Capabilities and Process Architectures "Old Chestnut"

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

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.

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

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.

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.