Business Capability
Strategy execution remains a challenging task for many organizations. The ‘Digital Enterprise’ requires major business transformations, delivered at speed. Most organizations are in a constant state of change. The ‘unfreeze-change-freeze’ model, reasoning from the current to a desired future state, no longer applies; the current state is always in flux and the future state is a moving target. Read more
As outlined in another blog, architecture-based enterprise portfolio management plays a crucial role in an integrated business transformation approach. Portfolio management is responsible for allocating investments to various asset categories and for creating a healthy project and program portfolio mix that realizes the organizational goals. There should be a balance in, for example, the types of projects (development, research, etc.) and long-term and short-term projects.
The other day, while I was musing about the reasons why many large organizations see many of their IT initiatives fail or underachieve, I came up with a rather simple conclusion: ‘project thinking’ is the root cause of these disappointments. Let me explain. Read more
“Many stakeholders consider their organization as unique.” Depending on the level of abstraction you take as viewpoint, you can argue this statement is either right or wrong. It is interesting from an enterprise architecture perspective to understand why stakeholders stress this uniqueness and what are the benefits of understanding where the organization really is different from others. Read more
Imagine you wake up one day and suddenly there is a completely new technology available that outperforms your product or service in every way, and you didn’t see it coming. Sounds scary, right? Well, this is a reality for many companies. Take for example, navigation devices for your car. Garmin and TomTom were the major players dominating this market for several years, selling their products for hundreds of dollars each. However, that was before Google introduced Google Maps for mobile devices. As a result, Garmin’s and TomTom’s market values dropped dramatically, 85% in only 18 months.
Sharing knowledge and good practices is one of the core values of BiZZdesign. We regularly organize and contribute to online and offline seminars, conferences and round tables. We recently had a very successful seminar on Enterprise Architecture in Dutch healthcare. After presentations on “Dilemma’s for Architects”, based on the relation between physical and digital architecture in healthcare and “Data Management”, we had a debate to discuss associated topics further with our attendees. Please share your good and worst practices by reacting to this blog.
Earlier this week, a large Dutch insurance company got itself into the national headlines after mixing up sensitive customer data. By mistake, over 2,500 participants in a large-scale medical research received an e-mail with information that was intended for other participants.
“In creating and handling the data, we made a mistake. This way we accidentally coupled the wrong information to the e-mail addresses of the research participants”. According to the insurance company, this was a “human error’’, and not an error in the organization’s system, which was tested extensively. Read more
Very few organizations have a systematic and reliable way of translating a business strategy into action across all relevant elements of the organization. Implementing a long-term plan by successive decomposition, design and realization steps is only possible in stable circumstances. Classical top-down strategy implementation cannot keep up with the transformation speed required in a rapidly changing environment.
Until quite recently, IT security was exclusively the domain of security specialists. However, in the last couple of years, organizations have started to realize that IT-related risks cannot be seen in isolation, and should be considered as an integral part of Enterprise Risk and Security Management (ERSM). ERSM includes methods and techniques used by organizations to manage all types of risks related to the achievements of their objectives.
Business architecture is a challenging capability. Designing the business, optimizing its processes and streamlining the way information is collected and used is very interesting, but most of all very difficult. I read a very interesting blog post by KLM’s SVP e-commerce Mr. Martijn van der Zee: “I Have a Lack of Strategic Vision” in which he points out that strategic visions in PowerPoint won’t cut-it for Air France-KLM in the digital era we are in today.
In my previous blog post on Enterprise Architecture at BiZZdesign in 2014, I described how the true value of architecture lies in its relationship with other disciplines within the enterprise.
Business models are a helpful way to define a business strategy and steer an organization in the “right” direction. Furthermore, business models foster discussions on the way organizations want to deliver value to their customers. Building business models is fun! Thinking about your organization and its future in an abstract manner is addictive, since there is no chance of failure…
In Lean Management, a lot of time is spent finding and eliminating waste. Our processes and organizations are full of waste. In the Lean philosophy these wastes should not be dealt with as ‘problems’, but as opportunities for improvement.
Enterprise Architecture supports implementation of change in a coordinated way. Building an Enterprise Architecture Capability is a process of change in itself, and thus can be supported by Enterprise Architecture methods and tools. In this White Paper we described how a high-level approach for the initiation and development of the Enterprise Architecture capability can be derived from TOGAF, and especially its core component the Architecture Development Method (ADM). This high level approach consists of four steps:
The Decision Model (TDM) is a new and rapidly growing methodology and framework for modeling the business logic (business rules) behind business decisions, using a powerful graphical notation, that is easy for both business and IT to understand and implement.