Context and IQ

Alan Kay is the source of two quotes I love:

1. The best way to predict the future is to invent it

2. Context is worth 60 IQ Points

Many enterprise and business architecture methods advocate aligning with business strategy. This alone indicates that they themselves are coming from another perspective than business strategy! In the case of methods like TOGAF® that is reflecting their history as IT Enterprise Architecture approaches.

We contend that Business Architecture and Strategy are inextricably interwoven. We also believe that the important stuff to worry about when doing strategy is “out there”, i.e. in the context, not internal. We have control over things like organisation structure, process, value stream (to an extent) and capabilities. What we don’t have control over, but which we absolutely must pay attention to in our strategy is the stuff out there, such as competition, legislation, social change, technology innovation, politics and the state of the economy.

It is absolutely vital that we understand our current context and future scenarios for how this will evolve before we choose direction and commit resources. For example, we don’t want to build a new internal combustion engine car model when we will not be allowed to sell it in a zero emissions future city. We don’t want to create a physical store to try to compete in an industry that has gone completely digital (e.g. music), unless, of course we have identified and are happy with a niche audience (e.g. those who prefer buying music on vinyl). We do not want to bring a service to market that legislation will prohibit us selling.

Understanding the context is vital to making sensible choices for future product and service offerings and hence the organisation, capabilities, partners, processes, technology, systems and data these will require. A good technique for considering contextual issues is STEEPLED, which stands for: Social, Technology, Economic, Environment, Politics, Legal, Ethical and Demographics. These are best considered in facilitated workshops exploiting scenario analysis techniques. We may also have to draft in participants with specialist knowledge.

Equally important is understanding all the Stakeholders and how we interact with them. These parties include Customers, Shareholders, Partners, Suppliers, Regulators, Unions, Industry Bodies, Related Companies etc. We like to do a Stakeholder Net Value Exchange (SNVE) model to identify what each party contributes and expects. This can be a brilliant starting point for downstream analysis including business events, value streams, process analysis and information analysis.

If you want more information on methods that integrate these perspectives and techniques, please visit inspired.org. There is also training, the Holistic Architecture Language and tools.

Architecture as a Context for Agility

Agility requires doing focussed things rapidly. The more you know going in, the better decisions you can make quickly. The more you document what you learn, the more knowledge is available for future efforts. Good agile work fills in more of the picture thereby enabling all teams.

The more of the picture is filled in the more we can avoid wasted effort, align our efforts and deliver with less risk. You can’t create the full picture quickly, which is why many agilists avoid architecture.
But you can start with a “paint by numbers” reference model/ontology, which gives you the framework into which to rapidly record your growing knowledge and which indexes where to look for information for your next effort, and what touches the squares you want to colour, so you know how to be informed and compatible.

Every project (agile or otherwise) should:

• Be informed by our knowledge of current architecture assets and challenges

• Contribute to an improvement in assets, condition, effectiveness and future readiness

• Improve the architecture of the portfolio

• Deliver business value

• Fill in more of the architecture “big picture” to inform future projects

The environment should:

• Have a conherent integrative meta model/shared concepts

• Encourage good work through well conceived principles

• Have standards for how things get recorded (artefacts) so they are meaningful and sharable

• Provide a collaborative repository that holds things and makes them findable

#agile #project #architecture #context

Context is Worth 60 IQ Points

This quote is attributed to one of our favourite great thinkers, Alan Kay, founder of Object Orientation, Graphical User Interfaces and other major innovations. We believe it applies to Business Architecture in a major way.

Most Business Architecture methods/approaches/languages (TOGAF®, BizBok, Archimate®...) originated from an Information Systems/Technology perspective. This is reflected in their view of concepts relevant to the business, which typically include: Organisation (Actor, Role), Process, Service, Capability, Motivation (Driver, Goals, Objective), Metric, Function and Contract. In their latest incarnations they may also recognise Value Chains and Course of Action. The former does relate to the position of the organisation in its industry, while the latter relates to high level change/initiatives.

What is typically missing, in our view, is consideration of the context in which we operate in a serious way. The context includes: Competitors, Product and Service Offerings, Legal and Compliance Environment, Technology, Political Climate, Society, Various Stakeholder Groups (Customers, Agents, Suppliers, Channels, Business Partners, Unions, Regulators, Industry Bodies…) and the Value we exchange with them, the Economy, Resources, Ecology, etc. all of which can provide Opportunities and Threats.

A thorough approach should contemplate these issues. There is no point designing a great new internal combustion engine vehicle in a world where legislation and public sentiment will prevent us selling it. There is no point devising a strategy where there are no resources to realise it. There is no point launching a physical record company into a media space that has gone fully digital (unless we want to be a niche player).

Being fully cognisant of our context helps us be much more intelligent about our strategy, our architecture and the resultant initiatives.

TOGAF® and Archimate® are Registered Trademarks of The Open Group. BizBok is a publication of the Business Architecture Guild.