Aligning Strategy, Architecture, Process Management and Governance

Over the last 20 years I have seen organizations with variant degrees of maturity struggle to align their strategy, architecture, business process and governance functions within their enterprise.?Very rarely have I seen these functions reside under one business unit or leader and in some cases run completely independently with very few process hand offs between them.

I have had the privilege to pilot and work with different approaches and the focus of this article is meant as a guide for organizations who want to improve alignment across these areas of their business.

Regardless if your teams are federated across IT and the business, the first step is getting all of these groups speaking the same language, making information transparent, centralize your source of truths and documenting your processes especially the hand offs between these functions.

Strategy

A strategy framework which all teams can follow is essential.?My personal preference is Goals, Objectives, Strategy and Tactic or GOST for organizations just beginning to standardize on a common strategy language. It is less of a framework and more of a method for planning.?It is simple to launch, stakeholders understand it and it is user friendly.?Another complementary method is VMOST.?Both are similar, simple and easy to adopt.

Once you have a consistent terms, definitions and a way of planning together as an enterprise, the next step is to implement a framework which is used throughout the enterprise to develop a consistent way to measure and track progress which demonstrates leaders are meeting the objectives of the organization set in the plan.

There are several others frameworks to consider as well as you mature.?A few you can research are:

• Balanced Scorecard – Very popular framework and widely used.?If you are already using a simple model like GOST today then upgrading to the Balanced Scorecard is a good next step in maturing your strategy framework.
• McKinsey’s Strategic Horizons – Great for organizations who are very innovative and want to build a tighter framework around innovation.
• Value Disciplines – This is excellent for organizations with niches in domain areas like retail or shipping companies where tight, focused discipline is needed to streamline processes.?This partners well with Lean Six Sigma process methodology as well.

• Stakeholder Theory – This framework works very well when your customers are spread across many different focus areas and can be segregated to focus either on the product or the customer.

To choose the best framework, assign individuals from your organization that is leading or heavily involved in your annual planning process and resources from your Enterprise Architecture organization.?

Consider implementing strategy management tools, some examples include Cascade, Aha, Strategy Blocks or Envisio.?These vendors will typically do an assessment of your enterprise and can make recommendations on the best frameworks to use based on the needs of your organization.?They adopt these frameworks into their tools which makes the planning process for users much simpler and intuitive.?Another bonus is most are cloud based tools and affordable.?You can also explore your project management tools as well, Microsoft Portfolio Management as well as many ERP tools like Workday have capabilities as well.?

Make sure you do a thoughtful change management plan to implement and train leaders on the methodology and the tools.?Ensure the information is highly visible and transparent to all employees. Lastly, remember that strategy, governance and architecture roles should be heavily engaged in the selection of solutions and methodologies you are choosing to enable your strategy.?

Enterprise Architecture

Perhaps the biggest miss that organizations make is not ensuring architecture has a significant seat at the table. Organizations can view architecture in different ways and engage with them differently based on what is being asked for by the business.

I look at architecture in two distinct functions, enterprise (High Level) and IT (Detail).?An enterprise architecture (EA) is a conceptual blueprint that defines the structure & operation of an organization. The intent of an enterprise architecture is to determine how an organization can most effectively achieve its current & future objectives.?IT Architecture is the detail design or the what/how for specific components of the enterprise, the network, the infrastructure, and the software. Neither function can be successful without the other.

I recommend strongly that Enterprise Architecture reside within the business of the enterprise.?Generally under the highest level business executives in the organization and very tightly aligned with strategy, process management and governance.?If you can get these functions under the same leader, it will make life much easier. At the very least establish a center of excellence for the service that supports cross functional, federated staff performing this function.

Think of Enterprise Architecture as a City Planning.?City Planners are joined at the hip with the mayor and the leaders who are running the city.?They establish the principles and standards that everyone must adhere to which are driven by what is developed in the enterprise strategic plan.

For IT Architecture, their function is to ensure that what is designed for the city adheres to those principals and standards.?Some of these types of architects are:

???????Application/Solution architects, who design out foundation elements like a building appearance, materials used, square footage and/or structural details of buildings;

???????Infrastructure architects, who determine foundation elements, connection to roads, parking capacities;

???????System architects, who plans one or more buildings;

???????Software architects, who are responsible for something analogous like the Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning or elements within a building;

???????Domain architects, who analyze where to build, resources required, amenities needed for occupants, skills required to operate the building or business;

???????Data architects, establish and maintain database systems;

???????Network architects, who determine how a city can connect people & buildings with each other

In many cases, domain architects can also reside within business areas, this is very common except I would work towards branding these roles as business architecture functions versus domain architecture.?Lastly, let’s not forget about Cyber Security Architects.?My recommendation is that this function resides with the business and is closely aligned to Enterprise Architecture in the development of standards and principles for the enterprise.?These roles must be tightly threaded with all enterprise and IT architecture processes from beginning to end.?The best place for Cyber Security is under an enterprises governance, risk and compliance umbrella.?I would avoid, inserting Cyber Security into your IT organization and focus more on threading the processes more tightly within IT, architecture, governance and compliance.

Now that we have defined the roles of architecture, next you have to determine what methodology you want to follow or what language do you want to speak.?This is crucial because if we don’t simplify how we communicate complicated technology, we confuse the business.?

There are several methodologies to choose from, below are a few to consider:

• TOGAF – My personal preference for organizations that are focused on managing and operating complex systems either on premise or in the cloud.?TOGAF creates a repeatable process that architects need to do when approaching design and breaks this into Business, Application, Data and Technical architecture. Its methodology is easy to customize to other processes and creates a natural hand off between enterprise architecture and IT Architecture.?The main reason this methodology is my preference is that is highly focused on process and in order to create a tight alignment between strategy, governance and other business/IT processes is to have a well-documented process.
• Gartner – this framework is better classified as a practice. The methodology is centered on bringing key stakeholders together to the table, business owners, information specialists, and the technology implementer.??I would suggest if you are a Gartner customer to explore this framework especially if you are a more balanced, innovative enterprise leveraging hybrid cloud strategically.?The downside to this framework is that it is poorly documented. Most of the materials do not have a lot of depth and if your goal is to align these functions by creating a thoughtful process you may be doing this from scratch.
• Zachman Framework – Using the word framework for Zachman is a stretch.?It really is just a taxonomy.?Zachman is my least favorite Enterprise Architecture framework because it does not provide guidance to architects on how to build out architecture but it does help build a common language for terms and definitions.?If the architecture of your organization is simple, highly cloud base, this may be an option to consider.?This is also a great starting point for smaller, centralized organizations just beginning to build their Enterprise Architecture capability.

• Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) – This is a very new framework and was specifically designed by the federal government.?I could see this being an effective framework for large, highly federated and regulated environments which are providing a large variety of services across a wide customer base.

Once you have selected a methodology, train on that significantly.?All architects, business or IT should understand this at a high level.?If you have an architect title, require certification.?All other roles can do a learning management course to learn more about the terms and definitions so everyone can understand what these terms mean and most importantly what artifacts and visuals can be produced to support business decisions.

Enterprise Architecture Repository

Putting the architecture repository after the selection of a framework is important.?Many companies realize they need to have a unified repository for architecture data and artifacts and then leverage that tools preferred methodology.?I don’t agree with this approach.?I think determining the framework needs to align with your organization not the tool.?Once you define the right framework based on the needs of your enterprise, select the best tool that maps to the chosen framework.?All of these tool providers have modules, templates and things for all frameworks but some do it better than others.?Do your due diligence after staff is trained in the methodology then start thinking about tools that best align and provide out of the box templates which align to the enterprise architecture methodology and the control structures you follow.

Once you have the methodology and the best tools that align to that methodology, drill down on tools that have the tightest integration to your IT Service Management Platform like Service Now for example.?Tools with well-established API’s to these platforms will save you time and a whole lot of money.?I would also ensure that these tools integrate with your project portfolio management applications as well such as Microsoft Project or Planview or even consider rolling out Portfolio Management onto your service management platform like ServiceNow.

Lastly and I think most importantly, select tools with the easiest user interface, self-service portal, and analytics capabilities.?If the business cannot interact with this data easily, the visuals are not consumable, frustrated customers closely follow and the tool will die a slow, painful, expensive death.?

Gartner’s 2022 Magic Quadrant lists the following vendors as leaders in this space:?BiZZdesign, Avolution, SoftwareAG, Mega International, Qualiware.?I would also suggest looking at ServiceNow's Application Portfolio Management solution if you are looking at consolidating, portfolio management, project management and enterprise architecture management into one centralized solution. ServiceNow is building adding capability into their Application Portfolio Management solution which will give enterprises the power of EA capabilities into the platform. The power of having all of this in one platform is huge!

Business Process Management

It is equally as important that your organization have a common process methodology as well.?If your organization uses Lean Six Sigma, train your architecture, strategy, and process management personnel on this methodology.?Also, ensure you standardize on how you graphically create process diagrams. My preference is Business Process Model and Notation or BPMN 2.0. It is essential you take a common approach to building diagrams across teams or you will not be able to correlate the data effectively between systems.

If you can combine process optimization function with enterprise architecture, strategy and governance under the same leader this would make alignment much easier.?At the very least, have an Center of Excellence where staff can go for support for materials, best practice and training. This Center of Excellence could also provide Six Sigma advanced skills like a Black or Green Belt resource who could support projects that have goals to reduce waste and optimize their business process. Business Process resources can and will be federated but there should be a common, documented approach to process optimization which ties to these functions, uses a common business process methodology, has executive level ownership, key performance indicators and strong CEO sponsorship. I would also suggest that the corporate strategic plan always have ties to improving/documenting processes and training staff on how to do this correctly.

For more common process areas in IT. I strongly suggest ITIL alignment and leveraging templates and taxonomy which comes out of the box with enterprise architecture repository tools. Many of these tools already have process diagrams based on best practices.

Enterprise Architecture tools can also be used to tie other control structures and standards frameworks like NIST or COBIT, they provide templates right out of the box so enterprises can tie all of this together with standards, reference architectures, and processes. Think about how much time and money you can save by understanding how your processes tie to how you meet compliance, policies and standards and then show how these relate to applications and business capabilities!

For organizations with significant business process automation, using an Enterprise Architecture tool will not work. However, when selecting tools where the applications can integrate with each other easily should be a key requirement. For example, many manufacturing and shipping companies automate business processes heavily and Enterprise Architecture tools do not do this. The Enterprise Architecture tool is simply a repository where correlation can be made between services, function, capabilities, applications, hardware and processes can be mapped. Just make sure that both systems can speak the same language and have common graphical standards so ingesting the data into the Enterprise Architecture repository can be correlated.

Business process management for many enterprises can be a separate animal but none the less when you are working to optimize strategy, architecture, and governance...business process management needs to be fore front in your mind. Key things to consider:

• What is the master source of truth for process management information?
• How do you interrelate this data with other tools?
• How can strategy, architecture and governance enable optimization around your business processes?
• How can we demonstrate that improving process is demonstrating to the business how process relates to business capabilities and the enabling technology/strategy that supports the process?

These are key questions to think about as you are streamlining business process with strategy and architecture.

Governance

How an enterprise makes decisions around what has been defined in the strategic plan is absolutely critical. The success of your governance model is completely dependent on the information that you provide to decision makers so they can make an informed decision. To get started capture the following:

• What is the meeting frequency?
• What day of the week does the meeting take place
• Who is in the meeting??Named personnel and title.
• Does the governance group have a written charter?
• What is the meeting's purpose?
• What are the decisions that are made in the meeting?
• Is it an enterprise meeting, product meeting, corporate meeting, board, business unit, process, architecture etc.?Create a naming convention for each of these.?For example, if it is a meeting for a specific business unit or product, create a category name so you can find common themes.
• Is there a named facilitator to this meeting responsible for agenda, meeting notes, actions?
• List out the artifacts which are used for this meeting to make decisions upon.?Road maps, budgets, architecture diagrams etc.
• List what tools are used to create these artifacts to serve the meeting’s purpose.

Now that you have an inventory, the first rationalization as part of your cleanup is to eliminate governance meetings with no established, written charter or named facilitator.?Engage with the key business owner over the area and re-constituent the meeting when a charter and facilitator are established. This should be written and driven by a business owner not the facilitator.

Second, find the common categories.?If you have 5 meetings a month on Product XYZ, consolidate the charters, optimize the frequency and simplify the artifacts needed to make decisions.?

Third, take a very hard, long and political look at who is in those meetings.?You do not need the volume of people you think you need and many of these people really don’t need to be there.?Every named committee member should represent a functional area, they have a named back up when they cannot attend.?If you have several people attending from the same function every meeting, eliminate one.?You also don’t need quiet, passive people in governance, decision making meetings.?You want outspoken, broad minded people mixed with folks who may be risk avoidance type of thinkers.?Do not forget that compliance, Cyber Security, Strategy, and Architecture need a seat at many if not all governance tables.?Without them, you will miss something big that may bite the very decisions you are making.

Spend some time thinking about the psychology and dynamics of the people in the room.?The facilitator of that meeting should be interviewing members once a year about their engagement, meeting frequency, their attendance, understanding how to improve the meeting and content used to make decisions upon.?I like doing annual surveys every year and then use a meeting to review results and discuss any changes which should be made the charter, meeting frequency and committee members.

All meeting notes and actions should be tracked and dash boarded.?This should be highly transparent and visible to all stakeholders.?You should keep and maintain a meeting action log make it available to all members.

Governance meetings need to be documented processes threaded with strategy, architecture and project processes.?If there is a governance meeting that is not documented in a process document anywhere, then the purpose of that meeting should be explored and possibly eliminated.

There should be a global governance calendar which is visible to all stakeholders.?Facilitators of these bodies should meet and coordinate regularly on what is coming on the agenda.?Many times, agenda items can be combined across meetings to save everyone time.?Do not hold a meeting without a quorum, know your quorum the day or two before and cancel appropriately.?If you establish this culture as a facilitator and hold members accountable you will make everyone’s life that much easier.

Also, and more housekeeping oriented, meeting notes should be distributed within 48 hours of the meeting and agenda’s sent 3-5 days ahead of the meeting.?Keep a close track on who is attending and who is not, report on it, and make it visible.

Now, how to manage all of this.?Every organization I have worked with or for has used SharePoint/Teams to manage this.?I would consider incorporating Microsoft Planner as well if you are currently using SharePoint to manage governance.?Governance is a very basic, collaborative process and it easy to leverage existing collaboration tools.?The exception comes with corporate boards.?These typically have external members and may not have access to your internal SharePoint environments.?There are several cloud tools out there that focus on corporate board management and collaboration. Whatever tool you use, focus on usability, mobility and integration with your internal collaboration environment so you can keep your document source of truth in one location.?

Good governance is a full time job and function for the enterprise.?There should be a named, accountable leader within your organization focused on optimizing your governance processes.?It isn’t a side job, it isn’t an administrator’s job.?It should and always be a dedicated and well documented process with an executive held accountable for its success.

Single Source of Truth

As you are optimizing your governance structure, documenting processes, building an inventory and collecting feedback from stakeholders.?Think about how to align your artifacts with the tools and processes you have chosen above.?If these governance bodies require the same materials to make decisions upon make these artifacts transparent and self-service.?

For example, if a copy of the current and actual budget is needed for 30-40% of your governance meetings, this data should be real time and readily available for facilitators to grab and present in real time.?

It is very possible to deliver a lot of this agilely as you are working through governance improvement.?We don’t have to think about this alignment strategy linearly.?Depending on maturity level across these areas, success may be easier than you think however, the goal is to create artifacts used for decision making that are common across multiple governance bodies instead of facilitators reinventing the artifact wheel every time.

In Summation

In summation, here is the focus to creating better alignment with strategy, architecture, governance and process management:

• Select the right methodology across strategy, architecture, and process management that maps to your enterprise not the tool.
• Train all these functional areas in these methodologies.
• Select the best tools which align to these methodologies and focus on usability and self service as a key vetting criteria.
• Project Portfolio, Enterprise Architecture, Strategy Tools, and Business Process Management applications need to talk to each other. Ideally consider a platform approach.
• Document your processes, all of them. Make a special point to demonstrate what the process hand offs are between strategy, architecture, governance and process management.
• Enterprise Architecture need to provide the business with the ability to link business services, functions, applications, hardware, costs, business capabilities and processes.
• Centralize your source of truth's and standardize the artifacts based on decision making governance structure. Make this information self service and transparent.
• Organize your governance process. Eliminate unnecessary meetings and make sure you have the right stakeholders you need to make informed decisions. Build the right artifacts they need to make those decisions.
• Ensure strategy, architecture, governance and business process optimization have a seat at the strategic planning table. These roles can truly enable business objectives that are achievable and more importantly govern and manage that you get there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If this is an area of interest for you and you have suggestions about methodologies, tools, and processes that have help make an enterprise successful, shoot me a message.?Happy to update this article with advice from experts in this area.