EBMM-TRIADs Benefits of Responsibilities-Driven Business Architecture Alignment

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Benefits of Responsibilities-Driven Business Architecture Alignment

Microsoft Corporation’s Principal Enterprise Architect Nick Malik was asked what biggest challenge he had to face during his distinguished Enterprise Architecture Career.[1]

The following slides summarize his answer.


“One of the biggest challenge is that you need to understand the scope that Enterprise Architecture could play in organizations. Organizations don’t adopt EA suddenly with any kind of positive effect; they need to adopt it over time; it is a growth process.

The challenges are going to be based upon that scope. Organizations typically start in an IT space where it is not really Enterprise Architecture but Enterprise IT Architecture, where they are trying to understand how to remove the segmentation in their IT space caused by the natural segmentation in their organization.“


“What I think is the bigger challenge and the one that impacts myself and most and my peers is that at some level, the dysfunctions within an organization become the dysfunctions within IT. You cannot address them at the IT level, you cannot repair this problem by stitching things together in IT systems.

You really need to repair this problem by asking your business, the people responsible for organizing the business whether it is an official organizational development role or whether it is more of an executive decision making role; you need to ask these people to be thinking about some key problems.“


“The key problems are: what rational did

you use to create the structure of the organization? And if you did use a rational can we explain it to everybody else because it helps to make decisions, it helps to allocate accountability, it helps to build ownership of information; which are really key problems that ripple throughout an organization’s effectiveness.”


“So from an Enterprise Architecture standpoint, I would say that asking people to consider making even fairly small changes to the allocation of duties and responsibilities, thus the structure of an organization is something to be done very carefully.”


“Those are really the challenges that we face

in Enterprise Architecture. How you ask the question, how you get the responses that say “do you have a better idea?” and to be able to answer that with “yes here are some ideas for rational on how you might construct the architecture of your organization” and have the credibility and the science behind what you are saying. Be compelling in that for a business person to respond with: let’s try

that.”


The EBMM-TRIADs are a conceptual Meta-model of a business architecture and as such they model the types of elements and their associated relationships involved in the definition of an actual business architecture. The four EBMM-TRIADs elegantly break down the complexity found in Nick Malik's initial EBMM [2] by showing how its business architecture elements participate in four very common views of any Business Architecture: Strategy, Motivation, Responsibilities, and Operation.


Each TRIAD combines three fundamental interrogatives taken from the following set: WHY, WHAT, WHO, and HOW. Each interrogative group contains several types of Business model elements that entertain relationships with each other (e.g Success Metrics and Measures [WHY] set Performance Criteria for Business Strategies and Objectives [WHY]).

Each TRIAD lists relevant types of business model elements and their respective relationships. Those relationships are between elements that belong to different interrogative groups (e.g. Business Strategies and Objectives [WHY] drive changes to Business Capabilities [WHAT]).


We were able to group the majority of Nick Malik’s EBMM Business Model Elements into 4 groups each answering a fundamental question about the Business: WHY, WHO, WHAT, and HOW.

There are 4 total possible combinations of 3 distinct fundamental interrogatives. Each one of these 4 combinations constitute an EBMM-TRIAD that relates well to a particular view of a Business Architecture as depicted on the next slide.


STRATEGY: HOW does WHAT fulfill WHY?

MOTIVATION: HOW does WHO influence WHY?

RESPONSIBILITIES: WHY does WHO do WHAT?

OPERATION: HOW does WHO do WHAT?


STRATEGY

OPER

ATIO

N

WHY

HOW

WHO WHO

WHO

WHAT

The following slides illustrate a possible approach that conforms to Nick Malik’s recommendation on how to solve IT Architecture dysfunctions rooted in Organizational Structure dysfunctions.


We advocate using a Responsibilities-Driven approach to aligning Business and IT Architectures. We have provided a quantitative rational in past presentations[3].

Let’s now explain our view from a qualitative standpoint by providing a series of steps that logically define relevant Business Architecture elements that can support a rational formulation of a Business Organizational structure.


We will examine the EBMM-TRIADs Relationship Rules contain in the following shared sets: ◦ Business Responsibilities and Motivation

Alignment [WHO-WHY Relationship Rules]

◦ Business Responsibilities and Strategy Alignment [WHY-WHAT Relationship Rules]

◦ Business Responsibilities and Operation Alignment [WHO-WHAT Relationship Rules]



(1)

(2)

(3)

Market Segments Generate Customer Demands and Relationships ◦ An Organization’s success is irrevocably tied to its

customers’ satisfaction and loyalty. To ensure that an organization is properly aligned with its customers’ expectations, it must have a reliable and comprehensive enough understanding of its Market Segments. Clarifying the specific demands or expectations of each Market Segment allows the organization to justify its engagement towards each targeted customer group. Customers’ trust and hopefully their long term loyalty can then be effectively secured and nurtured by the organization through its profound understanding and undisputable fulfillment of customers’ expectations.


Influencing Organizations are Sources of Influence ◦ Influencing organizations could be Partners,

Competitors, or Regulatory bodies. In some sense, Partners and Regulatory bodies are also Customers of the organization since they bring specific constraints or expectations often key to the organization’s success. Competitors’ influence is undeniable as they often cater to the same pool of customers as the ones targeted by an organization. Here again, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of Competitors as well as the organization’s own is key to the formulation of a Business Strategy that can ultimately secure the organization’s desired market position.


Stakeholders are accountable for Business Strategies and Objectives ◦ With a clear understanding of Customer Demands

and Relationships and the proper consideration of influences generated by Partners, Regulatory bodies, and Competitors, Organization Stakeholders are empowered to formulate effective Business Strategies and Objectives that have a high probability of securing a desired Market Position. It is fundamental to hold Stakeholders accountable for those Strategies and Objectives as described next.


Stakeholders can be a type of Driver ◦ Stakeholders when held accountable for a given set

of Business Strategies and Objectives become advocate for their effective implementation. Some stakeholders will carry this responsibility further than others by actually driving the Business Strategies and Objectives toward their fulfillment and by being actively involved in or accountable for all activities required for their realization.


Governance Body enforces Business Policies ◦ Some Stakeholders play the role of Governance

body by creating and enforcing Business Policies applicable to the entire Organization and/or specific Business Units. These Business policies are meant to support and articulate agreed upon Directives that contribute to the achievement of the established Business Strategies and Objectives.


Business Capability Roadmaps describe Changes to Business Capabilities ◦ A Capability Roadmap is a well-articulated set of

successive changes to the organization’s Business Capabilities aimed at progressively transforming the organization from its current state to its desired future states. Capability Roadmaps must be prioritized according to selected Assessment Metrics that highlight the most valuable opportunities for Capability improvements. Therefore, Capability Roadmaps are solid foundations upon which Business Initiatives and Programs can be chartered


Business Strategies and Objectives drive changes to Business Capabilities ◦ The organization’s desired future Capabilities are

the outcome of fulfilling its Business Strategies and achieving its Business Objectives.

Business Initiatives and Programs drive changes to Business Capabilities. ◦ Business Initiatives and Programs chartered from

Capability Roadmaps drive changes to Business Capabilities in a coordinated and effective manner.


Customer Demands and Relationships drive Products and Services ◦ Properly assessed and understood Customer

Demands and Relationships along with Influences created by Competitors, Partners, and Regulatory bodies all come into consideration for the formulation of desired product and service offerings that effectively package Business Capabilities specified by Capability Roadmaps.


Value Proposition drives Required Competencies ◦ The Value Proposition can be formulated by

describing the rational behind an organization’s featured products and services. Securing the targeted Market Position mandates Required Competencies through exceptional Capabilities included in or contributing to the organization’s product and service offerings.


Directives govern the use of Assets ◦ Once an organization has defined its Value

Proposition and Required Competencies, it can elicit its Assets. Assets are resources employed, possessed, or controlled by the organization in order to deliver its products and services. The next step is for the Governance body to formulate Directives that govern the use of Assets in a way that contributes to the achievement of the established Business Strategies and Objectives.


Business Units are responsible for Business Capabilities ◦ The organization is now in a more reliable

position to consolidate its structure by forming or allocating Business Units responsible for each Business Capability. Required Competencies can guide this allocation process.


Business Units are responsible for Assets ◦ From the previous elicitation of Business Assets

and their respective Directives, the organization can further refine its structure by designating Business Units responsible for each Asset.


Business Units provide Products and Services ◦ Since Products and Services package Capabilities and

since Business Units have been mapped to the Capabilities that they are responsible for, it is possible to determine which Business Units provide which products and Services based on the Capabilities packaged within products and services.

Business Units consume Products and Services ◦ A Business Unit consumes a Product or Service when it

uses a Product or Service that is provided by another Business unit.


The previous steps have contributed to aligning only 3 Business Architecture Dimensions out of 6 possible ones by examining 15 out of 30 total Relationship Rules.

We have explained how to address the remaining 3 Dimensions of Alignment in our presentation titled: “EBMM-TRIADs Deep Dive: The Chemistry of Business and IT Alignment”


http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/enterprise-business-motivation-model-ebmm-triads-the-chemestry-of-business-and-it-alignment





[1] FEAPO: Chat–new foundational EA Paper, EA Career Path, EABOK, FEAPO--Brian Cameron Founding President FEAPO; Nick Malik Principle Microsoft EA: http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2013/11/06/chat-new-foundational-ea-paper-ea-career-path-eabok-feapo-brian-cameron-founding-president-feapo-nick-malik-principle-microsoft-ea.aspx

[2] Malik N. The Enterprise Business Motivation Model (EBMM) : http://motivationmodel.com/wp/

[3] Pragmatic Cohesion Consulting: How to use the ebmm triads to conduct a business architecture alignment effort


http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2013/11/06/chat-new-foundational-ea-paper-ea-career-path-eabok-feapo-brian-cameron-founding-president-feapo-nick-malik-principle-microsoft-ea.aspx









































http://motivationmodel.com/wp/

http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/how-to-use-the-ebmm-triads-to-conduct-a-business-architecture-alignment-effort






Check out the Interactive Diagram at:

http://www.mypragmaticohesion.com/EBMM/index.htm

For EBMM-TRIADS™ Commercial Licenses Contact [email protected]

Check these other Presentations about the EBMM-TRIADS: • Applying the integrative propositional analysis (ipa) to the ebmm – triads • How to use the ebmm triads to conduct a business architecture alignment effort • Example of a responsibilities driven business architecture alignment effort • EBMM-TRIADs Deep Dive: The Chemistry of Business and IT Alignment



http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/applying-the-integrative-propositional-analysis-ipa-to-the-ebmm-triads













http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/example-of-a-reponsibilities-driven-business-architecture-alignment-effort

http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/example-of-a-reponsibilities-driven-business-architecture-alignment-effort




EBMM-TRIADs Benefits of Responsibilities-Driven Business Architecture Alignment

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