Month: July 2023

Comments Left on the following Blogs:

Rebeka Melber

Brad Miller

“Selecting the right person for the right job is the largest part of coaching.” – Phil Crosby

Technology isn’t the only important aspect of an evolving and agile enterprise architecture program. An equally challenging aspect of supporting business operations is identifying the correct individuals or groups to influence and guide business outcomes that align with future state architecture views. Having the right personality and skillset can make all the difference to help shape and achieve business success. In an article, Jackie Fenn identifies six styles of technology innovation groups that bring unique skills required to maximize and transform business impacts.

“Technology innovation and emerging technology groups need to identify the most useful role they can adopt in advancing their organization’s innovation capabilities, from navigators that drive business transformation through technology, to pollinators that encourage innovation at the edges (Fenn, 2012)

The article focused on identifying the right style of innovation for a team or group of individuals. However, I would argue that each style already exists and is an important part of the innovation process within EA programs. Each style embodies the characteristic necessary to form a comprehensive team to accomplish business driven outcomes. Bigger question… is how do you hire and identify the right people to complete such a team or group?

The Six Styles of Technology Innovation Groups (Fenn, 2012):

1. Navigator – “Determines the strategic business impact of emerging technologies, through tracking evaluation and piloting.” Focused on understanding current and future business processes to align corporate direction and priorities of business units with technology. However, they lack any authority to implement their vision.
2. Scholar – “Investigates technologies ahead of business need through primary R&D.” Focused on research and develop to push technology capabilities to support new technology solutions and maintain a competitive edge through emerging technology.
3. Responder – “Helps business units deploy new technologies through a tactical and pragmatic “SWAT” team approach.” Focused on testing, prototyping, piloting, and development to evaluate new/emerging technology evolution.
4. Counselor – “Educates senior management on emerging technology issues and potential.” Provides education and inspiration to achieve business objectives and will often champion and recommend technologies to executive/IT leaders.
5. Conductor – “Coordinates and leverage emerging technology activities performed in other parts of the organization.” Focused on aligning task through coordinate and leverage already existing teams and resources. Able to manage effectively to maximize impact of limited resources.
6. Pollinator – “Encourages and mentors distributed innovation activities throughout the organization.” Focused on coaching and mentoring to encourage and facilitate across all level of the technology stack.

Attributes/characteristics:

• Navigator: Drives, Leads, Adapts, Communications,
• Scholar: Drives, Leads, Invents, problem solver, hands-on
• Responder: Drives, Responds, evaluation
• Counselor: Enables, Executives, influencers/persuasive, communication
• Conductor: Enables, Workforce, Leverages, planner, communication,
• Pollinator: Enables, Workforce, Unleashes, people-oriented skills, persuasive.

 

References:

Fenn, J. (2012). Six Styles of Technology Innovation Groups. Gartner. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2277059/files/149153361/download?wrap=1

New and emerging technologies/innovations are rapidly changing how organizations and customers operate/function. Such technologies are designed to make life easier by improving capabilities through efficiency, cost reduction, integration with the intent to produce greater business value. The challenge with businesses and organizations is recognizing the technology or solution that is going to support best. Generally the much larger organizations like Google, Apple, and Amazon will develop in-house solutions to support business strategy and goals… which makes sense, many of those large organizations are leading the way with capability development and innovation. For instances, Amazon Web Services, at its core, is a cloud technology that is providing agile capabilities and solutions to millions of small business. And because there are so many different technologies/solutions that exist, it is difficult for small business to determine the correct one that will provide the best value. This is both a good thing and bad thing, in some cases it will be tailored technology that provides specific capabilities. However, with the many options available, companies can now pick and choose various technologies to develop a modular system that best fits the organization’s needs, but also makes the extremely adaptable to future technology changes. Because technology is constantly changing, business must also constantly adapt to remain competitive and meet customer demands.

So, what are some good practices to access new technology and the potential value of their integration within existing enterprise architecture? Technology innovation leaders must stay up to date with emerging technologies to determine their impact and the opportunities they present within your organization. Ideal, leaders want to assess or analyze technology that has transformational potential and capabilities to support agile business strategies. To assess such technology, the best option is to conduct use cases or develop and test within a small mimic environment to identify its potential and assess any vulnerabilities. Adding new technology within an existing infrastructure can produce unforeseen circumstances too. Knowing how to exploit these technologies can also help leaders develop the capability to handle such unforeseen circumstances. One last practice to help evaluate emerging technology is for an organization to develop a priority matrix map with defined criteria that will help evaluate multiple solutions at once and ideally yield the best solution.

References:

Dawson, P., Davis, M., & Burke, B. (2021). Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/document/4004623?ref=d-linkShare

Comments Left on the following Blogs:

Jonathan Holman

Rebeka Melber

The digital age is changing how organizations operate and function, requiring business leaders to transform their business models to create new sources of revenue, services, and experiences for customers to maintain a competitive edge. Leaders are turning to architects and technology innovation leaders to help bridge the gap between EA and information technology. Such architects use frameworks, methodologies, tools, software and much more to help integrate and support business driven outcomes. This is where business architects are supporting the enterprise architecture landscape to provide the insight and analysis necessary to support senior leader decision. Business Architects are helping shape business and operating models to define how an organization delivers business value to its customers. The most important aspect is aligning strategic objectives with tactical demands for business growth.

But what really is the difference between business architect and enterprise architect. The main difference is the business architect focuses on business capabilities or structure to help define processes, modeling, and support within enterprise information technology architecture. Whereas the enterprise architect will provide the governance necessary to support the transitional roadmap for the organization. The enterprise Architect is supporting the strategic vision of the organization, while the business architect is helping align business capabilities with said vision. Regardless, both the business architects and enterprise architects complement each other to help deliver day-to-day objectives using strategy and business transformations with IT solutions.

Business Architecture is redefining how business deliver value to its customers. Organizations like Amazon are capitalizing on the value of a services to customers. Supporting a wide range of capabilities and functions using the same tools and resources to provide a better experience to all its base customers. Such services as amazon web service is changing industries to operate within the cloud and influencing their customer experience in itself. Amazon is building the market for their organizations needs as they continue to support thousands of other businesses. Using technology innovations and best practices to help guide leaders within the organization. Business architects play a vital role because they help define the specific domains and the associated capabilities. Their goal is to align business capabilities with enterprise resources. In this case, depending on the amazon service or capability, a business architect is working to develop IT solutions that will support strategic goals within the enterprise.

 

 

References:

Blosch, M., & Brand, S. (2020). The Future Direction and Evolution of Business-Outcome-Driven Enterprise Architecture. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/document/3990599?ref=d-linkShare

Blosch, M., Brand, S., & Osmond, N. (2022). Design a Better Digital Business With the Business Architecture Landscape. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/document/4014213?ref=d-linkShare

GmbH, L. (n.d.-a). Business Architect: Skill Sets, Career Paths and Must-Haves | LeanIX. https://www.leanix.net/en/wiki/ea/business-architect#Business-Architect-vs-Enterprise-Architect

Simplilearn. (2023). Business Architect as a Profession: Job Roles, Career Path and More. Simplilearn.com. https://www.simplilearn.com/business-architect-article

Business transformations are continually taking place to adapt with constantly changing circumstance faced internally and externally by many organizations. If improperly managed, business components and supported technology plan in a bubble, leading to misuse of resources, lack of infrastructure alignment and even duplicated efforts. In the long term, this can be more costly to many organizations. However, the business value of EA provides a strategic approach to drive business activities, directly supporting management planning and decision-making through coordinated views of the entire enterprise. EA establishes a holistic approach to view current and future state to develop the transitional roadmap to achieve organization objectives. Without EA implemented it becomes difficult to identify current resources, gaps and capabilities that span across the enterprise, resulting in failure of anticipate future requirements. EA implementation focuses on the framework and methodology to drive business-driven outcomes that is enabled by technology. A successful EA program will be costly and time consuming at first, requiring involvement from leadership/ key stakeholders and diverting resources. However, the benefits far out way the risks once established. EA implementation can create standardized solutions across multiple lines of business, improving business architecture across the enterprise, referred to as architecture segments. These architecture segments ensure the greatest coverage and adaptability across the enterprise, allowing for improved efficiency and greater return on investment. EA is designed to model and improve the performance of organizations by enabling comprehensive views of strategic direction, business practices, information flows and technology resources.

“The whole idea behind business architecture is finding business solutions that solve current problems so you can align with and consistently deliver business strategies.” – Lucidchart

Similarly, to Enterprise Architecture methodologies and frameworks, Business Architecture focuses on how business functions, processes and technology connect with and interact with enterprise architecture. The purpose of business architecture it to solve current problems that align with business strategies and goals. Business architecture is designed to support the process, workflows, and procedures necessary to align business capabilities with enterprise architecture. A Business architect works with senior management and other key stakeholders to analyze current business models, structures, processes, strategies, and capabilities to better understand and determine where improvements can be made. Emerging technology is changing how business operate and influencing business architecture methodologies. A recent wave of business have turned to service oriented solutions to support a particular niche, while maintaining a level of agility to support customers needs. This same idea requires enterprise architects to develop capabilities that support the technique for improving communication and collaboration among enterprise architecture, business people and IT people. Capabilities focus on the same idea, providing a specific function or service to deliver business value.

 

References:

A. (2018, November 29). The business value of EA: a data-driven approach. Ardoq. Retrieved July 7, 2023, from https://www.ardoq.com/blog/the-business-value-of-ea-a-data-driven-approach

Bernard, S. (2020). An Introduction to Holistic Enterprise Architecture: Fourth Edition (4th ed.). AuthorHouse.

Building a Business Architecture. (n.d.). Lucidchart. https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/building-a-business-architecture

Burton, B. (2012). Eight Business Capability Modeling Best Practices Enhance Business and IT Collaboration. Gatner.

Niemi, E. (2019, June 19). The Benefits of Enterprise Architecture in Organizational Transformation. SpringerLink. Retrieved July 7, 2023, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-019-00605-3?error=cookies_not_supported&code=f87322d0-dc49-4846-ab09-864d7e0a5f2d

Comments Left on the following Blogs:

Sukesh Sabbani

Laura Garces

The key elements associated to Security within EA programs include Information Security, Personnel, Operations, and Physical protection.

• Information Security seeks to protect enterprise data/information systems through privacy-conscious designs, information content assurance, source authentication and data access control.
• Personnel security is extremely important within enterprise architecture because it is the employees that help drive business operations. Personnel security seeks to support and protect employees through user authentication, security awareness, and training.
• Operational security seeks to protect organizational assets through various development and security practices. It promotes the development of SOPs for EA component security, risk assessment, testing and evaluation, remediation, certifications, operation, and disposal. Disaster Recovery Planning form outages or natural disasters and continuity planning falls under operational security.
• Physical Protection protects organizational assets, such as infrastructure: buildings, IT, networks, equipment, etc. Uses EA to implement controls that protect facilities that support IT processes, building access, telecommunications, as well as fire and media storage protection. Typical implementation of physical protection usually involves a layered defense methodology.

There are important considerations and challenges with integrating security architecture with the four elements and EA together. Due to the rapidly evolving innovation and technological environment, security solutions can be difficult to maintain. The technological advancement also creates additional attack surfaces, which can make security solutions obsolete if not maintained, updated, or replaced. Security architecture design and implementation, including risk mitigating strategies, are also susceptible to sabotage, evasion, and disabled by member of the enterprise who have system administration positions, also known as insider threats. This is often the most dangerous security threat to an organization. Compatibility also is a concern when integrating security architecture with EA, ensuing all potential vulnerabilities are addressed and doesn’t hinder other systems or components. The best way to address security architecture solutions throughout the enterprise is to establish proper governance and controls/solutions within and around key business and technology resources and services. Taking in consideration of cost, level of protection and effect on end-user/system to design a security solution, including maintenance steps.

 

References:

Bernard, S. (2020). An Introduction to Holistic Enterprise Architecture: Fourth Edition (4th ed.). AuthorHouse.

Scholtz, T. (2012). Define the Structure and Scope for an Effective Information Security Program. Gartner.

“Security architecture is the process of evaluating information security controls and implementing the right business process and tools into IT systems to protect the data being used and stored by an organization.” – Conexiam

The reality is… there are no 100% full-proof IT security solutions. And security solutions are difficult to maintain due to constant changing attack surfaces and the advancements of new technologies. Security and privacy program, including risk mitigating strategies, are also susceptible to sabotage, evasion, and disabled by member of the enterprise who have system administration positions, also known as insider threats. The best way to address security solutions throughout the enterprise is to establish controls/solutions within and around key business and technology resources and services. Taking in consideration of cost, level of protection and effect on end-user to design a security solution.

So, how does security architecture help? The truth is the concept of security architecture encompasses a broad scope and intent depending on the context of the problem. However, The importance of security architecture within an EA program it to establish controls that effect all level of the EA framework to monitor risk and ensure protection of organizational assets. Integrating security architecture within an EA program ensure risk management strategies are developed for information, personnel, operations, and physical security, including privacy concerns. The documentation associated to security architecture is also critical to maintain to manage implementation methods for such components/assets that need protection. Security solutions should be developed to address threats against EA components and its functions at all levels, including mitigating steps. Security is essential for all organizations to manage both environmental and human-implemented threats, such as disasters weather conditions or insider threats.

 

Reference:

Bernard, S. (2020). An Introduction to Holistic Enterprise Architecture: Fourth Edition (4th ed.). AuthorHouse.

Conexiam. (2022). What is Security Architecture? Conexiam. https://conexiam.com/what-is-security-architecture/

Techopedia. (2023, May 19). What is Security Architecture? – Definition from Techopedia. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/72/security-architecture