Preamble
Enterprise governance has to face combined changes in the way business times and spaces are to be taken into account. On one hand social networks put well-thought-out market segments and well planned campaigns at the mercy of consumers’ weekly whims. On the other hand traditional fences between environments and IT systems are crumbling under combined markets and technological waves.
So, despite (or because of) the exponential ability of intelligent systems to learn from circumstances, enterprise governance is not to cope with such dynamic complexities without a reliable compass set with regard to key primary factors: time-frames of concerns; control of processes; administration of artifacts.
Concerns & Time-frames
Confronted to massive and continuous waves of stochastic data flows, the priority is to position external events and decision-making with regard to business and assets time-frames:
- Business value is to be driven by market opportunities which cannot be coerced into predefined fixed time-frames.
- Assets management is governed by continuity and consistency constraints on enterprise identity, objectives, and investments along time.
Enterprises, once understood as standalone entities, must now be redefined as living organisms in continuous adaptation with their environment. Governance schemes must therefore be broadened to business environments and layered as to take into account the duality of time-frames: operational for business value, strategic for assets.
Control of processes and administration of artifacts can then be defined accordingly.
Time & Control: Processes
Architectures being by nature shared and persistent, their layers are meant to reflect different time-frames, from operational cycles to long-term assets:
- At enterprise level the role of architectures is to integrate shared assets and align various objectives set along different time-frames. At this level it’s safe to assume some cross dependencies between processes, which would call for phased governance.
- By contrast, business units are meant to be defined as self-governing entities pursuing specific objectives within their own time-frame. From a competitive perspective markets opportunities and competitors moves are best assumed unpredictable, and processes best governed by circumstances.
Processes can then be defined vertically (business or Systems) as well as horizontally (enterprise architecture or application development), and governance set accordingly:
- At enterprise level processes are phased: stakeholders and architects plan and manage the development and deployment of assets (organization and systems).
- At business units level processes are lean and just-in-time: business analysts and software engineers design and develop applications supporting users needs as defined by users stories or use cases.
Models are then to be introduced to describe shared assets (organization and systems) across the enterprise. They may also support business analysis and software engineering.
Spaces & Administration: Models and Artifacts
Whatever the targets and terminologies, architecture is best defined as a relationship between concrete territories (processes and systems) and abstract maps (blueprints or models).
Carrying on with the four corners of governance square:
- Business analysts are to set users’ narratives (concrete) in line with the business plots (blueprints) set by stakeholders.
- Software engineers designing applications (concrete) in line with systems functional architectures (blueprints).
As for the overlapping of business and development time-frames, the direct mapping between concrete business and system corners (e.g though agile development) is to facilitate the governance of integrated actual and numeric flows across business and systems.
Conclusion: A Compass for Enterprise Architects
Behind turfs perimeters and jobs descriptions, roles and responsibilities involved in enterprise architecture can be summarized by four drives:
- Business stakeholders (top left): adjust organization as to maximize the versatility and plasticity of architectures.
- Business analysts (bottom left): define business processes with regard to broader objectives and engineering efficiency.
- Software engineers (bottom right): maximize the value for users and the quality of applications.
- Systems architects (top right): dynamically align systems with regard to business models and engineering processes.
Whereas roles and responsibilities will generally differ depending on enterprise environment, business, and culture, such a compass would ensure that the governance of enterprise architectures hinges on reliable pillars and is driven by clear principles.
Further Reading
- Abstraction Based Systems Engineering
- EA: Maps & Territories
- New Year: Regrets or Expectations ?
- Governance, Regulations & Risks
- Events & Decision Making
- Operational Intelligence & Decision Making
- Data Mining & Requirements Analysis
- Agile Architectures: Versatility meets Plasticity
- Business Agility & the OODA Loop
- EA: Entropy Antidote
- Business Agility vs Systems Entropy