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Enterprise Architecture in 140 characters

Last Thursday, I barged into a Twitter conversation on the “ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture”.  The conversation was related to Forrester’s Enterprise Architecture Forum in San Diego, which I missed due to the blizzard at JFK.  @Dcoon posed the question: “Is consolidation and centralization the ultimate outcome of EA?”

While consolidation and selective centralization are milestones on an Enterprise Architecture journey, I don’t believe they represent the “ultimate outcome”.  Enterprise Architecture needs to play a linchpin role in advancing the business. 

As such, I offered my 140-character perspective, edited for readability, as follows: “The ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture is change-friendly capability delivery.”

But, that’s my perspective.  What do you think?  Do you agree?  If not, what is the ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture?

Force.com + Visual Process Manager = Vanilla Layer Cake Theory

Salesforce.com just added a powerful new tool to its Force.com development platform, a Visual Process Manager:

“The Visual Process Manager brings the power of Cloud Computing to Business Process Apps. Now you can visually draw any business process and instantly deploy it in the cloud with no code, no software and no infrastructure.  The Visual Process Manager helps companies easily automate specific business process like call center scripting, sales quotes, and new employee on boarding.” 

According to a post on TechCrunch:

“The technology powering the Visual Process Manager is based on technology acquired from Informavores, call scripting startup Salesforce bought last year.

The Manager has several different components. The Process Designer essentially helps businesses sketch out applications with established set forms, questions, and choices, and logic components, like task assignments, decision trees, and approval processes. These components can be dragged and dropped into a visual process design diagram/ The Process Wizard Builder enables companies to design a “wizard” to help walk end-users, step-by-step, through their business process. The Process Simulator lets customers test out and review processes before they are deployed. And lastly, the real-time process engine will run all of a company’s sophisticated processes and provides realtime scalability.”

The Visual Process Manager introduction gets a bit deeper on functionality.  [emphasis is mine]:

“Using our cloud-based workflow software solution, you can specify the retrieval, creation, update, or deletion of any object in a salesforce.com application or any Force.com object (including custom objects). You can also call any Force.com API. In practice, this functionality means that sales and service agents can work with simple, easy-to-follow scripts—while underneath, embedded business rules and salesforce.com data drive what the agent sees and automatically update CRM records. These are textbook examples of successful workflow software applications.

After you’ve optimized a specific process using the Visual Process Manager workflow software tool and the process is running inside your salesforce.com application, operations become much more efficient. The newly automated workflow carries out all the administration work behind the scenes. It may control the interaction of an agent in a call center or a customer on a Web site, as it silently interacts with other systems, processes, and Web services to deliver the required actions.

Because our workflow software tool is designed with integration in mind, you can link to databases, dialers, and IVRs; initiate workflows; control exceptional events or surge conditions; and handle the “stop and save” process required to manage escalations and call transfers. All in all, our workflow software frees sales reps and support agents from administrative grunt work, quickly giving them the situation-specific information they need for effective selling and top-notch customer service.”

As I read about Visual Process Manager, I was reminded of my Vanilla Layer Cake Theory paper from 2005. 

“There are classic rules of thumb used in buy/build decisions. Buy in situations of parity. Build for competitive advantage/differentiation. In a buy scenario, you willingly cede control of the end product (functionality, architecture, technology) for the promise of a lower price tag, ease of implementation, and quicker time to market. For success, you must actually cede that control—in other words, no modifications. But, that’s not always realistic. So, how can you reap the advantages of a buy, while providing a solution that actually fits your business (modifications and extensions), without getting trapped? Think Vanilla Layer Cake.”

An excerpt published on elemental links, November 2005:

“The vanilla layer cake theory is simple. Do vanilla (out-of-the-box) installations of all new application packages. Then, customize and extend the application functionality using abstraction layers, rather than in the application package itself.

[Click on picture to enlarge]

 

In essence, the application package installation performs the role of a provider in a service-oriented architecture. In some ways, the application package is more valuable for its building blocks, than how the vendor assembled it.

The abstraction layers implement your business architecture, in the form of an enterprise information model, business services, business scenario composition (process, events, service orchestration), and user interaction (portal, user interface, unified in-box).”

Of course in the SaaS world of Salesforce and Force.com, you can skip the “Do vanilla (out-of-the-box) installations of all new application packages” step, and proceed right to “customize and extend the application functionality using abstraction layers”.  Now, that’s intriguing… 

For those with a sense of nostalgia, you can read the entire Vanilla Layer Cake Theory on ebizQ.  Otherwise, dig in at Salesforce.com.

 

[Cross-posted from Elemental Cloud Computing].

Event Processing Technical Society: Glossary Version 2 for Public Review

One of the projects of the Event Processing Technical Society (EPTS) is the publication of an Event Processing Glossary.  The second version of this glossary was just posted for public review at David Luckham’s Complex Event Processing site.  From the document:

The purpose of the EPTS glossary of terms is to facilitate industry use of event processing technology by providing a common language for developing applications and software infrastructure that use event processing concepts.

The event processing glossary has three goals:

• Accelerate the learning of the event processing concept
• Further community communication by enabling practitioners to utilize common concepts and terms
• Provide a foundation for analysis and the development of best practices, publications, and industry standards

As a participant in the working group calls, I must commend Professor Luckham and Roy Schulte for their squirrel herding ability. 

Review the document (pdf).  Participate in the EPTS.

BPM and SOA: Connected for Business Optimization

Ok, I admit, the only person who thought I wouldn’t be continuing, in some capacity, with the merged BPM / SOA Consortium was me.  Apparently, I was wrong.  In addition to writing and advocacy for OMG’s Business Ecology Initiative, I have a new consulting relationship with the practice area communities, including the BPM / SOA-C, and two more to be announced.  [Here’s a hint on one.  As if I could say no!]

Anyway, moving on topic.  Since January, the BPM and SOA Consortiums have been working together to formalize the merged consortium’s mission, goals and objectives, identify some early projects, plan the March Symposium, and combine web properties. 

The results of that work, cross-posted from the newly combined (and spiffed up) BPM / SOA Consortium Insights, follow.

Who is the BPM / SOA Consortium? 

The BPM / SOA Consortium is an advocacy group comprised of practitioners, service providers and technology vendors dedicated to promoting the business value, and enabling the successful adoption, of Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by the Global 1000, major government agencies and midmarket businesses.

The BPM / SOA Consortium is a practice area community under the Business Ecology^TM Initiative (BEI).  BEI provides education, advocacy and member programs to enable organizations to achieve Business Ecology success, employ Actionable Architecture^TM, and carve a path to business-IT integration.

Business Ecology is a business-technology imperative focused on streamlining business processes, removing waste from technology portfolios, and adjusting resource consumption, to optimize business operations and foster business innovation.

The BPM / SOA Consortium is a newly expanded community, connecting the members and sponsors of the SOA and BPM Consortiums, to focus on business optimization.

Why did the BPM & SOA Consortiums merge?

The 2010 merger of the SOA and BPM Consortiums is based on the following premises:

• When the SOA Consortium began, Service Oriented Architecture was more of a fringe methodology that only a few organizations were doing with any great success, rather than an accepted part of an overall business strategy. Three years later, corporations large and small use the principles of SOA to enhance their overall business and technology strategies.
• A well-implemented Service Oriented Architecture leads to streamlined technology portfolios, improved resource sharing, better defined business capabilities, and ease of capability introduction or change.
• A well-implemented Business Process Management initiative leads to greater business agility, faster productivity and improved customer interactions for all stakeholders.
• The combined use of Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management results in an optimized business environment that is change-friendly, and poised for business innovation.
• Business and information technology professionals must collaborate to realize the highest yielding benefits of Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture.
• Enterprise and government practitioners would benefit greatly from a vibrant practitioner community to exchange insights on use cases, challenges and techniques, related to Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management, used individually, or combined.
• Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture, individually and combined, enable Business Ecology.

And now, the go forward organization.

BPM / SOA Consortium Mission

Promote the value and adoption of Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture as a means for organizations to optimize business operations, increase agility and streamline portfolios.

BPM / SOA Consortium Goals

The BPM / SOA Consortium is working to achieve the following goals by 2013, that:

• 75% of the Global 1000 and 50% of mid-sized businesses combine Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture to optimize business operations, streamline portfolios, and create a change-friendly business-technology environment.
• 75% of Major Government Agencies combine Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture to optimize mission operations, streamline portfolios, and create a change-friendly business-technology environment.

BPM / SOA Consortium Objectives:

• Shift the conversation from competing strategies to combined business value (business optimization)
• Provide education on business analysis, process design, governance, performance measurement and implementation techniques to combine Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management for business optimization
• Showcase Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture success stories, benefit realization, best practices and lessons learned
• Raise the Business IQ of information technology professionals and Tech-Savvy of business professionals to realize the greatest business value from Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture and business-technology
• Create a vibrant practitioner community for the exchange of insights on use cases, challenges and techniques, which will assist in value attainment, and spur broader, industry-wide Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management adoption.

Visit our website to learn about BPM / SOA Consortium membership and sponsorship.  Check out the agenda for our upcoming public symposium in Jacksonville Florida.

 

[Disclosure: OMG, via its Business Ecology Initiative and practice area consortia, is a client of my firm, Elemental Links]

Forrester: Don’t be an IT-hater, be a Business-IT Integrator

I’m cross-posting my latest from the new Business Ecology Initiative blog.  As you know, “Business-IT Integration” is one of my soapbox items. 

In a recent post on the Forrester Blog for CIOs, Sharyn Leaver writes an inspired response to Susan Cramm’s 8 Things We Hate About IT.  As outlined in CIO Insight, Cramm’s “8 Things” focus on the following business-IT relationship issues:

1. Service or Control?
2. Results or Relationships?
3. Tactics or Strategies?
4. Expense or Investment?
5. Quickness or Quality?
6. Customization or Standardization?
7. Innovation or Bureaucracy?
8. Greatness of Goodness?

In her post, Leaver refers to the above as ““8 Beaten-to-Death Clichés” about IT-business relationships”.  However, her point isn’t directed at Cramm, but rather the situation that business and IT executives and professionals continue to inhabit.  As a way out, Leaver offers some good observations and actionable advice.  Her first two points relate to organizational design:

• “Tension between IT and line businesses is designed into organizational structures. Hard-wiring organizational lines into centralized IT “shops” assigned to business units or combinations puts IT unwittingly into a self-perceived servant relationship with business units. No doubt in recent economic downturn years, increasing centralization of IT has resulted in a cementing of “us” versus “them” — where as federated and decentralized structures preserve some of “us” within “them” and align attitudes and goals accordingly. HR, Accounting, Facilities, and other centralized services all struggle with balancing acts of meeting the needs of those they service.
•  Preserving a request-fulfill relationship institutionalizes disappointment all around. Missed expectations and unhappiness result from a “take a number” approach to queuing up service requests, ranking them according to some criteria, estimating fulfillment time, and attempting to deliver in the face of numerous “Look over there!” distractions. Again, breaking up some of the IT resources into the business units for dedicated and local work would help. CIOs should read and absorb Forrester’s BT model for operating IT.”

From a Business Ecology perspective, we refer to these design shifts as Business-IT Integration:

“Business-IT Integration is the organizational model for business and information technology convergence.  This model promotes collaborative strategy, planning, architecture and execution; shared decision-making, business-tech savvy personnel and service delivery at the point of value generation.”

Similar to Leaver, we are not saying immediately or completely decentralize IT, nor are we calling for an end to enterprise-level strategies and resources, but rather, that a new model is required.  A model that supports near-term needs as well as business vitality over time, balancing current conditions, optimization and innovation focus areas, resource allocations, and longer-term business motivations, capabilities and outcomes.

As Leaver points out, the time of lamenting needs to end, it is time to take action. 

To gather other actionable ideas, I plan to read Cramm’s book.  A related read I highly recommend is Weill and Ross’ IT Saavy.  For the all important peer interaction regarding Business-IT Integration, consider joining us in Jacksonville FL, March 23-24. 

If you can’t join us in March, but have some ideas, success stories, or warnings you would like to share, please leave a comment, or drop an email.

 

[Disclosure: The Business Ecology Initiative is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]