This presentation was given at EAC Europe (the premier European Enterprise Architecture conference) in 2010. It shows how some of the ideas of Systems and Complexity Science can be applied to produce a new way of thinking about EA that is accessible to all stakeholders and supports improved communication between people as well as machines

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2. Selecting approaches to
Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Architecture Conference Europe
London 17th June 2010
Sally Bean
sally@sallybean.com
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3. How can we best apply Enterprise Architecture to
manage complexity and change?
Changing the Running the
Enterprise Enterprise,
day-to-day
Strategic
Thinking, Operational
Policy and Management
macro change + adaptive
change
Bright
Ideas
Change
Projects
External Environment
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4. EA people today are engaged in a diverse set
of activities
 Coordinating technical infrastructure standards, patterns,
& roadmaps
 Design Authority overseeing IT Development Projects?
 Portfolio analysis & planning of assets and projects?
 Current state documentation/description?
 Business design, enablement and innovation?
 Solving multidisciplinary ‘wicked problems’?
 …….

5. EA today has evolved from a number of
distinct domain-oriented practices
Field Approaches/Frameworks/Gurus
Information Zachman 1, Clive Finkelstein
planning/Engineering
Technical Infrastructure TAFIM, Meta, Gartner, TOGAF 7
Planning
Business Process BPR, BPM, Hammer&Champy
Improvement
System INCOSE, DODAF, MODAF, TOGAF 8
Architecture Fred Brooks
Component Architecture O-O, CBD, SOA
“Whole-Enterprise” Zachman2™ TOGAF™ v 9
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6. There’s usually a blend of different types of
activity….
 Prescriptive (City-Planning)
 Determining, agreeing and promoting fundamental principles,
policies, guidelines and standards to support the organisation’s
operating model, cohesiveness and strategic direction
 Descriptive (Blueprinting)
 Creating an aligned set of models and other artifacts that
define/coordinate key elements of business, its information
systems and technologies or provide pattern-based knowledge
 Programmatic (RouteMap)
 Designing a target state architecture and a coordinated portfolio
of projects to achieve it, including high-value ‘infrastructural
elements’ that can be shared by organisations or projects
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7. ….Often a variety of reasons for doing EA ..
 Efficiency and Cost Reduction
 Avoid duplication of effort
 Contain technology variety
Structure, Coherence & Clarity
 Flexibility, Innovation and Agility
 Enable faster change (processes, information content/distribution,
system functionality, technology)
 More effective performance and decision-making
 Exploitation of new technologies and information sources
 Alignment and Integration
 Align IT change with strategic objectives and business intent
 Identify cross-departmental synergies, reduce inconsistencies and
disconnects
 Common source of knowledge for training
 Risk
 Improve visibility and compliance with regulatory requirements
 Better understanding of interdependencies
 Reduce dependency on failing technologies
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8. ….and different EA orientations
 Horizontal EA: Promoting enterprise-wide coherence
of domains (business activity, information, technology)
 Vertical EA: Integrative approach to large programmes
or issues, so that business changes and IT systems are
vertically coherent across the scope of the programme.
 Multi-Enterprise EA: organizations trying to join
themselves up - with emphasis on defining business
services and interoperability standards.
 ‘Whole-Enterprise’ EA: organizations establish
governance policies, a framework and appropriate
artifacts to promote incremental achievement of
horizontal and vertical coherence.
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9. Challenges for Enterprise Architecture
 EA aims for structure, coherence and clarity yet is itself diverse
and not always coherent
 Architecture or Engineering?
 Role and Value of EA models?
 IT-Driven or Business-Led?
 Mechanistic approach of mainstream EA frameworks
 All have value but cannot be applied blindly - need to be adapted to
context and culture
 Treat the organisation as a machine
 “EA-Centric”- not clear how they fit into an organisation’s way of
working
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10. This presentation is about making EA more
realistic, accessible and inclusive
 Blend structured EA thinking with other approaches to
business change
 Tailor approach to context and culture and allow for ‘hard’
and ‘soft’ complexity – you can only engineer what you
understand
 Develop an ‘EA operating model ’ that
 recognises that architecture is more of a discipline than a
department
 is more accessible by people outside EA
 Aim to diffuse architectural thinking across the organisation
with a participative and progressive approach
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11. Other business disciplines with relevance to EA
Business Discipline Relvant Ideas and Contribututors
Strategy Mintzberg, Porter (Value Chain),
Treacy/Wiersma (Value Disciplines),
Geoffrey Moore (Chasm Model)
Osterwalder (Business Model Canvas)
HR Organisation Design
Learning Organisation
Quality Deming, Lean, Six Sigma?
Commercial Design Design Thinking (Tim Brown, Roger Martin)
Knowledge Management Snowden (Cynefin model ),
Davenport, Allee, Dervin, Wenger
Systems Thinking and Management Cybernetics Forrester (Systems Dynamics), Senge, Beer
(Viable System Model), Checkland (Soft
Systems Methodology), Ackoff (Idealized
Design)
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12. Thinking about EA Approaches:
Do we confuse Architecture and Engineering?
Architecture - Shaping Engineering - Producing
 Concerned with overall  Working to a clear
context, purpose, specification within overall
conceptual integrity, architecture
structure, broad feasibility  Have to make things actually
and sustainability work
 Pay more attention to
 Pay more attention to parts
whole than parts than whole
 Comprehensive and detailed
 Identify key elements and
relationships that really  Necessary for ‘hard’ systems,
dangerous for ‘soft’ ones
matter
 Requires in-depth skills
 Requires generalists
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13. ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ complexity
(Checkland & Wilson)
 Concorde Programme - a  Concorde Aircraft - a
Human Activity System designed System with
with many possible clearly defined physical
purposes: characteristics
 To transport people safely  Shape
at supersonic speed  Technical Specification
 To provide prestige to a  Operating Characteristics
national airline
 To celebrate technical and
engineering achievement
 To persuade the French to
let the Brits into the
Common Market (EU)
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14. Peter Checkland on the Concorde
programme
“The Systems Engineering thinking that we were armed with
intellectually was not rich enough to deal with the
problematic situations we were trying to deal with”
http://www.open2.net/systems/practice/pet.html
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15. Cynefin Sensemaking Framework (Snowden/Kurtz)
5 Domains
INVISIBLE
Complex Complicated
Cause and effect coherent only in Cause and effect separated
retrospect over time & space
UN-ORDER ORDER
Chaotic Simple
No Cause and effect relationships Cause and effect relations repeatable and
perceivable predictable
VISIBLE
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16. Can be used to understand the type of approach
that is most suitable in a given context
INVISIBLE
Complex Complicated
Probe and Sense Sense and Analyse
Experiment Utilise expertise
Distributed Cognition GOOD PRACTICE
EMERGENT
UN-ORDER ORDER
Chaotic Simple
Act and Sense Sense and Categorise
Take Charge Take action
NOVEL BEST PRACTICE
VISIBLE
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17. Where might we place some typical IT activities
according to the Cynefin model?
Complex Complicated
Conceptual Data
modelling
Understanding new Physical Database
technical paradigms design
(e.g. cloud)
Chaos Simple
Coping with a Infrastructure
System Failure Operations
Coding simple
data entry
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18. Some perspectives relevant to modelling
 The Conant-Ashby Theorem says that you cannot regulate
a system without a model of it.
 “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (Box)
 EA models aim to represent some aspects of an enterprise
 Ontological models aim to represent things in the real world
 Epistemological models are mental learning devices to explore
ideas about the real world (Reynolds & Holwell)
 “We always know more than we can say, and we will
always say more than we can write down” (Snowden)
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19. Where might we position architectural
activities?
Complex Complicated
Strategy
EA Modelling
Exploration “Infrastructure”
EA Component
Practice Architecture
Development
Design
Chaos Simple
Exploitation
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20. EA OPERATING MODEL: how to relate Enterprise
Architecture to other activities?
Changing the Running the
Enterprise Enterprise,
day-to-day
Strategic
Thinking Operational
Policy, and Management
macro change + adaptive
change
Bright
Ideas
Change
Projects
External Environment 20

21. Models of EA itself address particular facets
of EA
TOGAF
IT process oriented
Zachman Framework?
(Abstract content; no process)
Sogeti DYA Framework
Process-oriented
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22. The DYA framework is easiest for a non-EA
person to understand
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23. Template for a ‘blended’ approach to EA - A core of
expertise supporting a distributed network of
activities in Strategy, Change and Operations
Environment
Strategy
(Business, Information, technology) ‘DISTRIBUTED’ EA:
Activities embedded in
EA standards, principles and models other business or IT
document business strategy + high-level activities
business/technology design decisions
‘CORE’ EA: Enterprise architects coordinate the practice of EA and design and
manage EA artifacts – they contribute to other activities as required.
EA promotes coherence, EA models provide a
efficiency and flexibility in ‘big picture’ view of the
implementation projects organisation
Change Projects and Programmes
(Business, Information, Technology) Running the Enterprise

24. An organisation can then create its own ‘operating
model’ of EA involvement and influence
Strategy Strategic Portfolio
Formulation Architecture Planning ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Shows varying levels of EA influence across
major activity segmentations. Both the
Enterprise
Modelling
Synergies and segmentations and the EA contributions are
Key Elements dependencies highly context-dependent
of Strategy Rationale for
Patterns programmes
 Principles & Framework  Governance
‘CORE’ EA:  Enterprise Model Mgt  Communication Channels
 Standards management  Etc….
Learning, Trouble-shooting
Pointers to sources of expertise and info
Project kick-off
advice and
Design
Authority
Experi- Mgt Enabling Core
mental Complicated Simple Business Business Business
Projects Projects Projects Activities Activities Activities
Environment
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25. Don’t lose sight of the fact that EA is just one of
many relevant ‘practice communities’
Strategy Strategic Portfolio ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Formulation Architecture Planning Larger organisations may have internal
practice communities or CoEs (implicit or
Enterprise explicit) in several disciplines – they may
Synergies and
Modelling dependencies have interests in governance, business
Key Elements
of Strategy Patterns
Rationale for change, etc
programmes
PRACTICE EA Process Mgt
Communities Project Mgt
Learning, Trouble-shooting
Pointers to sources of expertise and info
Project kick-off
advice and
Design
Authority
Experi- Mgt Enabling Core
mental Complicated Simple Business Business Business
Projects Projects Projects Activities Activities Activities
Environment
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26. A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH TO EA ensures
incremental building of understanding and delivery
of value
• guidelines and
Enterprise
methods for designing
“Engineering” fully integrated,
( Only where appropriate) modular Business &
Systems
• High-level principles and enterprise-
level models
• Enterprise Segments and Target
Enterprise Architecture Architectures for each one
• Kickstart and guidance for projects
• Patterns
• What does EA really mean for our organisation?
• What is its contribution to Strategy, to Project Execution
EA Capability and Business Execution in each of the different domains?
Development • Which types of artifact are likely to bring value to whom?
• What types of projects do we have and what should be
the architectural constraints and contributions?
• Who are the friends and enemies of the EA approach? 26

27. Sources
 Books and Papers
 Rechtin E, Maier M. 1997. The Art of Systems Architecting . CRC Press
 Wilson, B. 1990. Systems, Concepts, Methodologies and Applications 2nd Ed,
Wiley
 Reynolds, M, Holwell, S. 2010. Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A
practical guide, Springer. (contains chapters on Systems Dynamics, Viable System
Model and Soft Systems Methodology)
 Kurtz, C. & Snowden, D. 2003, The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-making in a
Complex-Complicated World, IBM Systems Journal, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 462-83.
 Snowden, D.J. Boone, M. 2007. "A Leader's Framework for Decision Making".
Harvard Business Review, November 2007, pp. 69–76
 Green, N, Bate, C. 2007 Lost in Translation. Evolved Technologist Press.
 Wagter, van den Berg, Luijpers, van Steenbergen. 2005, Dynamic Enterprise
Architecture How to make it work, Wiley
 Websites/Online articles
 www.cognitive-edge.com
 http://www.agilearchitect.org/agile/articles/order%20and%20unorder.asp
 http://eng.dya.info/Home/dya/index.jsp
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