strategic blueprint for managing enterprise transformation & agility

2013

Strategic Blueprint for Managing Enterprise

Transformation & Agility

Written By: Solomon Baba

Reviewed By: Dr. Dayo Ogunbekun

2013, Solomon Baba. All Rights Reserved 2

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 4

2. Overcoming the Challenges of Enterprise Transformation and Agility ........................................... 7

3. Develop Roadmaps of Transformational Enterprise Initiatives ..................................................... 8

4. Assess the Impact and Risk of Transformational Enterprise Initiatives ..........................................12

5. Align Transformative IS and Technology Initiatives with Business Initiatives ................................18

6. Effectively Govern Transformational Enterprise Initiatives ...........................................................23

7. Continuously Adapt to Market and Environmental Dynamics .......................................................25

8. Accurately Estimate the Resource Requirements for Transformational Initiatives ........................29

9. Ensure Effective Communication and Collaboration Between Business & IT.................................31

10. Glossary ...................................................................................................................................32

11. Bibliography ............................................................................................................................35


Trademarks

Trademarked names may appear throughout this document. Rather than list the names and entities

that own the trademarks or insert a trademark symbol with each mention of the trademarked name,

the names are used only for editorial purposes and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no

intention of infringing upon that trademark.

Disclaimer

Although the author took proper care in writing this whitepaper, no warranty is given by the author

as to the accuracy and completeness of the information contained therein, and neither the author,

nor the publishing medium shall be responsible or liable for any loss or damage whatsoever arising

by virtue of such information or any advice contained within this whitepaper. All trademarks,

registered names, and so forth acknowledged in this book are the property of their respective

owners.


1. Introduction

Change is the only constant.

− Heraclitus

Change is inevitable in our personal lives, and in businesses. The irony of change in life is

that, as a child, we could not wait to grow up to become adults, as adults, we do not want to

grow old due to so many reasons that are too numerous to mention. It is very logical to

conclude that, at different stages of our lives we tend to have different appetite or desire for

change or growth. However, whether we like it or not change will inevitably occur in our

lives. How we prepare for, and cope with these unavoidable changes are the most important

factors to our personal transformation or change.

In continuation of the above rational illustration; as a child, changing our behaviours or

attitudes is much easier compared to changing our behaviours and attitudes as an adult; a

stage at which we are almost set in our ways, and are used to, or comfortable with the way

we do things. Similarly, enterprises in their formative stages tend to have a high sense of

urgency for change, and are easy to change, or have a positive or strong appetite for change,

but, as they reach certain stage of maturity or size, changing an enterprise becomes an uphill

task. The inability of enterprises to change easily as they become bigger occurs partly

because their appetite for change would have dwindled, or they would have been set in their

ways, or more people in the enterprises will now be required to make change happen.

Just as it is in our personal lives, whether enterprises or businesses like it or not change will

inevitably happen. How enterprises anticipate or sense, respond, and manage these

unavoidable and phenomenal transformational changes are the most important factors to

enterprise transformation or change in this new millennia. Providing an effective blueprint

to help enterprises respond, cope, or manage these transformational changes is the sole

intent of this whitepaper.

John P. Kotter, a former professor at the Harvard Business School, vividly justified the

juxtaposition depicted above in this whitepaper in his seminal book Leading Change, John

stated that ‘In an organisation with 100 employees, at least a two dozen must go far beyond

the normal call of duty to produce a significant change.’ He further stated that ‘In a firm


with 100,000 employees, the same might be required for 15,000 employees or more.’1 We

can see that as the size of the organisation increases so does the number of people that will

be required to transform the organisation, which is one of the factors that makes it very

difficult for large enterprises to fundamental alter or change their operations, processes,

products and services and so forth.

In spite of the challenges associated with enterprise transformation and agility as clearly

illustrated above, enterprises cannot afford to stand still in today’s dynamic and globalised

environment. If they do, either one of these two things will happen, either they will be left

behind in the state of things and become obsolete in their approach, products, and services,

and eventually wither away or file for bankruptcy, or they will become the target of hostile

takeover or acquisition. Moreover, if such an enterprise is a public sector organisation, the

citizenry or its stakeholders will consider such an organisation to be out of touch with their

needs, concerns, or interests.

It is obvious that enterprises must continue to change, as well as, develop the ability to

change (i.e., to become agile) in order to survive in today’s dynamic environment. However,

we have two major types of changes, the first is routine change, and the second is

fundamental change (also called transformation). The change referred to in this paper is

fundamental change. According to William B. Rouse, the executive director of the

Tennenbaum Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology:

‘Enterprise transformation concerns change, not just routine change but fundamental

change that substantially alters an organization’s relationships with one or more key

constituencies, e.g., customers, employees, suppliers, and investors.’2

The need to fundamental alter or change the way enterprises carry out their activities in

order to deliver their products/services and to relate with their customers, employees,

suppliers and government is driven by internal/external factors such as the economy growth,

government laws and regulations, taxes, globalisation, recession, supply and demand,

competition, new technology and so forth.

1 Kotter J. P. (1996).Leading Change. US: Harvard Business School Press, p. 35. 2 Rouse, W. B. (2005). A Theory of Enterprise Transformation, Systems Engineering, 8(4), 279-295, p. 279.


Although transformation and agility are both critical to the survival of enterprises in today’s

dynamic and globalised environment, they are very difficult to achieve.

Numerous researchers have identified the many factors that are responsible for the

difficulties associated with enterprise transformation, or for the failure of transformational

initiatives, or why enterprises are unable to transform themselves, or become agile enough

to respond to the changes happening in their environment in a quick and effective manner.

However, not much has been done in attributing the root cause of these problems to the

challenges of managing the complexities associated with handling all of the numerous and

interconnected components or parts of the enterprise that must change and work together in

a cohesive fashion in order for an enterprise to successfully transform itself.


2. Overcoming the Challenges of Enterprise Transformation and Agility

In order to overcome the challenges of managing the complexities associated with enterprise

transformation and agility, enterprises need to develop or possess a strategic blueprint of

their enterprise that will be used for:

1. Developing roadmaps of transformational initiatives, or for identifying the right

transformational business, IS and technology initiatives to embark upon in order

to achieve their strategic goals (i.e., to carry out strategic business, IS, and

technology planning)

2. Assessing the impact and risk of fundamentally altering the way they currently

perform their operations or for performing numerous what-if-scenarios for the

purpose of testing all the assumptions surrounding their transformation efforts

3. Aligning their transformational technology and information systems (IS)

initiatives with their business initiatives

4. Governing their business, IS, and technology initiatives or programmes

throughout their entire lifecycle

5. Continuously adapting to the dynamic nature of their environment or to develop

the ability to quickly sense and respond to changes that are happening in their

environment

6. Accurately estimating the resources that will be required to deliver their

transformational business, IS, and technology initiatives effectively

7. Creating a common language or terminology and modelling notations that will be

used within the enterprise, and with external partners and suppliers in order to

reduce the costs and risks of enterprise transformation that may results from the

lack of standard communication language and approaches

The strategic blueprint is able to achieve all of the value propositions mentioned above

through the provisioning of a complete and coherent documentation of all the key building

blocks or components that makes up the enterprise. The blueprint also provides all the

relationships, dependencies, or interconnections that exist between these enterprise building

blocks or components that are the key enablers of enterprise mission.


3. Develop Roadmaps of Transformational Enterprise Initiatives

In the same way that individuals or organisations need an architectural plan or blueprint to

guide the construction or renovation/transformation of buildings, a strategic enterprise

blueprint is also needed to guide the transformation, engineering, and manufacturing of an

enterprise. The Government of Canada clearly understood the significance of using a

strategic blueprint to guide enterprise transformation efforts or programmes, which is why

they developed a custom strategic blueprint called Business Transformation Enablement

(BTEP) Toolkit to guide all their transformation programmes. According to the Canadian

Government’s Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat:

‘If, across government, the ways that we define and understand the “as is” state, and

then scope, design, plan, and execute business transformation to move to the “to be

state” aren’t compatible, coherent and efficient, then it’s highly unlikely that the

outcomes will be.’3

The strategic blueprint presented in this paper will help enterprises to develop roadmaps for

their transformation programmes or to identify the right transformational business, IS, and

technology initiatives by providing a comprehensive and coherent architecture or

documentation of their baseline and target enterprise capabilities that can be used to analyse

the gaps, redundancies, and overlaps that may exist between them.

Following the assessment or evaluation of the gaps that may exist between their baseline and

target business, IS and technology capabilities, enterprises can easily develop the roadmap

of transformational initiatives or roadmap of new capabilities that should be developed to

close the identified gaps, or to eliminate the redundant/duplicative capabilities or services

that may exist in the enterprise. Figures 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 below graphically illustrates how

the strategic blueprint presented in this paper can be used to document the baseline and

target architecture of enterprise capabilities, perform gap analysis, and develop the

roadmaps of transformational enterprise initiatives .

3 Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. (2004). Business Transformation Enablement Programme. Canada: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, p. 4.


Figure 3.0 High Level (One Page) Strategic Enterprise Blueprint


Figure 3.1 Business, IS and Technology Capability Gap Assessment


Figure 3.2 Business, IS and Technology Transformation Roadmap


4. Assess the Impact and Risk of Transformational Enterprise Initiatives

In order to assess or measure the impact and risk of fundamentally altering the way

enterprise currently perform their operations or serve their stakeholders, a strategic blueprint

is needed to provide a comprehensive documentation of the enterprise building blocks, and

to establish the relationship that exists between all these building blocks (i.e., business, IS,

and technology architecture building blocks). The process of establishing relationships

between all the key building blocks of an enterprise is called Meta modelling, and the

outcome of that process is called a meta-model.

A meta-model provide enterprises the means or tools for assessing the impact of the changes

they are going to be making, perform numerous what-if-scenarios to test the assumptions

they made about their transformational programmes, and be able to trace the relationships or

dependencies between the building blocks of their enterprise (i.e., business, IS, and

technology components). Figures 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 below provides a comprehensive

enterprise metal-model that can used to assess the impact of change when it is used to

document the architecture of the enterprise; most especially, when it used together with the

right enterprise architecture (EA) repository and modelling tool.

Figure 4.0 High Level Business, Information Systems (IS) and Technology Architecture Metal Model


Figure 4.1 Detail Business Service Architecture Meta Model


Figure 4.2 Detail Information Services Architecture Meta Model


Figure 4.3 Technology/Platform Services Architecture Meta Model

Figure 4.4 Detail & Integrated Enterprise Architecture Meta Model


5. Align Transformational IS and Technology Initiatives with Business Initiatives

In order to align transformational information systems (IS) and technology initiatives with

business initiatives, a strategic enterprise blueprint is needed to provide the means or context

for aligning all three initiatives or for integrating transformational initiatives that span both

business, IS, and technology building blocks. Figures 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 below

provides different views of the blueprint that shows how to integrate and align

transformational IS and technology planning with business planning, or shows how to

integrate/align the building blocks of business, IS, and technology components.

Figure 5.0 Business, IS, and Technology Objectives and Initiatives Alignment View


Figure 5.1 Business, IS and Technology Services Alignment View


Figure 5.2 Business, IS and Technology Components Alignment View


Figure 5.3 High Level Business, IS and Technology Alignment Meta Model


Figure 5.4 Business, IS and Technology Alignment Meta Model

6. Effectively Govern Transformational Enterprise Initiatives

In order to govern transformational business, IS and technology initiatives effectively, a

strategic enterprise blueprint is needed to provide a comprehensive documentation of key

enterprise building blocks that must be governed effectively in order for enterprise

transformation initiatives to succeed. The strategic blueprint will also enable enterprises to

specify standards and patterns that each of the strategic building blocks must comply with,

in line with the IT principles of the enterprise.

Without a strategic enterprise blueprint, it will be practically impossible to identify all of the

building blocks or components of an enterprise, establish the relationships that may exist

between them, specify their standards, capture relevant information about them, and manage

them throughout their entire lifecycle. Figure 6.0 below illustrate how strategic blueprint can

be used to specify standards for enterprise building blocks, following which the architecture

review boards of enterprises can use these standards to effectively guide and govern

programmes/projects and solutions delivery, mostly by ensuring that the architecture of the

solution is consistent with the specified IT standards throughout the entire delivery lifecycle.


Figure 6.0 Technology Architecture Artefacts Meta Model


7. Continuously Adapt to Market and Environmental Dynamics

In order to continuously adapt to the dynamics of their external environment, enterprises

need develop or possess a strategic blueprint that provide a holistic and integrated picture of

their entire building blocks to help them identify, design, deliver, and operationalize

transformational business, IS, and technology initiatives or programmes quickly, including

those initiatives or programmes that supports or enables enterprise agility. In other words,

strategic blueprint will enable enterprises to quickly respond to the changes that are

happening in their environment by providing a comprehensive and integrated business, IS,

and technology blueprints for identifying and delivering transformational enterprise

initiatives or programmes such as business process re-engineering or transformation,

service-oriented and event-driven composite application development, and business process

management (BPM).

Numerous researches have shown that enterprises that has a fully developed strategic

blueprint prior to embarking on the initiatives mentioned above are better able to come to

market faster with their business agility enabling solutions than their competitors, and are

more likely to succeed in delivering operationalizing those solutions. Figures 7.0, 7.1, and

7.2 below illustrates how enterprises can leverage strategic blueprints to continuously adapt

to the dynamics of their environment, and to design the architecture of their business-

aligned and transformational IS and technology initiatives cum solutions. Numerous

researches have indicated that the key to delivering transformational IS and technology

initiatives or projects the right way is to have excellent solution architecture.

Strategic blueprint will help enterprises to accelerate the definition of their solution

architectures because it enables solution architects to understand the current state of the IS

and technology architecture that the new solution will integrate with, and to leverage

opportunities for re-use in the current application and technology services portfolio. In

addition, the strategic blueprint also helps solution architects to adhere to the catalogue of

technology standards and patterns specified by the enterprise.


Figure 7.0 Conceptual Application Security Solution Architecture


Figure 7.1 Logical Application Security Solution Architecture


Figure 7.2 Physical Application Security Solution Architecture


8. Accurately Estimate the Resource Requirements for Transformational Initiatives

In order to estimate all the resources that are required to transform an enterprise

successfully, a strategic blueprint provide a comprehensive documentation or catalogue of

baseline and target enterprise building blocks. This strategic blueprint will help those

involve in transforming the enterprise to accurately identify all the business, IS, and

technology components or building blocks that need to change as part of the transformation

programme, for example, enterprises will be able to identify what applications are needed to

support business processes.

Strategic blueprint can also help enterprises to identify and document which business events,

rules, information/business objects, measures, process, or which business services are

automated or orchestrated, and by which application service, and as part of which business

process management or transformation programme. In essence, enterprises can use the

strategic blueprint to identify the key building blocks (organisation units, functions,

location, roles, actors, business services, data entities, map actors to roles and organisation

units etc.) of their organisation that will be required to design and deliver transformative and

agility enabling solutions such as BPM and service-oriented architecture (SOA) before

embarking on them. Figures 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 below clearly illustrate how strategic blueprint

can be used to document the building blocks that are required to deliver enterprise

transformation initiatives.

Figure 8.0 Business Architecture Content Repository Framework

9. Ensure Effective Communication and Collaboration between Business & IT

Numerous researches indicated that one of the major reasons why IT-enabled enterprise

transformation programme fails is that, the business, IS, and technology organisation units

speaks different languages, and uses different approaches to define and describe their

contexts/situations, which tends to introduce a lot of ambiguity in the way they

communicate, collaborate, and understand each other’s context. Enterprises need to adopt

and use a strategic enterprise blueprint that is developed based on industry-accepted

terminologies and modelling notation such as the strategic blueprint presented and discussed

in this paper in order to eliminate the ambiguity or communication gaps that exist between

the business, IS, and the technology organisation units. The Canadian Government’s

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat also corroborates this view by stating that:

‘A government that can lead change to reach its goals must be able to align and

analyze its business using a common language around common functions, and types

of programs and services and their client groups, across the entire enterprise.’4

The strategic enterprise blueprint presented in this paper was developed largely based on

TOGAF 9.1 frameworks and notations, and on other industry standard reference

architectures and patterns.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Solomon Baba is currently a freelance Enterprise/Solutions Architect, prior to becoming a

freelancer, he was an Enterprise and Solutions Architect at Wipro Technologies in the

United Kingdom; and prior to joining Wipro, he was an enterprise/solutions architect with

Oracle Corporations, EMEA. Solomon has a master’s degree in Business Technology

consulting (with specialisation in Enterprise Architecture) from the prestigious Henley

Business School at the University of Reading in UK. He is passionate about helping

enterprises to manage the lifecycle of their IT investments, and in designing service-oriented

and event-driven enterprise architecture for private and public organisations. He recently

authored a book that laid out the five rational steps that enterprises can follow to manage

their IT investments successfully and generate maximum business value; now available for

sale on all Amazon websites.

4 Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. (2004). Business Transformation Enablement Programme. Canada: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, p. 4.


10. Glossary Keywords Definitions

Actor A person (employee, customers, partners and other stakeholder)

assigned to a role. Actor can also be a system or thing that triggers an

event or perform/initiate an action

Architecture Represents the graphical or otherwise description or representation of

the building blocks of an enterprise, system, or things

Building block Are the reusable components that are used to engineer and manufacture

an enterprise, or to deliver solutions to enterprise problems

Business Information or Object

Data about the attributes of business entities that are consumed by

business processes. Business object can either be structured or

unstructured

Business Rule Are structured business policies that are used to control the behaviour of

business process, IS/application, and technology service. Business rule

also represent the decision logic that determines the

execution/performance of business processes

Capability Can either be a business, IS or technology capability. Business

capability is the ability of an organisation unit or of its business function

to deliver business services and products. IS capability is the ability of

IS function to deliver application services. Technology capability is the

ability of the technology function to deliver technology/platform

services

Component Represent the building block of an enterprise. Components can either be

conceptual, logical, or physical.

Contract Can either be a business, IS, or technology contract. Contract is a

formal/informal quality of service (QoS) or agreement associated with a

service

Data Object or Entity

Data about the attributes of business entities that are consumed by

application service. Data object only exist in structured format, and are

managed by a conceptual technology component called structured or

relational data management service. Business process consume data

objects by accessing application services

Driver Can either be a business, IS or technology driver. A driver is a factor

that influence, motivate, or constrain an organisation. Drivers can


originate from within or outside the organisation. Typical examples of

drivers are customer satisfaction, regulatory compliance, profitability

and so forth

Event The occurrence of an observable action, which can be generated or

resolve by an actor, and can be triggered by a business process or it can

triggers a business process. An event can simply mean a change of state

e.g. from cold to hot, yes to no and so forth.

Function Can either be a business, IS, or technology function. As an entity, a

function is a group of similar/related enterprise resources or capabilities

required to deliver services to either internal or external customers. As a

verb, a function is the set of activities that are performed by an

organisation unit or a role. This definition sounds somewhat like the

definition of business process, However, while a business process group

enterprise components based on a sequence or “flow” of activities that is

needed to realize a product or service, a function typically groups

enterprise components based on required resources, skills, competences,

knowledge (i.e., capabilities). According to TOGAF 9.1 document, ‘a

function delivers capabilities closely aligned to an organisation unit’

Gap Can either be a business, IS, or technology gap. Business gap is the

shortfall that exists between the baseline and target business architecture

or capability. IS gap is the shortfall that exists between the baseline and

target IS architecture/capability. Technology/platform gap is the

shortfall that exists between the baseline and target technology

architecture.

Goal Can either be a business, IS, or technology goal. Business goal is high-

level statement of business intent or direction. IS goal is high-level

statement of IS goal and intent that that support or enable the

achievement of business goal. Technology goal is high-level statement

of intent or direction that supports the achievement of IS goal.

Initiative Can either be a business, IS, or technology initiative. Initiative is the

course of action or prospective programmes/projects enterprise will

embark upon in order to achieve its objectives. Initiative is often

referred to as enterprise strategic initiative by TOGAF

Investment Can either be a business, IS, or technology investment roadmap.


Roadmap Investment roadmaps are the time-phased and technically interdependent

set of strategic enterprise initiatives that will help an enterprise to

develop the capabilities it needs to achieve its business, IS and

technology objectives

Interface Can either be a business or application interface. Business interface is a

point of access for business services, or an access point for business

services. Application interface is a point through which business

processes or function accesses application services, or a point through

which application services can be accessed. Application interface

exposes the functionalities of application services or application

components.

Location Can either be a business, IS or technology location. Business location is

the place or geographical location where actors deliver business

services. IS location is the place where IS/application services are hosted

or deployed. Technology location is the place where technology

components are installed.

Measure Measure is the performance metric that must be met by business

processes in order to achieve business objectives or goals. TOGAF

recently introduced MEASURE building block as an entity that links

business objective and business service

Objective Can either be a business, IS, or technology objective. Objectives

quantifies business, IS and technology goals. Objectives can also be

defined as SMART goal, the intent of which is to measure progress

towards a goal

Organisation Unit

Can either be a business, IS, or technology organisation unit.

Organisation unit represents a group of resources with the requisite

capability to deliver services in order to achieve goals, and objectives.

An enterprise is made up of one or more organisation units. According

to TOGAF driver, goal, and objective link organisation unit to business

service

Process Sequence of steps or activities that are performed by an actor to realise a

business service or to deliver a product.

Product Can be a collection of intangible business services together with their

contracts and service quality requirements, or the combination of


intangible business services and tangible commodities/goods delivered

to an external or internal customer

Programme Can either be a business, IS, or technology project and programme. A

programme is an organised grouping of interdependent or connected

projects that are required to achieve the desired outcome (objectives)

sought by enterprises and deliver maximum value

Role An actor is assigned to a role to perform/initiate/trigger a business

service, process, or events.

Service Quality Can either be a business, IS, or platform/technology service qualities.

Service qualities are the non-functional requirements that must be met

by business, IS, and platform services.

Service Can either be a business, IS, and technology service. Business service

can either be defined as the smallest unit of business capability, by

implication; a group of business services will constitute a business

capability. Alternatively, business service can be defined as an

intangible commodity/product that fulfils the needs of an internal or

external customer. Application service is piece of application

functionality. Business service delivery requires a combination of

business, and might also require both IS and technology capabilities

Strategy Can either be a business, IS and technology, which then consists of

business, IS and technology objectives, and the transformational

business, IS, and technology change initiatives or course actions

required to achieve the objectives

Value Relative significance of a product or service

11. Bibliography 1. The Open Group. (2011). TOGAF Version 9.1. Netherland: Van Haren Publishing

2. Baba, S. (2012). The 5 Rational Steps for Managing IT Investments: How-to Generate Maximum Business Value from IT. US: CreateSpace

3. Open Group Standard. (2012). ArchiMate 2.0 Specification. UK: The Open Group

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