Business Architects Blog

The Open Group Threaten To Certify Business Architects

2012-02-07T09:09:00.002Z

During a recent forum thread in - Business Architecture Community- one poster declared the The Open Group's intention to start offering certification in business architecture.

Some are horrified at the prospect of an I.T. centric organisation claiming this space with one well known and respected poster declaring

"We must discourage Open Group and even some others from 'certifying' Business Architects using a short cut approach This will be very unhelpful and harmful for Business Architecture profession."

I do see his point when TOGAF (The open group architectural framework) doesn't provide a good example of this organisations approach to business architecture; indeed some say it is poor for enterprise architecture - let alone business architecture -and in reality many conclude that it is Enterprise Information Technology Architecture not EA.

Certification has pros and cons the latter being that many parts of I.T. have suffered quite badly from a culture of badge collecting which results in H.R. professionals and recruiters using the certification to exclude perfectly competent practitioners. You might say "get certified then" but this costs serious money and is alright for those working for larger corporate organisations with extensive personal development budgets but overall it impact inclusiveness and can create a potential elitist closed shop.

The debate on certification continues and we watch the discussions with interest.

Capabilities and Process Architectures "Old Chestnut"

2011-12-18T11:36:00.003Z

There have been many posts in recent forum discussions within the business architecture community which describe the commonality,within some organisations, between higher level process blocks and capabilities.
Some have suggested that this makes capabilities less useful. This is due to a combination of factors either because the organisation is very process dominant with low levels of physical things like, manufacturing or logistical activities or perhaps even due to poor analysis.
Process folks think process and when searching for capabilities use their reference point, process in current organisational structures, to search for capabilities. In many cases it is not surprising that they "low and behold" discover capabilities fairly identical to their high level process and say " well that was a pointless task wasn't it ".Quite often they have missed a lot of capabilities that the organisation has that could be instrumental to a step change in business model.
Thus the introspective continual reference to to current physical state of the business constrains the thinking of the logical. Peter Checkland recognised this feature in his Soft Systems Methodology in Action (P.Checkland, Jim Scholes, 1999, Wiley, Chichester).
To model capabilities properly it is necessary to detach from what you know and the current context that you work within i.e. process and look in at the business from the outside through a fresh set of eyes lifting up to root definitions and conceptual models. This is not easy when your analysis team are steeped in operational thinking.

Business Architecture Training early 2012

2011-12-11T13:06:00.003Z

Just started to get some initial interest for public business architecture courses in 2012. It looks like the February offering near Southampton will go ahead now on the 15th to 17th of February. We could do with a few more delegates to add to the initial provisional bookings to crystallise the event.

In all though, in house courses for groups seem to attract more interest, although this doesn't help individuals either those privately funded or from smaller organisations who don't have larger groups of staff they wish to train in business architecture.

The thinking with in house courses, as opposed to public events, is that companies like to keep their own issues private and also it is more cost effective for a trainer to visit them with one set of hotel and travel costs rather than sending four or five people away on a public course with all the subsistence expenses that that incurs.

The downsides are that off site venues allow focus on learning away form the day to day distractions of being still in the "office" and we do get a lot of interruptions from BAU in these - in house - circumstances as people go away from the training event to attend brief meetings or arrive late or leave early to attend to their issues. This can on occasions be quite disruptive for the event for all concerned and limits delegates full appreciation of what is on offer as they miss critical points, techniques or concepts.

Language gives poor impression in recruiting for Business/Enterprise Architects.

2011-11-16T14:46:00.003Z

I had a role description shown to me this week which contained phrases like "heterogeneous legacy environment" and "consistent global platform". The text was full of words like this and was effectively sophisticated gibberish. Spattered with TOGAF, Modaf and DODAF and Zachman -this and that - made it look like a pick list of "in" words where the key role of communication was clearly missed, If this is the job advert for a Enterprise/Business Architects role no wonder many business people in large organisations can't get their heads round Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture when the successful candidate arrives.

What even more disturbing was it was for a role where effective communication is absolutely key. The recruiting manager who wrote this is obviously in dire need of a business architect even if to teach the organisation that to use simple meaningful language has enormous benefit ; this may even mean that all the employees are pulling in the right direction because they know where they are going because they actually understand the words used. A key objective of Business Architecture perhaps?

Using language like that described above cannot in anyway lead to sensible communication and surely attracts the wrong type of candidate.
Did make me chuckle though!

IGrafx develop the SAP Market

2011-11-06T15:19:00.001Z

We were interested this week to see how IGrafx have launched their new SAP process reference model. It seeks to map the foot print of SAP processes on manual processes and the holistic view of the organisation and save considerable time in configuration design. This check list approach makes cross organisational design considerably easier than starting from scratch. IGrafx claim that this fast start tool will save thousands in expensive SAP consultancy hours.

The IGrafx tool set is advancing its market impact by adapting its popular simplistic process mapping origins to the more sophisticated world of ERP implementation. In addition they have launched a number of high end software utilities in recent months moving towards operational analysis and dash-boarding rather than their traditional offline design approach of earlier times.

Employers Employ People in their Own Image.

2011-10-27T16:24:00.002+01:00

In running an HND unit in employability skills and team building recently we discussed the anomaly of homogeneous teams being the norm as opposed to balanced teams or heterogeneous teams.

In Meredith Belbin's model a performing team is said to be best composed of different personalities and skill sets - diversity is the aim for a performing team. Why do we see so many teams that have the opposite. Corporate organisations often recruit on "team fit" which means people recruit in their own image or to fit in with what we have already.

There are all sorts of issues around this including some typical recruitment nightmares for job seekers. One trend seems to be if you haven't been doing the similar role in very recent times recruiting managers don't want to know. Another is the "recruiting in your own image" where line managers view people like themselves and consciously or subconsciously reject people on initial CV search that don't fit the norm or mould - i.e. they recruit existing industry players who work for big corporate organisations like themselves, rejecting people from outside their industry or ex freelancers and contractors because they don't understand their backgrounds, lifestyles and CVs. What a missed opportunity this is for getting in some fresh ideas and approaches!

The result here is all sorts of anti diversity behaviours and in some cases quite discriminatory certainly from an ageism perspective let alone anything worse. This narrow approach isn't complementary to the Belbin approach is it?

So many ex-colleagues and associate consultants tell us anecdotes of corporate short sightedness resulting in rejection at a very early stage of the exhausting recruitment process.

Most are older employees who said to us that they where told that they don't fit in with the team profile by recruiting managers in their thirties, or that their skills are not recent, even though most of these people held senior roles in these skill sets earlier in their careers with seriously success records behind them.

So is this naivety or is it protectionism by younger managers worried about employing older workers or challenging individuals from outside the industry who might perhaps know more or be in fact more competent than them?

The resulting insular and non performing teams in many of Britain's larger corporate organisations is a significant concern in any organisational design.

Taking Time To Think

2011-10-18T18:04:00.000+01:00

What is the main barrier to business design?

At a recent delivery of an in house Business Architecture course in Northampton in the UK delegates said " Not having time to think and be creative due to the pressures of delivery".

Thinking time and a culture that accepts it as a worthwhile pursuit is a really important factor in designing and doing the right business change programmes . Thinking time is work - trust me!

Design or Evolution

2011-10-17T13:06:00.000+01:00

Most large corporate organisations are what they are. They evolve through: change acquisition merger and the purchase of customer portfolios. Business architecture seeks to change this by putting in place intelligent design; defining an end state based on an assessment of strategy and gaps from the "As Is".

If we step back a moment this is a bit like Darwinism versus Intelligent design; evolution seems to have worked well for biology in creating organisms that are highly adapted to the environment; most highly efficient and effective until a change brings extinction of a species.

So if evolution is good enough for life on earth why doesn't this work in business or does it?

The issue is that the larger corporate bodies are sheltered some what from environmental change due to their size and brand dominance and it only when a major change event that the "water level" is lowered and the "rocks" start to appear to "hole the hull".

The issue is also that over many years change was a bit steady and the survival pressures and survival of the fittest didn't hit too many larger companies. Until of course when major events like the banking crisis meant to extend the analogy here "an asteroid hit the planet" in late 2008 and caused a mass extinction.

SMEs seem to work better or more easily in a evolutionary environment but when you get bigger a future must be crafted and planned not just allocated to survival of the fittest and business evolution based on Darwinism.

In business, intelligent design seems a much more sensible approach than sitting back and allowing fate to govern your future. So why do so many big companies just morph and evolve and effectively unknowingly "hope for the best"? -Answer- Do some business Architecture!

Balancing Compliance and the Media

2011-09-22T14:18:00.001+01:00

In a world of financial difficulties the media looks to pillory and find those responsible. Regulation and compliance become the popular solution for all our ills. "If things had been regulated better" then this or that would n't have happened. Nearly every day the media is probing and acting like a pack of hunting hounds around one issue or another.

The trouble is that regulation cost money, lots of money. It is evident from contractor job boards that the majority of contracts on offer for change professionals in the UK this autumn are regulatory based compliance projects. Large corporate organisations are doing stuff because they have to, not because they really want or need to. Solvency 2, RDR (Retail Distribution Review) are two of the many regulatory based initiatives rippling through financial services. How much real customer service improvement has been put on hold as a result?

Who pays for all of this- the customer - in higher prices and also perhaps more significantly in many cases, irritating processes and worsened customer experiences - yet another pointless pre recorded compliance based announcement delaying the call!

I am not advocating that compliance is bad news I am just saying that we need to be careful we "don't throw the baby out with the bath water". It isn't the panacea that the announcers and anchor men/ladies on the Today Programme would seem to suggest.

Compliance has an enormous cost in both hard cash and in how we interact with organisations we buy services from. What we really need is a bit of balance and a bit of common sense.

Time to go Fishing!

2011-08-01T16:26:00.006+01:00

We seem to arrived at that time of year where running a small business whose customers are mostly corporates becomes frustrating!

Loads of people are off taking their annual paid leave, managers aren't around to make decisions to release budget and generally it's " I will call you in September".

So, like Christmas, half terms and Easter it is yet another time that isn't particularly productive.

Annual leave is a serious productivity issue its not just the time off but it is the week before to wind down to finish off and the week after the holiday to read the 1000 or so e mails and to ramp back up again.

An ordinary two week holiday can wreck a month for some. When everyone is taking it and it's usually staggered to "provide cover", the whole place grinds to a halt for the best part of July and August. Funny really cause when I was a salary-man I took it all for granted too!

Oh, and take too long a holiday and its an opportunity for some politics at your detriment whilst you are away!

You can understand in the days before globalisation, well even before doing business outside your local area, meant that whole towns in the North of England closed for a recognised week as the whole workforce went on mass by "charrabang" to "Skeggy" or some where. Bit before my time though hasten to add! - I'm sure Orwell can give us some snippets!!

So perhaps it's best to join the "permies" and go and do some fishing!!

Technology breeds stupidity.

2011-07-30T16:17:00.007+01:00

Here's a nice line from an article by Jack Wallen on ZDNet trying to dispel myths about open-source software. This section points out that you don't have to be an expert to use it, and it's as easy to install as proprietary software, if not easier...

"Like all things to do with computers, as the intelligence of the average computer user has dropped, the ease of use of open-source software has increased."

But I suppose it applies to most technologies. The more complex things become under the skin, the more user-friendly and idiot-proof the developers try to make them. The same applies to cars. Thirty years ago you might have had a go at replacing the cylinder head gasket. On modern cars you can't even find the cylinder head. Is technology actually making us less capable?

Cloud is going to do for operations what the web did for marketing.

2011-07-30T15:35:00.008+01:00

The growing capability of cloud software as a service.(SAAS) functionality is looking to change the business models of many small medium enterprises and particularly micro businesses. The web enabled anyone to market to the world where previously only large companies could market with substantial budgets. It has revolutionised marketing and sales over the last 10 years making small businesses able to compete in markets where years ago it would have been impossible.

Cloud is going to do for operations what the web did for marketing.

When you have an idea and uptake could be slow it takes a brave entrepreneur to fork out for expensive software and supporting infrastructure; raising fixed costs and automatically creating as a result high take up to hit the break even point. Many have shrunk back from this and how many good ideas have not developed due to high initial investment costs?

With many SAAS offerings a "freemium" approach is used for low volumes so it is low on up front cost to start trading in a certain way and really good to "just see how it goes".

I think this is going to be a serious stimulant for innovation and the development of smaller businesses.

Cloud is going to revolutionise many business models and create those that historically would never have got of the "fag packet".

It will particularly assist part time business and lifestyle ventures as these low volume options previously could not be sustainable and reduce the risk of start up operations.

Costs bases will be more aligned to variable costs and the costs therefore flexible with the ability to expand or contract due to changes in volume. Scalability both up and down is the benefit.

So cloud is more than just another I.T.fad its going to make some serious waves in business design land.

Tom Graves speaks sense yet again.

2011-07-27T14:10:00.006+01:00

I always like to read what Tom Graves has to say on business/enterprise architecture, recently he posted the following which was spot on as usual.

" If you come from an IT-centric architecture background, the first need is to realise that the standard EA view of business-architecture is a mess - it's essentially a random grab-bag of 'everything not-IT'. Tom Graves 2011.

I.T. centric EA is a core problem to us in the Business architecture space because often 80% of represented architecture is I.T and 20% is business which is the wrong way round.

Whilst EA continues to be used incorrectly as a term and job role title then the problems and culture persist in an unhelpful way.

Tom is a business centric business architect so when you see his name in discussions stop and read because, most of the time, its worth reading and take note.

Off site Courses Reap Benefits

2011-07-14T12:03:00.005+01:00

I just finished yesterday afternoon a public delivery of Dever Solution's three day business architecture course which we held at New Place near Southampton.

Delegates enjoyed getting away from it to discuss and exchange views as well as learning a new set of techniques in a relaxing environment.

They commented that it is difficult these days to get thinking time as corporate cultures drives a "let's be busy" way of operating where stopping and reflecting is often seen as laziness.

The excellent facilities and calm environment provided by Devere Venues( no connection) were certainly conducive to a quality learning experience with both UK and overseas delegates meeting to up-skill in Business Architecture. The food was pretty good too! Many thanks to Zulfiya Huntley and her colleagues for looking after us so well.

So, we better schedule another course soon as even today, the day after the course finished, we have had further enquiries. It looks like a repeat in September is on the cards.

Business Architecture Recruitment

2011-07-05T15:03:00.004+01:00

Most agents don't seem to appreciate what business architecture is. They call associates of ours on regular occasions talking about data migration projects, technology integrations or new platforms; hardly business architecture is it?

When end user clients express a need for an EA with good business skills they organise interviews "yes we want business people" and then later in the second interview it becomes clear that really when the chips are down they want someone technical. Time wasting seems to be on the increase my ex colleagues tell me.

There is obviously a lack of skill in agents really understanding what clients what and agents just repeating what they are told rather than really understanding the role they are recruiting for.

A colleague of mine earlier this week spent some time, whilst speculatively applying for a permanent role, to explain to an agent what a trading consulting business was; the agent, bless her socks, couldn't see that when you run a business you spend large amounts of time marketing and selling and wanted every assignment and piece of delivery outlined with dates so to present a clear pattern to her client. You have too many gaps!!" she said. The conversation soon ended after that and he went elsewhere.

We all don't operate as serial contractors or employees. Commercial naivety like that is probably why they can't get their heads around business architecture - well its commercial is it not!

Perhaps there is a role for people who do business architecture to do some recruiting least we know what we are taking about!

Is the word Organic Positive or Negative?

2011-06-18T14:43:00.004+01:00

In general the word organic is associated with a positive spin.

Organic meat and vegetables are perceived by most as better than non organic. However in business design is organic design a good thing? the phrase "organic design" is really a bit nonsensical because when businesses just become what they are they are hardly designed are they! oxymoron perhaps?

It is becoming clear to many that organic development of a business without design results in complexity confusion, duplication and avoidable cost.

So, in business architecture "Organic" development isn't particularly desirable or a positive. In fact a lot of business architectural work is all about sorting out the mess of organically developed structures and it keeps us all busy and employed.

One thing though organic produce is more than often more expensive than non organic and in business design this is definitely true!!

All or nothing in Process Management

2011-05-01T15:11:00.004+01:00

It seems that so often that people expect a right or wrong answer to business problems. Process mapping and process management is sold often on the basis that this is the only way forward for everyone. In reality of course answers are in the shades of grey rather than black and white.

Does every business need or benefit from fully documented measured and dash-boarded set of processes?

Vendors of process tools will tell you you do, but that's because they deal with this day in day out and find their thinking gets clouded. The answer is no not always, often yes but also sometimes a partial or appropriate solution is required.

Obviously if you are into volumes of highly repeatable services (transactional) or manufacturing processes then a lot of what these process vendors and solutionists say makes a lot of sense; however if you do similar things but your variability is fairly high then over engineering of process may not be worth the effort and be counter-productive.

Executive or professionals often conduct activity in a regular or consistent way but apply their experience case by case so attempting to codify all they do and measure it as such will create enormous amounts of corporate angst and cultural barriers. So map, measure and manage to a level that is sensible for the activity in hand don't attempt to impose a full blown approach as this will ultimately result in rejection and no consideration of process at all!

Public Business Architecture Course July 2011

2011-04-08T16:09:00.004+01:00

There has been a lot of requests for delivery of the "Business Architecture An Approach for Effective Business Design" over the last few weeks.

In recent times this unique business focused course has only be held in house within client organisations but many individuals from a variety of companies have requested places; so as a consequence Dever Solutions Limited is scheduling a Public Course Delivery for the 11th- 13th of July at New Place, Shirrel Heath near Southampton.

We can take up to 10 delegates on this course.

http://www.devere.co.uk/our-locations/new-place.html

Please note that Devere venues is a trading name of DeVere Group and is a completely different legal entity to Dever Solutions Limited the business architect training company. It is a pure coincidence that the venue chosen and training company delivering the event have similar names.

The Unspoken Business Model - Phantom Forces

2011-03-16T14:47:00.003Z

I have been working with developing some business models for clients recently and I came to the conclusion that often there is a deep seated business model that is actually not voiced or declared and in some cases not even understood within the organisation.

Behind the scenes is an unknown or phantom business model that is simply there by default through competitive pressures, external environment and by business Darwinism.

Take insurance as an example most insurers tell us and believe that customer service is a prime driver to their business and particularly in claims. In reality though the market driver is that they make their money from those that do not claim and claims actually are rare in terms of customer contact, well that is how insurance works - is it not.

So bad claims service is not seen by many of the customer base by default and in reality if you loose customers who claim by giving poor service does it matter because does the business really want these people who claimed anyway - people who claim don't make money for insurers do they?

People buy on price and the promise of a good claims service is difficult to justify and sell when people are comparing insurance premiums so the driver is reduced costs not the higher costs of a quality claims service.

Insurance is a commodity based business where you make money by driving down cost and reducing claims so naturally "doing claims" well as an offering doesn't really get supported by the unspoken business model even though corporate mantra say "We pride ourselves on claims".

So, does the unspoken or natural selection based business model actually overwrite the explicit business model in the longer term? It is almost like defying gravity - an unresisting force.

Is there an unspoken business model behind every declared business model and how many organisations are actually planning strategically against those natural pressures with all the consequences of "rowing against the tide" ?

Customer Service Mass Production

2011-02-28T15:56:00.005Z

In the early part of the 20th century Henry Ford said "You can have a model T in any colour as long as it is black!"

The days of building large volumes of mass produced items in batch have almost disappeared with the introduction of lean thinking. Manufacturing might have reached this state of mass individualisation but has customer service?

Not a week goes by without encountering yet another example of crass service design that end up making this grumpy business architect even more grumpy.

We have to realise that we can't codify everything and sometimes humans have to apply common sense and yet this seems to rarely happen, particularly when activity gets outsourced and off-shored.

Lift and ship to a place that is "cheap"; standardise activity to minimise the need for high levels of 1st language communication skills and pay staff a fraction of what you did before - "Kerching" all in the name of reduced costs and competition.

The result is often a fed up customer, threatened loyalty and renewals but in a culture of management delusion where no-one knows that the service they offer end to end from an individual customers perspective was dreadful; as introspective KPIs continue to "fog" the management that all is well.

Does all this facilitate growth, customer retention or even customer advocacy? ehh... No!

Simple problem really - think and apply common sense and build exception routines into your processes and staff accordingly to flex the requirement for a bit of sensible response.

Mass produced customer service done on the cheap in mass call centres using foreign cheap labour to drive down costs; does this sound a bit like a car assembly plant sixty years or seventy ago!

Maybe in years to come we will see a similar revolution in customer service that can deliver service excellence pulled as customers demand it, individualised and intelligent, rather than the frequently bland, frustrating and cost reduced excuses that we regularly put up with today.

Then we will look back on the noughties and say: "well you could have customer service then as much as you liked, as long as you obeyed the BPM work-flows!"

Will the early 21st century be quoted in future business studies texts as the dark days of customer service before the enlightenment of lean mass individualised service; well we shall see if things improve - there is certainly lots of scope for that in my view.

I will resist the wish to share yet another fiasco I experienced with an insurance company that sparked this post but you really will think I am being grumpy if I did that, so I will spare you!

Well maybe for now- I reserve the right to come back and reveal all!

Applying Business Architecture to Micro Businesses

2011-02-26T19:41:00.003Z

This week we delivered a morning unit of business design in support of a local FE college offering training for potential entrepreneurs referred from Job-centre plus .

An eclectic mix of nine delegates assembled to receive training on a variety of topics on starting a small business.

I delivered a session on business models using the Osterwalder Business Model Canvas and the group saw the relevance of this type of holistic analysis - not that it was presented as such!

I often wonder about applying business architecture methods and techniques to smaller businesses than we normally get involved with and this event shows that if you carefully choose the material and make it relevant a lot of value can be transfered.

The key benefit seemed to be the recognition by delegates that customer segmentation and client need analysis needed to be linked to specifically aligned propositions with a supporting framework behind them to make it all work.

The approach to all this was a deliberate attempt to remove corporate jargon and not to present method for method sake - the feedback gained from the session was encouraging.

So, business architecture, even though the subject title was deliberately not mentioned at all during the session, is valuable for for big and small businesses a like. You just have to position it in an appropriate manner.

Measures determine behaviours and not always as intended!

2011-02-19T15:41:00.003Z

Continuing on the theme of measurement several people have mentioned how they do things differently according to the way things are measured.

The "game playing" i.e. the behaviours developing to meet the measures can result in the measurement being totally pointless.

An example is an organisation that needs to collate attendance data and berates its staff for not doing this by close of play that day when in reality the following morning isn't really an issue; so what happens the staff fill the attendance in advance just in case they forget to fill it in especially when they get tired towards the end of the day, so they don't get "told off" thus challenging the actual quality of the data.

The measurement goal seems to be achieved but - oh dear - the data is probably no good now as attendance is always positively flagged by default and if someone forgets to overwrite the present mark with the correct data then it is artificially presented.

A bit of patience, communication and empathy for working practices would have resulted in better data quality and timeliness to boot. A bit of process evaluation might have helped to actually design more appropriate measures; but that requires a bit of structural thinking!

Changing the measure to allow 48 hours for the data to be entered would have been a compromise and resulted in less game playing and then timely data of a good quality would have been the result.

The person receiving the stats probably things his/her management has been excellent - tick- " am I not wonderful" - but in reality statistics blind the truth - the behaviours have now bucked the system because the consequence of the measures haven't been thought through correctly!

"You cannot manage anything you cannot measure" True or False

2011-02-16T11:41:00.002Z

There was an interesting interview on the Today programme on Radio 4 yesterday morning with reference to NHS care for the elderly. The interviewee made the point that society doesn't value anything that we cannot count and concluded that this was the reason we seem to be moving backwards in progress in many fields.

Many managers say "you cannot manage anything you cannot measure" it became a cliche particularly around six sigma.

I think that this is not as true as many people think; because instinct for doing the right thing is not based on randomness but application of experience and patterns, the latter being quite difficult and complex to model mathematically

What order? Vision Imperatives or Business Model?

2011-02-12T19:48:00.009Z

Recent Business Architecture Course in Glasgow debates what comes first: Vision , business model or imperatives in a process for developing a Target Operating Model.

http://teacherbuilding.theiet.org

The Teacher Building Glasgow Excellent Training Venue. Having used this venue twice now in recent years I found the staff and levels of service second to none.

In a recent business architecture course delivered to a leading bank in Glasgow the debate was about what comes first in constructing a target operating model: the business model, the vision or the imperative statements ( goal statements). Normally I show the business model choice first, followed by imperatives, design principles and then the vision.

I suppose it depends what you mean by vision but essentially, semantics put to one side, it's what you see as being the future probably in a variety of levels of detail.

The conclusion from the group was that rather than a sequential approach the process was probably iterative i.e. that each one informed the other and it was necessary to examine each stage several times in a rotation until the conclusion was satisfactory.

The business analysts on the course thought that the vision should come first, followed by imperatives and then the model, the model being the solution, as this fits in with their normal way of working; however the group as a whole concluded that actually all the items fed into each other and the iterative conclusion seemed to become the consensus.

So, the message was work them through several times until the whole connected sequence makes sense- interesting conclusion; another nail in the coffin for waterfall type thinking!

If this makes sense great, but if not make contact and book a course for your business analysis/design team in business architecture and we will help you get to grips with building an operational model based on your strategy for your business to work towards - A Target Operating Model.

Business Capabilities and Business Services

2011-01-16T16:00:00.004Z

Carole Chilton who works for Wells Fargo in the States started a good discussion on the "Business Architects" group in Linkedin recently; after many posts and extended discussions here are her conclusions which I think are quite helpful.

A business capability is an abstract but essential building block, designating a particular ability or capacity that a business posseses (or exchanges) to achieve a specific purpose or outcome, and describes what the business has the ability to do to create value for customers; for example, pay employee, ship product, or provide consultant.

Services are abstract yet inherently manageable entities requiring one or more capabilities that a business draws upon to create, provide, &/or support an instance of value to a customer or another service (i.e. a product, widget, or consulting).

Business capabilities are what a business can do to provide something of value to its customer - a service.

This reflects the views in an article that I myself wrote a couple of years ago. http://www.deversolutions.co.uk/capability-frameworks.pdf

Faceless Registration - A bad customer experience.

2010-12-31T11:36:00.007Z

Several electronic products needed registration over the holiday period and most give a web site reference for registration; bearing in mind this is perhaps the first experience of the organisation one gets you think it would be a good thing to get right.

On two occasions the websites failed to allow an account to be registered and so followed a phone call only to be held in a queue for ages and an abandoned call. For the first organisation in the end the post card was filled in a stamp applied and the old fashion contact strategy used. A mail was sent pointing out this rather daft situation and I still await a reply with bemusement.

The second company a well known camera manufacturer with the initial letter "N" where having failed to set up an account to register I tried to email a message through "contact us" only to be told I need to register an account to send a message - oh dear!

OK next step use the phone, having listened to a message about defrosting frozen pipes for 3 or 4 minutes, remember this is a N**** camera , I eventually get through to an operative in a general maintenance and warranty company who is operating this outsourced activity on behalf of this photographic manufacturer, who to be fair to her registers the product quite efficiently.

On mentioning the website failure she says " nothing to do with us sir but I can put you through to N**** to talk to them" reply "no thanks I have wasted enough time on this already sorry; Oh by the way what has frozen plumbing got to do with photography?" answer " I didn't know we had that message running and as we operate insurance for plumbing cover that's probably why it is there".

So apart from this "Meldrew rant" what is the point of this post from a business design perspective?

Do any of these large corporates every really realise what their customer experience is really like. Customer journeys must be mapped correctly and clearly understood else the consequence is creates serious confidence and brand damage particularly for a prestigious brand like the photographic manufacturer in discussion here.

The second observation is that outsourcing, although saving costs, can create a disparate customer experience with processes and activities operating in non communicating silos.

The third observation is if you use a web site to stand at arms length from your clients for please ensure other channels of communication are easy to access as not only are you alienating your customers but you don't even know you are doing it and can't be given constructive criticism - blissful ignorance and corporate group think prevail yet again.

My summary message from all of this is "for goodness sake step outside and look in because from out here it looks pretty bad".

Best Practice - Is it always best?

2010-12-08T13:28:00.004Z

There is a constant focus on aiming to follow best practice in many corporates at present. Best Practice means to many the best way of doing something, but is this reality.

Is best practice perhaps the most common way or excepted way of doing something - does the word best really serve us well here?

Best practice based on the normal way of doing something is really attempting to minimise risk by following what most people do on the basis of if most people do this and failure is rare then by definition this is the best practice way.

There are some issues with this: "insanity is doing things the same and expecting different results" Einstein I believe. So if you want to differentiate or achieve a step change in results is best practice really the way forward or will it limit your results and ambition.

My other point is that best practice way well have lots of waste in it as people move from one organisation to another and accumulate activity by wanting to create a position and a set of activities to sustain their existence; then that all becomes best practice; is this really agile or lean, probably not.

Is the adoption of so called best practices actually creating corporate overhead and management fad or does it give benefit? - most smaller businesses would not understand much of what goes on in large corporate because they are to busy serving customers and making ends meet to spend time engaging with corporate best practice. Is that in itself a clue to answering the question?

Best practice may well the safest way of doing something but is it the most effective way of achieving results and is perhaps a limit on creativity?

I think if we are continually striving towards best practice it is important to challenge and assess whether it really represents a good way forward because at the end of the day it may well a serious constraint to creativity and downstream performance.

121 Distance Learning some useful experience.

2010-12-06T15:14:00.005Z

Having just finished a distance learning version of the Business Architecture training I thought it was worth talking about the delivery process and technology.

Being it was 121 facilitated via VOIP and screen sharing I was pleasantly surprised at the effectiveness of teaching like this. The learning management system provided bespoke material to the learner and made an easy place to leave material to be browsed securely whilst between sessions.

The Skype worked well as the new version 5 seems to be bug free and didn't have any of the disappointments of the previous versions ; no video freezes or issues whilst flicking from video to screen share. Whether I would use this for larger groups is another question but some of the more familiar commercial versions of web conferencing are a bit pricey for low casual use like this.

Upsides are substantially lower delivery costs and therefore lower pricing for the client, no travel costs no venue charges, overnight accommodation or travel time to be billed. A classroom event needs a minimum number of people to make it financially fly; so this is ideal for individuals particularly those who are self funding.

The other upside was it fitted the clients time scheduling an hour session once a week - well we often over ran in reality but that was OK - as long as value was perceived I am happy with that.

Downsides are you loose the flow and ebb of group discussion facilitated by social interaction over a more traditional residential delivery model. Kinaesthetic exercises obviously are not so clever and neither is syndicate work for obvious reasons; syndicates with one member aren't that effective!

Overall from a trainers point of view this approach has some merits and we will be pursuing it further as part of the mix of offering.

Strategy and the SME

2010-12-06T14:50:00.005Z

I have been putting some material together for a business strategy unit and it contains the usual candidates Ansoff, BC Matrices, SWOT and Pestle; most of the literature is written about big corporates and very little on smaller organisations SMEs and even less on micro businesses and in particular life style businesses. Banks don't seem to understand life style businesses underwriting loans based on balance sheets rather than income generation.

It seems that many seem to look down on life style businesses and yet these form much of the small business economy. In fact if you look at your average local authority facilitated business group most of the members will be life style businesses.

What is needed in terms of a strategic point of view is a different perspective on some of the techniques deployed which are clearly emphasise on growth and value creation. Lifestyle businesses give focus to enjoyment of an activity that a so called lifestyle business creates. i.e. the fun or delivery of an activity, perhaps an interest or hobby, that also creates income is clearly a different matter.

I don't think corporate types and bankers should look down their noses so much on these businesses; lets face it making a living doing something you enjoy rather than commuting up to London three hours a day and attending meetings filled with corporate group think isn't really all that clever - is it?

SMEs and lifestyle businesses at the smaller end of the SME spectrum have specific strategic and tactical issues that need addressing.

These ideas need to be explored more and my new unit will contain some thinking on this as well as the traditional blue chip large corporate approaches.

Security and productivity

2010-12-01T19:45:00.002Z

An organisation that restricts access from the outside in terms of emails both in and out although best intentioned creates great delays and extended delivery times when it tries to work with outside suppliers or contractors. What happens here is an organistion that has made a decision, usually by risk people, who have not considered the consequences to the organisation as a whole.

It then begins to complain when deadlines are missed as working productivity dives for the partner as it sends its staff into the client building 200 miles away to use a PC; after of course the obligatory 6 weeks it takes to set up a new user. When companies are paying time and materials just why do they do this?

The decision may well be right; but has the downsides been discussed and agreed, or is this a risk decision made without recognition of the overall needs.

A colleague once said "the easiest job for a risk manager is to say no - the real skill in risk is in knowing when to say yes".

Value Add Very Low Percentage of Cycle Time PCE%

2010-10-27T17:41:00.005+01:00

When you first explain that the amount of value add in a process is often less than 5% the rest being waste you get some odd looks as if "that can't be possible surely".

Well, if you take the total cycle time i.e. the time the process takes from initiation by a customer until when the customer considers it finished and then see what time is spent adding value from the customers perspective then 5% in service processes is the norm. Sound bad well it is.

This is known as the process cycle efficiency figure PCE %

Why am I thinking of this today? Well my son has need of some orthodental work and we have been for yet another appointment.

This all started five months ago, we still await some actual work to be done, the rest has been in consultations and differences of opinions across three health silos.

In fact the value add so far is about 1.5 hours i.e. time in the chair so to speak; the rest is in waiting caused by queing and unfortunately delays caused by defects in process due to poor communication between seperate dentists and othodontists working in different practices.

So, even by being kind in removing weekends and non working hours! the process cycle efficiency is at about 0.18% and we still haven't achieved much yet either!

The waste to the NHS is another matter; poor letter writing and mis-communication, confusion as to who should be responsible for doing the x rays, asumptions of what has done whom and what each party thinks the other is responsible for adds to the list of delays and obvious cost of this "should be" simple process.

No wonder the NHS costs so much. Why of why do they make such a meal of everything!

So 5% PCE in service industries is quite good really!!

Answer: improve communication and manage the process from end to end not within silos.

IGrafx Reference Models

2010-10-26T12:30:00.005+01:00

I had a call from Trevor Moore of IGX solutions today he informs me IGrafx are providing some reference models in their process modelling suite.

The models are for ITIL and SAP they are also working on a Solvency 2 model.

This is going to save loads of time for people implementing one initiative or another rather than having to start from scratch and pay the high consulting bills for the IP. this approach looks an interesting development.

Distance Learning

2010-10-26T12:23:00.002+01:00

I have been experimenting with delivering a version of the business architecture course at a distance. The issue has always been that when individuals want to enrol there are never enough at the same time to make a course economic for delgates and the trainer alike.

So by offering a version of 121 seminars and material on an learning management system it means the problem can be solved.

I have mentored one client recently and it seems to be well received. Skype as a delivery method is a bit flaky though with screen control freezing to much but as a first try all is going well. The delegate is based over 250 miles away and that fact alone proves the concept.

Process Gets the Blame

2010-10-06T17:10:00.002+01:00

I am working with an organisation that has very little process, well fragments - dotted around here and there. They think they have process but they don't really. Some low level physical work flows too wordy too granular and certainly no big picture. Well meaning people changing stuff with unintentional knock on elsewhere in the organisation organic growth not change by design.

When things go wrong and you say its "because of lack of process" the reply is we have to much process that is the problem!

The issue is that what they blame as process is bad design and poor old process as a discipline gets the blame - it is difficult when people just don't know what looks good or for that matter what looks bad!

Are pockets of bad process worse than no process at all?

Networking Cynicism

2010-10-06T16:45:00.003+01:00

As the downturn continues I am not surprised when as network colleagues get redundant they suddenly get in contact; this is happening about once a week at the moment.

Often you don't hear from people for years and then guess what their on the phone. The best ones are senior perm's that never returned your calls while trying to get business when they were in a position of power and now of course they want your help. How the mighty do fall!

I must admit is takes restraint not to tell them a few facts however in the preservation of the network- you never know when it works the other way- one has to hold ones tongue!

If people want the benefits of networking you think they would see the benefit of keeping in touch when times are good as it does look so cynical otherwise!

Process Technology and People have to be in balance

2010-08-12T13:14:00.003+01:00

A recent reply to a comment on a forum that presense of business processes were negative in a business promoted this response.

Process technology and people have to be in balance.

However processes are vital, without them you have high variability non managed customer experiences and high costs. Processes are as much important assets as people.

What we see so often is badly designed standardisation resulting in some of the appaling customer experiences that we have to deal with today as customers. So just because process design is done badly is no reason to deny the value of process management.

Any business above a certain size can't function professionally without some process framework a SME can, to some degree, and that is why small compapies often do so well in a competative environment based on service; however get beyond a certain size and the cottage industry approach tends to fall apart, unfortunately.

The people issue is interesting. I have worked in failing organisations with no process or very little and they always promote "our people" as assets the result is people running around in mad chaos making things happen due to lack of process and creating a culture of indispensible people - prima donnas and heroes. In these companies costs are out of control and the inefficiencies errors and customer service are highly varied. They rush from one crisis to the next. In a market where day rates and salaries have plunged and supply of people is high people, subject to training of course, are a fairly easily replaced.

Businesses say people are their main asset and perhaps they are but most fail to treat their employees and engage them correctly. Corporate mantra of HR is that people are our assets but the reality of this doesn't often manefest in how folks are treated.

HR often believe what they wnat to believe in a group think manner - is "our assets are our our people" a corporate buzz-phrase?

Extreme Contrast

2010-08-11T11:22:00.006+01:00

I was fortunate to have a day on the Ffestiniog Narrow Guage railway recently. One of the thoughts I had was how different this railway was to mainline companies; and one in particular I used daily whilst on a contract.

In accepting the vast differences in scale the overriding difference was cultural.

The daily commuting line I used seemed to treat its customers as the enemy with revenue inspectors, penalty fares, process driven ticket staff who had no empathy or concern for anyone other than their rules and inflexible procedures. Many posters of corporate mantra of customer focus but the reality is that its staff ,who are effectively inenabled due to the corporatised nature of the organisation, have a culture of resignation and "whats the point" - this is how things are done around here.

To be fair the trains run on time, well mostly, but the experience of this large company imposes on its monopolistic customer base is quite unpleasant.

The mountain railway was the complete inverse and it was all about engagement of its staff; they loved what they did, many being volunteers, smiles and fun were the theme throughout. It is so interesting to see how culture and coporatisation of a culture can create such variance. I know this is an extreme experience comparison but the well known commuter line could learn a lot from this bunch of committed amateurs in North Wales.

My observation here is about how coporate cuture can destroy the essense of customer service and how employee engagement is so key.

Pivot the Organisation - Design the organisation to serve the customers not the people who work for it!

2010-07-22T16:48:00.004+01:00

-An Article published in Leasing World Magazine July 2010 issue aimed at the Asset Finance market but true for many other organisations-

Management through functions and departments is very familiar to those working in banks and asset finance companies. This traditional approach where businesses are structured according to professional skills - financial people working in finance, sales people working in sales and processing staff working in operations - is nothing new,

The traditional functional based business design is efficient in organisations that do not change very much and in businesses with low levels of complexity. The centralisation of skills delivers savings in synergies and resource management. Today businesses that have low levels of change and are simple are rare. There is a clear driver for client focus and an emphasis on local profit and loss where centralisation and standardisation doesn’t deliver differentiation and agility easily.

However in other industries this model is changing. There has been recognition in recent times that the customer and his or her experience is more important than how the organisation is constructed. The underlying question posed is does the division of the business into these skill sets actually deliver performing processes and activities?

In many cases the resounding answer has been no. Why is this case? Many customer-based experiences have activity that crosses functional boundaries and every time there is a border crossing there is an opportunity for miscommunication and delay. The criticism of organisational “silos” is well voiced and having enterprises structured in a way which could be described as being at “right angles” to the way customers experience the organisation doesn’t necessarily facilitate good customer service.

The growing trend seems to be to structure the business in line with how the processes flow with all individuals, with whatever skill family they come from, reporting into someone accountable for the performance of the process as a whole. This end-to-end management structure is gaining popularity and pace.

This starts off with a few core customer processes where experts from all the functions collaborate in a new end-to-end organisational structure. It is soon seen that this works: customer satisfaction rises, complaints fall and more efficient processes deliver better returns. After a while the new way catches on and soon other key activities in the enterprise start to be re-organised in this fashion.

If the end-to-end management takes off the traditional functions eventually get smaller and smaller until they finally disappear. The organisation has by this stage completely pivoted from a functional construction to a construction based on its core services and underlying processes.

In asset finance there has always been the aim to create a healthy tension between the risk management sales and operation functions. The balance between the desire to sell, the drive to follow protocols and the need to reduce risk has always been a continual ebb and flow within finance businesses. If this balance is well managed then the company is successful; if one or more functions are allowed to dominate then the company either fails to achieve market share or conversely develops bad debts, both issues leading to potential failure.

The natural requirement to sustain this functional tension is maybe one of the reasons that functional based organisational design in leasing companies persists. Other industries have tackled similar issues through matrix management or balanced scorecards or indeed a combination of both to generate both customer focus tempered against increased levels of risk.

Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”; this quote gives encouragement to try out different and new things, or else expect more of the same.

One way of developing a step change would be to try out structuring your organisation around the activities that support your customers rather than around the skills and political preferences of your employees. You may well find a lot of waste and certainly delays in delivering customer value as well as potential improvements in customer focus leading to higher volumes of business. If you structure differently to your competitors then this may well lead to market changing differentiation.

So often restructures start and finish with an organisational chart; they should start with a process and value chain map and people allocated to support the delivery of value. The message of this article is to design your processes with your customers in mind and then design the organisational structure to fit those processes not the other way round, which is the default position for so many enterprises.

Training for Individuals -ADVERT-

2010-06-19T14:25:00.004+01:00

Training courses for specialist subjects are difficult to provide to individuals. If the subject matter is widely in demand then one can schedule public courses knowing that of the hundreds that want to do the course a core number will book places for the scheduled dates.

For more specialist courses like for example "Business Architecture" conventional training usually only can be organised for groups of people within businesses. This is how most of the business architecture courses that we have run at Dever Solutions have run historically.

Frequently it is a team which is wanting to build up a business architecture capability and wishes to use the course to facilitate its building process - this has worked well for many of our clients over the last two years or so.

However several times during the year we get individuals wanting to book on to a course but there is never enough who want to do it at the same time! It would be unfair to recover the full costs from an individual to run a 121 course delivered in a conventional way; it is the fixed costs of paying tutors travel and subsistence that makes this difficult.

In order to solve this issue we will be creating a 121 mentoring version of our popular "Business Architecture An Approach For Effective Business Design" course using remote delivery and our e-learning portal.

http://www.deverlearning.co.uk/.

This won't be just slide packs and resourses but scheduled lecturing time with tutors using conference call - audio and visual - and other remote delivery techniques.

This will enable us to price the learning experience at levels affordable to independently financed individuals - contractors and consultants and the like. At the moment the ability to deliver a course to less than 4-5 people on one occasion, particularly away from our home territory, is restricting its access to many.

A Token Post! What is a Token?

2010-06-19T14:22:00.003+01:00

A process does nothing until it is triggered. Some therefore refer to a process as a static business item or object.When some event happens the process "fires", the receipt of a letter a timed event or a phone call are examples of triggers.When the event occurs a relay race starts through the process activity boxes - think process map here- and the baton passes through the flow until the process ends.If the process splits into parallel activity the relay baton, otherwise known as the token, duplicates or splits until it merges later, or each part of the split token finds an end point.The token represents the flow of activity through the process identifying the event that started it all off.So, a process is static until triggered and becomes dynamic whilst the token or token parts are still active until the tokens either combine and reach the end or all of the tokens reach the end point in the process.If you want to do process simulation getting your head round this is essential!I am currently designing a new training programme in "Developing Your Business Processes as Business Assets" which will address this issue amongst others.

Visio Helps Me Bill More Days! But is this Good Value for My Clients?

2010-06-16T16:34:00.005+01:00

I was asked to do some simple process mapping recently. I asked what tool they wanted me to use and surprise surprise "VISIO 2003" came back as an answer.

I arrived on site and ran some 121 interviews and began to draw.

Several days later on schedule I delivered the results and was then asked to do some customer experience (value chain) work with the process drawings. The re-drawing with all those fiddly links that get messed up on changing things took several days with much angst and frustration; as everyone who has used this generic drawing tool will tell you.

Why do you use Visio? I asked during the assignment wash up meeting.

- Well, its on the standard build and its cheap" was the reply.-

- "We don't want to spend money on more software and anyhow it is too hard getting the purchase request approved by I.T." !

My conclusion was - had they recommended a professional mapping tool I could have done the work in 40% of the time or produced more in the time allocated.

So is saving money on a cheap tool really a saving when a freelancer, charging several hundred pounds a day takes, a week to do what he could do in two days with a professional process tool like IGrafx flowcharter? http://www.igxsolutions.co.uk/

False economy I thinks!!

The addition factor is that Visio drawings are drawings not models and very 2d not being suitable for further use ; but that is another discussion for another day.

Lean Irony

2010-05-28T15:15:00.003+01:00

I had a side splitting moment this afternoon after receiving an e mail from a government agency, name withheld, telling us it was cancelling its procurement tender for a lean process review due to the new government cuts.

Why is this so amusing?

Well it all started before Xmas with a request for tender for some lean consulting work; having looked at the paperwork required to tender i.e. health and safety policy equal opportunities and the such; I and my associates decided to give this paper trail a miss.

Five months later we get a mail saying that none of the applying companies understood the requirement due to communication difficulties and they were starting the process all over again! Lean I think not!

The agency didn't understand what lean was, in our view, and when people who did know gave them advice it fell on deaf ears.

Would they indulge in dialogue with suppliers - no they followed their process; surprise surprise they got the wrong things offered to them.

Today the note says the process is now cancelled due to government cuts in consulting contracts. I spluttered all over the laptop screen in mirth.

So we have a Lean initiative procured in a remarkably unlean way and then it gets cut to save waste; but Lean saves waste and reduces costs how ironic is this.

Understanding of lean is not that good in this particular government agency. No wonder this country has financial problems!

A Bird in the Title DSDM Atern

2010-05-24T18:31:00.010+01:00

The naming of a project development methodology version with the name of a species of bird hit the discussion forums this week. DSDM Atern instead of Version 5 or whatever; is apparently named after the Artic Tern a so called agile bird species.

The use of such a metaphorical version name is a bit puzzling and I do wonder whether it will further the cause or not. DSDM = Dynamic Systems Development Method is actually a pretty good approach shame about the name - an opportunity missed I think!

Shame I always liked DSDM having helped a major life insurer develop their own approach calling it something different "Hothouse" but in reality it was a variant of DSDM version 3/4 with some tweaks for bolting an agile front end for requirement definition on to a tediously slow incumbant waterfall method.

RJ Robinson comments on this @ http://openmgt.blogspot.com

What is in a Process

2010-05-17T14:01:00.003+01:00

Process means different things to different people. When groups of people used to working with certain types of processes view other areas they think and act in their own image.

What do I mean?

Well, transactional process i.e. people dealing with high volume high replication activity, model measure and simulate. Data is key and they use it on occasions to the the extreme using methods like six sigma to measure slight variations in variability to eliminate defects and produce highly repeatable consistent processes.

Whilst processes in the professional area, where the activity is nearly always different in one way or another, are viewed by transactional people as "Are these really processes?" and they often try to codify the variability much to the frustration of the users who rapidly get turned off.

The theme with professional processes is that there are scenarios around a standard theme or best practice approach. Process mapping and improvement is no less valuable than "paper factory" processes; it is just different.

Learning to see and to communicate how best to do things doesn't mean necessarily turning a professional job into a production line.

The message here is appropriateness e.g.use the right approaches and tools don't impose your views or experience on areas that just happen to be different - business and process architecture is not a black and white game.

Forcing inappropriate methods on to people never reaches a satisfactory outcome.

What wastes time?

2010-04-28T16:52:00.004+01:00

I was running a session yesterday on time management. We were doing a "brainstorm" on what wastes time. As well as the usual stuff about e-mail mis-use and meetings one feature that was discussed was the most wasteful thing for some was dealing with their own manager's chaos!

It seems that busy fool disease amongst middle and senior managers is still growing as corporate cultures demand individuals to look good and be "busy busy" at the expense of productivity and the people they work for.

Another comment was the bigger the business gets the further its activity goes away from delivering value to its customers at the expense of corporate group think and fluff - interesting.

Good bit of perception from a group with an average age of about 26; perhaps some of our older 50K + earners should think about their behaviours and look in the mirror.

Standing Back From The Cliff Face

2010-04-20T12:20:00.003+01:00

Well I actually mean that literally!. I did geology at Uni. and as a consequence still have a look at the old rocks when on holiday.

When you are close up to rock formations on the beach trying to understand what the structure is it gets difficult. Look back at the bay from the cliff path and things become quite obvious very quickly.

What has this muse of the Lower Paleozoic of Pembrokeshire got to do with business architecture?

I sadly thought while walking the coastal path last week that this is just like analysts and architects. Analysts often stand too close to the "rocks" and do measurements in attempt to understand whats going on while architects stand back and see the bigger picture.

The ultimate ability or competence is to do both; which in my experience it is difficult to find individuals that can successfully achieve both.

Accreditation a double edged sword?

2010-03-25T13:41:00.002Z

The I.T. world is full of accreditation on the face of it it all sounds sensible but is it really?

As I run a training company I looked recently at a well know I.T. accreditation programme; I shall keep the name to myself for now.

I was surprised to see that it was the exams that were accredited not the training and it involved both substantial fees to be paid to the accreditation authority and lots of process and bureaucracy. There was no insistance on qualified trainers either PTTLS or ITOL which seemed a bit ironic to me.

The exam providers get there exams approved, quality control the examiners/course directors and then the approved examination centres train delegates to pass their exam.

Is accreditation therefore more about making money for accreditation authorities that improving professional capability or am I being cynical?

As a qualified trainer I am more interested in delivering long lasting skills and capability than getting delegates through tests.

Perhaps this is why senior I.T. leaders say to me "Well the team got accredited but they still can't do the job - is this perhaps what is going wrong?

Perhaps accreditation is creating the wrong behaviours, creating closed shops and delusion particularly when ignorant agents and HR professionals are filtering out candidates based on their accreditation credentials; but that is another subject for another day.

What is PTTLS

2010-03-19T18:00:00.003Z

Answer: Preparing to Teach in the Life Long Learning Sector.

Any training course funded by public money in the UK has to be delivered by a trainer holding a PTTLS certificate. So if you are in the public sector - NHS Trusts, Government Departments, Local Authorities or in receipt "train to gain" funded training you need a qualified trainer.

Shareholder Value As a Measure of Value?

2010-03-04T15:48:00.003Z

I asked someone the other day how they defined value as they described their efforts to add value in their business change efforts - The reply was quickly given "shareholder value".

I reflected on this over the last few days and thought actually this is pretty difficult at the moment and really doesn't help us in project land - why?

Well shareholder value is the combination of divided and gain on share price and really is a longer term goal through a complete economic cycle because it is dramatically affected by short term volatility of share price; particularly in recent times.

I mean when do you measure it? at balance sheet date each year? or is it over a full economic cycle? which would make it quite difficult to use to measure shorter term initiatives.

You could embark on a major piece of change to radically re design the business and in reality that may well have been highly successful but the market falls of 2008/09 would wipe any so called value off the face of the project making the initiative a complete failure if that what the programme uses as its measure?

Is shareholder value a useful measure for business change. Well perhaps not? Is it just too high level and abstract to be really practical; give me NPV any day.

Tom Graves, in a recent thread on a linkedin group robustly thinks that shareholder value is a massive distraction and other definitions of value are much more important, I have sympathy for his views.

The Role of Enterprise Architect Again

2010-02-20T15:10:00.004Z

It was coincidental with my last post that I was talking on the phone later this same week with Paul Williams of GCS Recruitment, who specialises in architecture appointments in the UK, he told me he had had written in his blog recently how he was frustrated by clients advertising for enterprise architects and then promptly listing a whole list of technical skill requirements.

The role clearly was not what it said on the tin.

I do hope I.T. and HR people are not high-jacking the job title and using it to sound good and dress up senior technical roles else this trend is going to create even more mis-understanding and be quite unhelpful.Particularly in alienating the business people who then will see the title enterprise architect and think it is something quite different to what it should be.

The other issue I have seen is that CIO's and their senior managers go out to recruit enterprise architects and say all the right things about wanting business orientated candidates and call strong business architect type people in for interviews; but then end up selling out, recruiting technical people instead later on in the interviewing process.

This creates much frustration to the business types who were reluctant to get involved in the first place because they new this would happen; but had been reassured by the agent that: " Oh no they really want strong business design people- this isn't a technical role you such a good fit!"

I have always thought that there is a tendency for people to "recruit in their own image".

When is an Enterprise Architect not an Enterprise Architect?

2010-02-18T10:51:00.002Z

Answer: When in reality they are an Enterprise I.T Architect!

An Enterprise architect by definition should mean an architect that architects the business as a whole. However, most individuals who hold this title sit in I.T. and look outward to the business for guidance. In variably these folks architect the I.T. across the whole business i.e. an enterprise view. An enterprise architect seems to represent the most senior architecture role in I.T.

This causes confusion amongst all architecture roles including business architects and results in much discussion wherever business design and architecture is discussed.

Business architecture should be a subset of EA but invariably it isn't EA often plays with business architecture but doesn't incorporate it properly else we would see 80% business and 20% I.T. in EA; but in reality the reverse is true.

Thinking About Value in an Outsourced Scenario

2010-02-17T13:40:00.004Z

On the face of it determining value seems quite simple - ask the customers what they see as value and work with that.

However, whilst working last week with an outsourcing organisation the first comment is who is the customer then? is it our client, the clients client, or the end user; this is made even more complicated when the "consumer" i.e. end user is not a true consumer as they don't actually buy the goods or services they are just subjected to them.

The chain delivers value to an authority rather than "actors" that the process is performed upon.

The answer is that we need to examine the value chain as a whole and see how various stakeholders get value and that value may not just be monetary but other aspects such as time delayed or degrees of intrusion.

In understanding the chain of value we can get all parties to agree on the value add through the chain, else as in so many outsourced arrangements the SLA's between the many partners in the chain create behaviours that destroy value from the chain as a whole.

Remember - end to end is the key not just analysis of a component part. So life in outsourcing and shared services isn't as simple as it first seems. If done badly outsourcing destroys overall value as fast as wet rot in a roof!

Sophisticated lean suggests examining the flow of value beyond ones own enterpise boundaries which is quite a step change in thinking for many organisations.

Modern Communication has side effects

2010-02-02T14:47:00.005Z

How often do you walk on to a large floor in corporate premises to see many people working in complete silence. All these individuals are staring at their screens some are writing documents or coding programmes or processing data. Many are responding, reading and creating e-mails; probably to those on the same floor perhaps?

The modern office is becoming a lonely place! Is this efficient communication or social ineptitude. A conversation results in interaction, creative and productive in nature.

Taking 20 minutes to carefully construct a mail by each individual in the chain of communication, to avoid offence, when a few minute conversation will do the same is much more effective and indeed healthy.

Come on lets Talk!its much more productive.

An office where there is lots going on is a creative place, a floor full of screen ghouls is depressing and dull.

Whats your office like?

Razor Blade Business Model

2010-01-26T16:34:00.004Z

I have been printing today in preparation for a business architecture course in early February. I have been upgradng the printing and output quality by going down the colour printing route.

One aspect that is interesting is it is cheaper to buy a new colour laser printer with a set of cartridges doing a 1000 pages per cartridge than buying refills!

It also seems that cheaper printers give smaller starter cartridges and sell the printer cheaper to get you on the hook. A modern example of the old razor and blade business model.

Throwing out a printer because replacing cartridges costs substantially more than a new printer isn't very environmental either. Mad world.

Another feature I thought about was Dr Kano where colour printing of course material has become an example of a delighter moving to basic or hygiene. At one time , not that long ago colour output was rare due to the cost and now more the better -performer- or even expected- hygiene.

Mind you some organisations ban colour printing due to cost; having seen the Staples invoice I see why!

Expectations on handouts drive up the cost of production and therefore the training charge. Do you want lower day rates or higher quality output? Tell me.

Organisational Design and Business Architecture

2010-01-19T10:05:00.004Z

I have reading up on organisational design recently particularly a couple of books written by Naomi Stanford.- Organization Design- Guide to Organisation Design- apologies for the "z" it is in the spelling of the title.

What was interesting was that these books actually described, in the main, a business architectural approach, with some HR bias naturally, but the phrase "business architecture" didn't appear at all.

So it seems when organisational design is carried out correctly the two disciplines are somewhat synonymous.

So why is it that in many organisations HR do org. design and compete with operations people doing process design and I.T. people doing enterprise architecture. In some organisations there is a business strategy group doing business architecture as well, with all these teams pulling in different directions and fighting for "turf".

The corporate world is so interesting is it not?

Business Process Maturity Model

2010-01-08T15:50:00.007Z

I have recently revisited my Business Process Management Maturity model particularly as an associate started discussing with me the allied CMMI business process related models which rely on subjective questions posed in interviews from senior managers in process areas.

I quickly saw that the model I created and use was more objective being based on observational data i.e. Can I see evidence of things rather that a response to a questions posed in an interview "Do you have your processes mapped"? "Oh Yes" says Churchill!!

The first point is: does the recipient of the question understand the question the same way as the person who asks it?

i.e. Question "Do you have visual management in place"?

Does the person interviewed know what visual management is? or worse does he/she think they know what it is and say yes, or indeed yes it is there i.e. a white board with some figures on but in reality it is there for show not for use and has not been updated since last month when the divisional head was on a royal tour!

Secondly is the answer based on hubris and ego rather than reality; we all know that senior managers have a tendency to be "half full" optimists on occasions!

Surely it is better to go and have a look and see the reality rather than accept someones word for it however well intentioned they maybe? At least I know what I am looking for which is a start.

The model looks for features in lean-sigma and benchmarks your process management based on things the assessor finds - a bit obvious really and I am surprised this sort of approach is not more common.

New White Paper

2010-01-07T13:53:00.003Z

I have just been using these quiet snow bound days to write a new white paper, my first for 2010. It is all about developing business processes as business assets and gives focus to the use of tools and approaches.

I have used the IGrafx tool set as an example, which I am becoming increasing enamored with, to illustrate how tools need to be appropriate for a choice of process maturity allowing migration and progressed functionality. The white paper is about 2500 words or so, a bit big for on here.

If you want a copy it will be on the Dever Solutions website shortly or post a comment requesting a copy and I will send it on.

Confusion between the role of a Business Architect and the subject of business architecture.

2009-12-20T16:25:00.004Z

I have been involved in another of those intellectual discussions on the Linkedin Business Architecture Group and there are some folks getting mixed up with their definitions; so I thought I would copy and paste my post here as well as it adds value to this blog. Some folks are defiing business architecture by what they do based on the scope of there role when the activity is done by several roles inclusing that of the executive board.

An implicit or "non visible" business architecture exists even in organisations that do not call it that or even realise they have one.

I mean that: in these cases the "business strategy, mission statements, objectives, and goals are developed by senior management" is the underlying business architecture which as yet has not been crafted into a communicated form by a business architect. i.e. all businesses have the relationships between the various business elements most have not yet extracted them and presented the information in an architecture.

It is like saying that DNA had a structure before Crick and Watson discovered it but now we can see it as the human genome.

What you do as your job, scope, as a business architect is a different matter and doesnt impact on the definition of business architecture. For example I heard an CFO say " My colleagues and I on the board are the business architects ".meaning they set the rules, strategy and the design of the business. Scoping of roles is very different to defining a term such as business architecture as roles will overlap process, activites and subject areas.

TOGAF 8.0 to TOGAF 9.0

2009-12-08T16:40:00.006Z

What is new?

Well an easy question but apparently not an easy answer. I posed the question on the business architecture group on linkedin and nobody yet has come up with a succinct answer. The most common reply is read the manual.

Apparently the conversion course from v. 8 to 9 encompasses 12 modules to upgrade the certification for TOGAF.

Is this the real problem with these I.T. base frameworks that they can't seem to communicate simple distilled messages without vast quantities of over intellectualisation; no wonder that business leaders get so frustrated with I.T. types who seem to them to add limited value.

When we try to sell good business architecture this type of situation just seems to make life so harder. I begin to wonder whether this overwhelming pursuit of accreditation is some what self serving than really value adding - training fees and bureaucracy income maybe. I am being cynical this afternoon!

I will invest some time reading the tome and come back when I have the answer; I suppose that is the role of a trainer - research, summarise and communicate!

Things are looking up.

2009-12-04T15:28:00.003Z

It is good news to be receiving more calls with interest in scheduling Business Architecture courses for early next year. Several companies have requested quotes for in house deliveries and one of my training partners says he has enough demand to organise a public course.

I must upgrade the TOGAF section to include the introduction from TOGAF 8 to TOGAF 9 and also to amend that old slide that predicts the failure of Woolworths! to a fact rather than a prediction.

I am also going to introduce more on drawing techniques and gestalt theory as applied to diagramming as this is a key business architect skill.

Igrafx

2009-11-21T10:02:00.001Z

I have had a copy of Igrafx process since 2000 and I love it for process mapping.

Visio is just too fiddly for me and although many clients insist on it it is only either because it is cheap and forms part of the standard build or due to ignorance.

I like the igrafx set of products because more expensive analysis tools like process work on artifacts created in cost effective tools like flowcharter.

It is the ability to supply less expensive version to the troops and only spend serious money for the few that in my view is its financial USP.

When you draw a drawing in Visio that is all you have a drawing with igrfx you can use the map to analyse it or create simulations with the more sophisticated tools in the offering. Igrafx is a layered solution.

It does BPMN now which is great if we are modelling rather than drawing, see the Robert Lamont post, and I think the promotion of standards in maps is of key importance for the re use of artifacts across projects and initiatives.

If you want a highly productive process mapping tool have a look at the range of process tools at Igrafx.

Click the title to have a look at their site.

Office 2007 Productivity in Business

2009-11-19T10:05:00.005Z

As a Business Architect I use Microsoft office 2003 professional for business running on XP but for home use we have a student version of 2007 purely so my son is working on the new platform to align with what is being used for school.

Last evening I had to use the home machine to do a domestic task, printing some photos, and was starting to play around with the new version. What I found stunning was the fact that nearly everything has moved into different places, menu structures and the like. Most of the functionality seems to be similar but "prettied up" in a icon driven manner. Finding where familiar old things were was a nightmare and to me somewhat frustrating.

What struck me was the productivity impact on business because my speed of doing things was dramatically reduced due to trying to work out where everything had gone.

I thought if this was deployed in a customer services division of say 500 people the short term effect of productivity and customer service coupled with the cost of retraining staff could be considerable, all in pursuit of glitz. This is classic example of technology having impact on people and process without things really being thought through. Although we can't doing anything about it the lesson can help us in situations where we are deploying in house technology because similar effects occur during system implementation.

Software providers tell us all the time that they focus on productivity but here we have a strange reversal.

Larger businesses seem to to run many years behind the consumer, probably two sets of upgrades old, so I wonder when 2007 will hit the business sector and what effect it will have. Perhaps by then home uses will already be using 2007 and therefore staff will not see it as a big change?

My own decision is when do I upgrade? most of my clients are still running 2003 or even windows NT or even Office 2000 so from that point of view not yet, however as I train in colleges as well as commercially my own skills are now effectively behind the times. I always considered myself a "super user" of office applications but the experience of the first use 2007 made me gulp.

There is obviously a bit of a learning curve here and the prospect of spending considerable time working through tutorials and guides/books to re build my super user status is a liitle galling when there are more lucrative things to be doing - thanks Bill.

This of course ignores the cost element as buying a new commercial version of Office Professional and Visio plus a laptop capable of driving it all sensibly is the best part of £1000. Don't even mention MS Project because that is serious cash and a subject for another rant!

Missing the Point

2009-11-13T11:43:00.003Z

I rang a subcontracting training supplier of mine today to ask a question, the person in I needed was not there so I was asked if I could leave a message, great no problem.

However:

"Oh wait a moment I need to load some software".

"Can you write my name and number on a post it please",

"No, we have a CRM system to manage your contacts with us"

Few minutes passes...

"Can I have your postcode?"

"Do we really have to!"

"Yes we do, this is how me maintain our customer relationship".

Five minute later and the call closes....

Just write it on piece of paper and update the system after the call.

When we allow process and technology to annoy the customer in the pursuit of customer relationship management than we have lost the plot it seems to me.

This was a small business not some multi national call centre....should know better.

I put him right but I am not sure it sank in!!

Drawings and Models

2009-11-11T16:03:00.006Z

A delegate on a recent course, Robert Lamont from NAGE, made an important distinction between drawings and models. Drawings he described as being communicative expressions and models must have full logical integrity. i.e. all pathways and connections must work and make sense. Many process diagrams draw by analysts convey conceptual information and users say:

"That the process"

but when you trace it through and it stops at a decision box and can't carry on then you realise this isn't a model.

Models have to work and be absolutely rule driven whilst drawings are produced to communicate an idea or depict an interpretaion.

Drawings are art and models are science.

Thats why some modelling tools drive us nuts with their logical integrity, i.e. delete a process or change its name on one drawing and it magically disappears everywhere in the tool!

What we are doing is trying to draw not model.So use a drawing tool like visio for drawing and a modelling tool when modelling, many analysts make this basic mistake with tools.

I thought this quite inspirational... Thanks Robert.

Knowledge Genes

2009-11-10T13:53:00.014Z

I am always a fan of simple tools. Back in the nineties I was introduced to Que Sheet which then became Hyperknowlege and today is known as Knowledge Genes.

It is great for semantic logical models, creating logical modles using words, and I like how it traces the objectives through through to how to deliver those objectives in a breakdown structure.

It uses a How, Why and What format which enables one to trace linkage from business process through to business imperatives; the what element can be used to identify supporting assets. The best benefit for independants like myself in its basic form it is free.

I recently showed this to some delegates on my business architecture course during my businss modelling unit and they were impressed and got quite excited; a lot more than they were with Zachman or TOGAF!

The only downside, from my point of view, it's all thin client with the data residing on the knowledge Genes site. I like control!

As a mobile consultant and trainer I like to be able to work away from an internet connection and then synchonise up later. Control of the package and the data makes me feel more comfortable. So many tools are going server based these days and I'm not sure it is for the best.

Mind you I like software on a CD or DVD with a nice manual and box rather than a download so perhaps I am a bit old fashioned and a control freak.

Have a look at http://www.hyperknowledge.com/ Click the title bar on this post.

Lost Talent

2009-11-08T14:15:00.007Z

A day doesn't go by at the moment without an old colleague ringing me up saying they have had enough of sitting on the bench waiting for new contract work and have decided to go off and do something different.

Organisations are recruiting some staff but on a permanent basis and trying to get away with salaries that a couple of years ago would not have attracted anyone. It is shameful that out of work contractors are getting the cold shoulder from hiring managers -" We don't like contractors that want to go permanent" well what are they supposed to do leave the industry.

Well that is what is happening - crazy.

In the end it will be the client companies that suffer as when the recession ends and projects need to be done we will hear "where are all the contractors we need", rates will soar and numbers of quality individuals will then be running HIPS companies or therapy salons or whatever and not be interested.

The result of all this is the cream of change is being lost as freelancers represented the more successful and entrepreneurial of our profession, please don't get me wrong there are good permies as well!

So many top quartile professionals are being lost both through economic circumstances and the prejudices, jealousies, of permanent hiring managers. Short term thinking or what!

What is in a title?

2009-11-06T09:11:00.002Z

I remember a meeting with the finance director of a major motoring organisation who said quite robustly -

"I and my fellow directors are the architects of this business!",

- whilst listening to a presentation from two people who had described themselves as business architects and who were trying to pitch get some interest in mapping out the organisation and its future direction.

In later meetings he used to ridicule people from I.T. who introdued themselves as architects obviously finding the title amusing.

I learnt from this that to some the title of architect is pretentious and threatening! Learning to understand stakeholders and adjusting the approach is the moral of this little tale.

Capability Frameworks Useful?

2009-11-05T08:43:00.006Z

Nearly ever time I meet up with other business architects, whether whilst delivering training, assignments or during contract interviews people always ask " What do you think of capabilities as a way of representing the business"; well I had a few thoughts on this and wrote an article on the subject which is on a link accessed by clicking on the title bar of this post.

Apologies for pushing you off to the web site but it is a bit long to go on here!

Training in Business Architecture

2009-11-04T15:52:00.002Z

I came to the conclusion last year that there was no business orientated training available for business architecture.

TOGAF training seems so I.T. focussed and really not that helpful so I built a three day training package. I have delivered this several times in 2009 and it has gone down well.

The only issue I have is that I do get enquiries from individuals but they are never available all at the same time making publically advetised events difficult to schedule.

That is why most of time the course is delivered in house when organisations ask me to run it for them; shame really but that is the way it is.

Click on the title bar on this post to see the course profile.