Being An Architect

I imagine a great architect to come in the darkness of night, to a beleaguered organization, perhaps accompanied with his team of architects. And the Architect will camp with the organization for a period of time, to learn what the company is all about, and to propose what can be done to promote its essence and existence.  The Architect will listen to the elders -- the company's collective wisdom, to hear the leadership's vision of what the company wants to be, the mission that the company wants to serve, and the goals and objectives in the coming years, to stay true to the mission.  In hindsight, the organization is not necessarily beleaguered. It could very well be an organization in good shape to begin with, which, perhaps, is just ready to go from "good to great" -- as our professor has pointed out earlier in the course.

Listening to the vision of elders.

Reflecting on the essence of an architect, I sometimes wonder of equivalents such as the great builders like Frank Lloyd Wright or an I.M. Pei, or a Louis Khan. Or to industry architects like Steve Jobs of Apple; or Iacocca/Sperlich for the Ford Mustang; or even FDR's New Deal architects like Hopkins and Cohen.  Visionaries who in their respective contexts, pushed the current knowledge of what is available, to create solutions at the edge of new innovations, and helped us -- or perhaps more important -- enabled us, to face the challenges, and possibly discover even new exciting opportunities.

Frank Lloyd Wright and his students. Image from the Ken Burns documentary. 

Steve Jobs with the iPod team

To be called an architect is to be a powerful force in the organization.  Never again should we mistake architects for draftsmen or modelers or the so-called "picture-makers," because that would completely miss the point.  The best architects are primarily communicators, both as keen listeners to the company aspirations and pains, as well as eloquent articulators of guidance towards future-state vision. As such, architects will effectively use these and any other instruments to communicate abstract notions of mission, strengths, weaknesses, and solutions.  The architect will communicate all of these with such force and clarity, to make everyone in the organization understand how all these solutions, all these components, and all these plans will work together -- to bring the company to future-state.

Iacocca and a famous customer and Mustang fan.

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For the last 6 years an awards program has been sponsored by InfoWorld, Forrester Research, and the Penn State University Center for Enterprise Architecture. The Enterprise Architecture Awards recognizes the excellence of enterprise architects, and the organizations whose practice of the EA discipline has resulted in substantial benefit to the organizations which they serve. I think this is really a great idea.

There were five winners in 2015:  British Gas, Capital One, Idaho National Lab of the Department of Energy, National Grid, and Tata Communications, Ltd.  

At British Gas, the company formulated new strategic imperatives which aim to improve customer service and enable greater innovation.  To help with these strategies, the enterprise architecture practice in the company enabled a successful application rationalization program that reduced the company's application portfolio from 350 to fewer than 100, resulting in increased flexibility and reduced costs. The EA team as a result grew to be beloved, perhaps because they are seen as allies and pragmatics, with solutions that clearly show a deep understanding of the interest of both the company and its customers.

At Capital One, the Awards talk about how the EA practice adapted to the company's forward-looking business, by making the EA mission aligned with strategies for accelerated delivery of highly resilient and secure systems. At the company, EA enables the organization by leveraging technology disruptors such as microservices, cloud, and big data for the benefit of the whole organization. The EA practice facilitates culture development in the company through various activities such as awareness programs for advanced engineering practices, "hackathons", and design workshops. EA makes use of agile techniques to enable faster delivery of architecture guidance. And how EA provided transformational framework for improving technical competencies through continuous learning programs.

At the Idaho National Lab of the Department of Energy, the EA practice worked to address the grave issues of cyber security vulnerabilities, and provided a new EA execution model which they call "bi-modal" in order to clearly delineate two main EA missions or modes:  1.) Effectiveness Architecture and 2.) Innovation Architecture. Effectiveness Architecture focuses on cost effective operations that manage the risks associated with reliability, sustainability, and security. While Innovation Architecture promotes flexibility for the organization to explore solutions that can increase capacity, improve capabilities, and generate greater revenue.

At National Grid, the EA practice made its mission to fix the legacy technology estate that was unable to provide the business with the agility, insight, and flexibility it needed. EA focused on simplifying core business services and associated KPIs by focusing on core sets of technology in the areas of mobility, service-driven architecture, modern data platforms, and hybrid cloud.

Lastly, at Tata Communications, the EA team provided multiple road maps to transform the company's delivery architecture by placing strong governance mechanisms. These resulted in better, faster, and more accurate strategic design decisions, as well as cost savings achieved with the effective systems rationalization. The EA practice at Tata was clearly responsive to the company's strategy of placing greater emphasis on bundling and next-generation services.

So... Is your company and EA practice up for nomination for the 2016 awards?

A business strategy session from the movie "The Intern"

Conclusion:

It is important for enterprise architects to have models of excellence to which they can assess and calibrate their own development and growth. As winners of the EA Awards have shown, the EA discipline and practice is alive and well, and will continue to do so if architects collaborate and share the lessons learned in various practices, and also if we continue to dissect and fine-tune the essence of this practice that we have labeled "Enterprise Architecture".  The Enterprise Architects in those winning companies showed excellence in terms of responsiveness to the needs of business, mixing both innovation and effectiveness in their disciplines, going beyond "doing architecture," or beyond just being smart technical experts. They were all masters of business transformation, consistently tuned to the alignments that are needed, pulling the capability and competency gaps closer, enabling the IT organization and its resources towards delivering tangible business outcomes.

Being an architect is thus, not a simple profession. It takes a lot of wherewithal - particularly, analytical skills and the broad reference frame to understand applicable technologies;  to devise a plan that successfully aligns with the vision; and to have a certain courage to stand by that plan, and provide the enabling guidance as the plan is executed to transform the organization.

I would think that the set of skills goes beyond management. The practice of architecture truly contains a lot of art beyond the science -- embodying a truly creative force, whose powers can orchestrate all those abstractions into organizational action, to bring to fruition, very tangible business outcomes. It is like painting in broad strokes, perhaps even at the highest levels of business -- and with each stroke of the plan, possibly affecting so many parts and corners of the enterprise.

 Gartner's EA Activity Map

To be a true Architect, therefore, is to be a creatively formidable, and responsible, leader. When called to serve and wear the badge, the Architect must stand to be the organization's key communicator of the so-called vision.

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I have learned a lot from the insights coming from the class discussions, and the blog forum has been very instrumental in making the discussions even more enjoyable. 

Thanks and all the best to your EA journey.

/ Ian.

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Readings:

The 2015 Enterprise Architecture Awards

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2984801/enterprise-architecture/the-2015-enterprise-architecture-awards.html

Weiss, D., Rosser, B., Blanton, C.E. (2005 Oct 31). Enterprise Architecture Improves IT Planning Synergies. White Paper. Gartner Research Publications. (ID: G00130847)

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