Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategy & Others

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  • Enterprise Collaborative Quotient

    Better collaboration within IT will

    • fetch more innovation
    • improve team building
    • improve effectiveness & efficiency
    • reduce the over all IT residual risk
    • improve organization attitude

    The above are top 5 value added imperatives a better collaboration will bring to an IT organization. Each one of the above adds value to the core business, saves IT G&A and minimizes the IT risk exposure.

    How the CIOs and other senior executives will manage and measure the collaboration within their organization. We all familiar with Intelligent Quotient (IQ) and it is a measure how smart a person is? Likewise, an organization must have a metric to measure the collaboration  within their organization.

    I was searching to find out what kind of metric is available to measure it in the industry. Based on my research, I could not find any metric to measure it. So I innovated a metric called enterprise collaborative quotient (ECQ)

    What is collaboration?

    Group of people working towards the same goal.

    Why collaboration is needed?

    IT has an organization goal every year (which is aligned to the IT strategy which supports the business strategy which supports the competitive strategy) and every member of the organization works towards the goal (Strategy focused organization). When a group of people working towards the same goal, to avoid duplication and ensure full coverage, collaboration is required within the organization.

    What is the Enterprise Collaborative quotient?

    Even though I prefer to have more mathematical way to calculate it, in reality, the formula approach will not work in management science. My famous saying is, it is not \pi r^2

    However, a methodical approach is proposed to calculate the enterprise collaborative quotient. Let me make sure we understand why are we measuring this? To measure how the organization is working together towards the organization goal.

    The structure to the problem is, what are the factors involved in measuring it. The factors are

    1. Understanding of

    • the organization goal (theme),
    • the overall IT strategy (targets, performance measure,strategic objectives),
    • who is who (theme managers, initiative owners)
    • overall business bottom line
    • core values and company’s mission and vision

    2. Frequency of

    • formal face to face meetings/discussion
    • informal face to face meetings/discussion
    • Impromptu face to face/phone/chart meetings/discussion
    • proposal of new suggestion/ideas for a target set for a different team
    • brown bag sessions
    • huddle meeting
    • skip level meetings
    • team meeting
    • town halls
    • 1:1 meeting with direct reports
    • special interest groups (boat club, motor cycle club, quantum cafe club,womens forum)
    • lunch meetings
    • dinner meetings
    • group activities (like community services)

    3. Willingness to

    • Share knowledge
    • Listen
    • Challenge the obvious
    • care for others
    • be open

    Based on types of the organization, the above factors can be used and information can be garnered by interview or survey. The weight factor can be applied based on the core function IT supports.

  • IT Risk Management – An Elevated view

    Risk management is part of any management science. (period) Any good project managers do have a risk management plan of a project, team, organization and etc . Risk management plan is part of any management science (yes, I’m repeating myself to stress the point).

    CIO‘s are part of the management team and any good (or even an ordinary) CIOs do have a risk management plan for the over all IT organization.

    It is a basic principle of business, more risk more profit. At the same time, business is not pure gambling and some time it is calculated gambling. When it comes to gambling, it is taking the chances. When you take the chances blindly, then it is gambling and when you take chances after your due diligence then it is business. May be, I’m over simplifying it but that is the simple definition. If a bank wants to AVOID risk, the ONLY best way to avoid risk 100% is NOT to do business. That is, not performing steps towards their organization goal, mission and vision. Philosophical interpretation is, if you want no complaints then be nothing and do nothing.

    Are we not take chances every day? Yes, we take chances every minute. I know some one do not agree what I’m saying. There is a risk of rejection from someone. To avoid it, the best approach is to stop expressing myself. By doing so, I can completely avoid the risk of rejection of my opinions but I can not accomplish my mission (Blog as much I can). The point I’m trying to make is, risk is part of any management science and it should be managed better.

    How to manage IT risk better?

    Residual risk matrix (RRM) for an IT organization risk is one of key metrics a CIO should have to have a clear picture on probability of exposure. Before I jump into the RRM, let me explain what are the key components of enterprise IT risk management?

    Components of enterprise IT Risk management

    • Compliance Risk
    • Infrastructure risk (including data center and business locations)
    • Project Risk
    • Security Risk
    • Financial Risk
    • Technology Risk
    • Process Risk
    • Competency Risk
    • Vendor Risk (service providers like infra service, right sourcing, etc)
    • License Risk
    • Open source Risk
    • Business Risk

    Steps to create an enterprise IT residual risk matrix (IT RRM)

    • Identify the known & known unknown risk for each components of the IT risk management
    • Device a mitigation plan for each identified risk
    • Identify the cost of the mitigation plan
    • Identify the probability of the risk occurrence
    • Calculate the risk at exposure (risk exposed to the organization after the mitigation plan)

    IT Residual Risk Matrix provides an elevated view to the executive management on the exposed IT risk.

  • Genchi Genbutsu for Enterprise Architects & Strategists

    There are at least two school of thoughts for enterprise architecture.

    • Law maker approach
    • Do what makes sense and do the right thing approach

    Law maker approach

    I had witnessed the first approach in the past. I was not playing an enterprise architect manager nor enterprise architect role at that time. Watched from the side line and it is better to learn the mistakes from others. The law maker approach is to come up with all the standards, road maps, patterns,etc and it is up to the civilian (rest of the organization) to abide to the law. If the civilian did not follow the law, then civilian violated the law and if civilian assess the law is inappropriate then an appeal can be made to the enterprise architects and they reevaluate the standards or patterns. I do not believe in this approach. This will create the EA as the special group or ivory tower team makes decision but never will have clear picture on implementation and lack details on the value generated to the organization.
    Do what makes sense and do the right thing approach

    I love this approach. Not just for IT strategy nor EA. I love this approach for any role. For the Enterprise Architects, this approach is the apt approach to fetch value to the organization.

    Factual Data —> Analysis + Intuition = Solution

    The above concept applies to any management consultant. Boutique management consultant firms (like Boston Consulting Group, BCG) when they get engaged with a client, they work on very interesting problems like “why WALL-E (a movie recently released by Walt Disney) did not exceed the expectations?” and for this kind of consultation, they need factual data, quantitative analysis and apply intuition to derive the solution.

    Enterprise Architects are the management consultants with stronger technical knowledge. To add value to the organization EA need to get the factual data, quantitative analysis, intuition and come up with road maps, IT investment management framework, patterns, compliance, etc.

    To get the factual data EA needs to understand the end to end business life cycle. For example, if an organization is financial service organization, then EAs need to personally visit contact centers, customer services centers, business centers, dealership, zone offices etc. If possible, at least for a day, they need to play the appropriate roles in each centers. (Like be a credit analyst, customer service agent, call center agent, collection agent, repossessing agent etc) Get a loan or lease product from the same financial service company and be a real customer and use the web sites as the customer. Experience gained during this visits, role plays, interviews and etc provides EA (and IT strategist) an edge to come up with realistic strategic plan for the organization which will have a direct positive impact to the bottom line of the core business.