The Strategic Staircase (Case Study) by Roger Evernden

In the Architecture Development Method (ADM), TOGAF documents a fairly typical process for defining and realizing architectural changes in an enterprise. The basic phases and steps are fine – and it is fairly easy to map the overall process to pretty much any EA practice. But like much of TOGAF, there isn’t much in the way of background to explain why or how EA practitioners actually approach their work.

In this case study we will look at how an EA team used the ADM as a basic process for driving the overall enterprise-wide direction of architectural change. Our case study is based on work completed by the EA team in a European telecoms company.

Background

Telecom operators have a range of mature products and services, but the marketplace is saturated and margins are falling, so companies are looking for other ways to maintain their market presence and improve business performance. For our example company, an area that was falling behind that of competitors was in customer-facing distribution and sales channels. Senior executives wanted the company to be able to listen to customer needs - in particular the more complicated needs of corporate clients. Executives also wanted the company to have better online, mobile and independent sales channels.

The EA Response

Following the TOGAF ADM, the EA team began to develop a response to this Request for Architecture Work, by developing a Statement of Architecture Work and an Architecture Vision. But they quickly ran into a communication problem, because every time they produced a vision it required a long term horizon, and executive leadership wanted much quicker results. This problem was compounded because of uncertainty about the future; in particular, it was possible that a competitor could come up with an industry changing strategy, or that new technologies could cause major disruption in the market place. Senior executives expected a clear statement of architectural direction and destination.

The EA team had to find a way to demonstrate an architectural end-state, when the particular solution or technology destination was unclear. They also felt that had to provide direction, but be able to change course along the way if it proved necessary.

TOGAF doesn’t explain in detail how an architect goes about resolving such a dilemma, but fortunately there are examples of other companies that have faced similar problems. One example is the Strategic Staircase approach, which is based on the approach that Komatsu took in the 1990s to become the world’s second largest manufacturer of construction equipment and mining equipment after Caterpillar.i

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tional Systems Ltd. The Open Group® and TOGAF® are registered trademarks of the Open Group in the United States and other countries

© Copyright 2015 Good e-Learning. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, resold, stored in a retrieval system, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Such requests for permission or any other comments relating to the material contained in this document may be submitted to: marketing@goodelearning.com. Good e-Learning is a trading name used by Educa-

tional Systems Ltd. The Open Group® and TOGAF® are registered trademarks of the Open Group in the United States and other countries

Plans Actions and Outcomes

Diagram 1 shows a simple three-step model that many companies follow: Plans, Actions and Outcomes. There are potential gaps between each step. For example, we make plans, but what actually happens is not the same – so there is an alignment gap between plans and actions. There may be an effects gap between what we expect to achieve and what we actually produce. And there is a knowledge gap when we would like to know more about the future, but it is actually very uncertain. The usual management response to these gaps is to provide more detailed instructions, more detailed controls, and get more detailed information. This is what the executive team were expecting from the EA team.

The telecoms company couldn’t predict the market for particular products in four years’ time. Nor could they predict market trends or the product priorities of customers, as the market was highly turbulent. In other words – the EA team couldn’t define a precise future vision or a detailed step-by-step roadmap to get there.

The EA team adapted the ideas behind the Strategic Staircase in the following ways:

• Plans to Actions: they identified the core capabilities that would be needed. Then they identified a strategic staircase that would lead to these core capabilities, with each step on the staircase developing options that could be realized in the future if required.

• Actions to Outcomes: they specified an architectural end-state, rather than specific technologies or solutions (in TOGAF, this is the distinction between architecture and solution that is found in the Enterprise Continuum, in the difference between Architecture Building Blocks and Solution Building Blocks, and in the separation of Phases A to D from Phases E and F in the ADM). The team then identified criteria to make sure that all investments took architectures towards this end-state; this approach is known as following a strategic vector.

• Outcomes to Plans: they team focused on defining the next step up the strategic staircase within a strategic vector. Although the team outlined all of the steps on the staircase, they only plotted the detail for the next step.

The Strategic Staircase

In our case study, although the EA team couldn’t predict the long-term needs with certainty, they did know that whatever happens would benefit from reduced costs and improved customer service – and these two objectives became the first two steps on their Strategic Staircase (shown in Diagram 2). And although it was impossible to predict market trends or the product priorities of customers, it was possible to say that the company would focus on high-end segments and that the basis of competition would be excellent customer service.

Diagram 1 Diagram 2

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tional Systems Ltd. The Open Group® and TOGAF® are registered trademarks of the Open Group in the United States and other countries

In this example, the EA team demonstrated the by describing a target enterprise pattern that described the architecture end-state without naming any particular solutions or technologies. This end-state was based on a focus on high-end segments, and an assumption that the basis of competition will be customer service. This gave enough clarity about the business capabilities and market that the future architecture would need to support. The senior executives were happy about this as the architecture vision.

The idea of a strategic staircase gave the team a simple way to express the EA strategic vector technique – which provide direction and guidance, but allowed a change of course along the way if it proved necessary. TOGAF only provides basic guidance on how to fine tune the architecture vision and direction in the Architecture Change Management, Phase H, of the ADM. This approach defined clear criteria and options, based on sound architectural analysis, for steering evolution of the enterprise architecture.

With a clear architecture vision and a strong first step, the EA team could engage with business and executive decision makers to think about detailed architectural requirements. One discussion explored the current marketing and channel pattern: pushing high volumes of “exclusive” bundled products and services through physical shops. This pattern became known as the Arterial Channel Pattern, because the shop-based outlets were seen as the arteries in a commercial circulatory system. Options to replace this pattern included new patterns for customer interaction that provided a consistent experience across all channels, including online, mobile, and independent sales channels (this pattern was known as the Omni Channel Pattern), and a pattern that proposed using an unlimited range of channels instead of focusing on a few high-volume channels (this was called the Long Tail Channel Pattern, based on the notion in statistics of the long-tail where economies are shifting from mass markets to many of niche markets).

Our case study has shown how a company supplemented TOGAF with the idea of a strategic staircase, supported by the use of enterprise patterns, strategic vectors, and roadmaps that emerge by building the next-step and creating further architectural options. These techniques gave the EA team the tools they needed to plan a long-term EA direction in a turbulent and uncertain environment.

i Peter Williamson & Michael Hay, Strategic Staircases: Planning the Capabilities Required for Success, Long Range Planning Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 36–43 (1991)