI) should be achieved and can be measured: if there is a marked improvement in reducing/streamlining the processes, and managing the risks to an acceptable level by the Enterprise and management oversight, those would be some of the areas being considered successful.

1). Making the best use of the functionalities of GRC Tools and getting the benefits;

2). Ensuring High & Medium Risks are re-mediated, Low risks are mitigated and residual risks are accepted.
3). Auditors have confirmed on the Risk remediation, mitigation methodologies implemented and the GRC process followed is acceptable.

Practice Multi-Dimensional GRC Disciplines: You do not implement GRC, you earn it through repeated practice. That is something very valuable. The most commonly used dimensions consist of -
• Strategic – risk & compliance posture, risk enabled decision-making, competitive edge
• Financial - Reduced cost of risk &compliance, improved bottom-line, value to stakeholders, etc.
• Operational – operational efficiency, program visibility, reduced turn-around-time, reduced stakeholder effort, etc.
• Regulatory – reduced audit failures, predictive compliance i.e. the ability for early diagnose of non-compliance, etc.

People Dimension: Generally not focused but it’s the most critical one because no matter how robust the technology maybe if people do not use it, the entire investment or efforts go into the drain. The people dimension of GRC consists of -
• Strategic – enrichment, empowerment, etc.
• Financial – aid in performance resulting in increments/promotions, etc.
• Operational – work-life balance, increased productivity, consistent delivery, etc.
• Regulatory – avoid failures, aid in the discharge of regulatory responsibilities, etc. 

Effective GRC should sustain the transformative change in business. Evaluate whether the GRC implementation leads to streamlining processes, improved governance and risk management, and whether the organization is able to measure its strategic objectives more effectively and efficiently. If the efficiency quotient of the organization is not impacted to a very high degree, then, GRC implementation would have been futile. A high effective GRC can mitigate both systematic and strategic risks on the journey of business growth and transformation.

Last but not least, in the current dynamic environment as changes appear more often and fast, how can you achieve your company objectives fast, safe, and cheap? This asks for dynamic risk management and resulting in a dynamic and integral GRC solution.

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Why ‘Good Managers’ are not always Good for Innovation

It takes an innovative adventure to grow one from good to great. 

Modern managers are pillars of running complex businesses, good managers are disciplined, dedicated and accountable, however, in many cases, why good managers are not always good for innovation, what’re the issues, how to flex innovation muscles in the management team?

Only follow the best practice, not contemplate next practice: ‘Good managers’ are the ones who try to stay on the straight and narrow, follow the experience and industry best practices to make the job done, lack a sense of adventure and forget it’s just a job, not life itself. Good managers use tested and proven methodology and are least likely to deviate; they do things the same way they have been done, ALWAYS. To be a good innovator, one must be able to understand the current situation via different lenses. Think out of the box to come up with a better way of doing the right thing. It's a different competency for which companies have to train and coach their managers.

 Too much Emphasis on Control, not Enabling: Is it because good managers are good because they always ensure they do the right thing right and their main concerns are to manage the team, processes, and achieve their KPIs. They may too much emphasis on controlling, not enough energy on innovation and unleashing talent potential.

Leverage innovation-enabling process and system: If there is no support system put in place in some cases, where managers are punished with the bad rating for not demonstrating an innovative streak when he/she didn't know that he/she was allowed to do so, let alone put it into practice. An innovation support process or system can be seen in companies that clearly indicate innovation as a required competency for managers, and it's tied to performance management and total reward system.

Lack of a culture of failure tolerance: To innovate one needs to think differently from the rest, but in many traditional organizations, creative managers always get into trouble since they try new ideas which they hope will work. When these ideas do work, they get praise, and when they don't they get 100% blame. As it is a lack of a culture of failure-tolerance.Start with personal awareness and change of mindset: An innovative leader will spend more time contemplating the new possibilities, challenge the “we always do things like that” mindset, craft the next practices, breakdown the silo processes and instill the openness and inclusiveness in corporate culture.

Refine the reputation of being good managers: Who are the good managers? Clear communication of what is expected as good managers and support systems in cultivating the culture of innovation is crucial, as managers may be afraid to be innovative for fear of failure alone. In a much simpler context, the manager should take it upon himself or herself to discuss innovative ideas with his or her superior who will mentor him or her in the implementation of the new ideas; whatever that may be. So it takes clear communication and talent management process that innovation as the expectation to be a good manager.

Being a good manager is not enough, from Good to Great, it takes courage, innovation, and discipline for effective managers to make an influence on the organization and society as well. 

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Three Paradoxes in EA

EA is a paradox to uncode the paradox of business. 

Running a successful business is full of paradoxes at today’s VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment, EA is both philosophy and methodology for businesses to not only understand but also leverage resources in prioritization and execution. 

Indeed, EA itself has paradoxes, in the strategy process; there are three paradoxes that are also some of the fundamental paradoxes in EA.

1.    Logic vs. Creativity 

The main responsibility of enterprise architects is to have a holistic picture of Business Logic of the whole enterprise, mostly not in the level of part of the organization. Without that whole picture, separate parts of the organization will care for their own part and maybe for interfaces and not more, such business logic can underpin business processes and enforce business governance.

However, EA goes beyond the business logic, it’s also a structure for innovation management. Innovation is equivalent to sustainability and resilience for an increasing number of hyper-connected enterprises and industries, not just for recovery but more importantly renewal. Enterprise Architecture can support such innovation only if it undergoes a paradigm shift. 

EA has a unique position to provide innovation to the enterprise because it comprehends process change as well as emerging technologies. The combination allows EA to both reduce the risk, and improve the reward, of all scales of organizational change EA may support the innovation by developing the Structural Capital and ensures that the enterprise is always fit for purpose of achieving its vision, mission, and strategies. 

2.    Deliberateness vs. Emergence

EA manifests the ‘AS IS” & “TO BE’ state of the organization. There is one side pressure for EA to be holistic and comprehensive. Therefore, a number of concepts in the meta-model as well as the number of artifacts should grow. 

On the other side, there are requirements to EA to be simple and easy as the world becomes more dynamic, EA contextual problem space is that of a complex adaptive system that exhibits emergent behavior, made up of customers, products and services, cash-flows, etc.

To balance such paradox, it is resulting into the necessity to use many reference models and other accelerators. It also leads to splitting of EA into layers with different level of information granularity, where upper layers are holistic (covering all concepts, such as enterprise ontology and vocabulary) and lower layers are comprehensive - covering all attributes needed but for selected concepts only (such as application architecture). 

3.    Revolution vs. Evolution 

EA should be the tool for CHANGE, though it means a lot: the communication tool, the process optimization tool, the governance tool, the knowledge sharing tool. So the other paradox in EA is about which change it should focus on, incremental improvement or leapfrogging transformation, culture evolution or eco-system revolution? 

Actually, they are not polarities really, because there you can have either or part in there. The paradoxes, however, will each time produce a different outcome and the outcome is no right or wrong, which also makes them different from polarities.

EA can become the link between change and transformation: Look to the edge-cases of roadmaps and transitional architectures and attempt to find the intersections between those incremental steps and disruptive leaps in technology or business strategy innovation activities are championing and that's a powerful convergence of drivers.      

EA can also become the link between Change Inspiration and Change Implementation. The most observed, planned and developed in the change management is called change inspiration. The more people on board, informed and even inspired about the change, the smoother change can occur with great effectiveness and efficiency.  

A reactive EA may tolerate a silo culture, but an optimized EA should breakdown the silo culture, and EA program is used as a media to change a silo mentality, EA can even become the culture analyzer and designer in pulling up the resources and push up the business evolution.

An effective EA should have capabilities to deal with fuzzy logic but not with outright inconsistency, to do so, you need to allow for partial truths or coexisting conflicting truths, at high-level maturity, EA is a master to deal with such complexity and paradox. 

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