Architecting Management

An Enterprise has Capabilities. Capabilities need to be Managed. To be Manageable, Capabilities & their Management must be Architected.

In my article "The Architecture Of An Enterprise", I showed the basic and fundamental purpose for architecting an enterprise is to design, develop and operate the enterprise to be successful in its mission to provide value to the customer.

This requires capabilities to be controllable with the minimum need for commanding during development and operation. Otherwise capabilities will be designed and their operation will be difficult to control.

There must always be a control system for the proper development and operation of the capabilities and this drives the need for interfaces between functionalities to enable and assure insight, monitoring, measurement, adjustment and feedback.

In other words, the ability to keep capabilities working, requires command and control functionality, and therefore architecting the management of the capabilities as part of the capabilities, is a critical part of architecting the capabilities.

Management, just like quality, needs to be 'designed' into a capability, and design begins and develops with Architecting

Architecting management into the design, development and operation of capabilities requires a perspective of the enterprise as-a-whole in order to enable and assure the successful development, operation and management of the capabilities.

In my last article "Outside-Inward-Inside-Outward" I started to describe a holistic and philosophical view of an enterprise. In this post I will continue to describe this view of an enterprise in the context of the architecting of capabilities to serve the needs for managing the capabilities.

Resources Required To Provide Capabilities Needed

As last presented in "Outside-Inward-Inside-Outward", the multi-view of capabilities and abilities provides a?perspective used to balance and align

• the top-down methods to analyze, plan, design and deploy capabilities

with

• the bottom up methods to implement, provision, manage and control the people, tools and equipment ("the resources") needed to realize capabilities.

The resources needed to realize a capability are used from an organization of resources that exists in the gap between

• the requirements of the capabilities

• the abilities to serve the need.

The relationships and conditions which are not shown are

• A capability may need, have and use multiple abilities (the architect perspective)
• An ability may produce and acquire multiple capabilities (the manager perspective)
• Resources need, have and use their capability to meet requirements for their ability (the architect perspective)
• Resources produce and acquire their ability to serve the need for their capability (the manager perspective)

Integrating resources requires 'seeing' the relationships and conditions between the requirements, capabilities, resources, abilities, and needs. Integrating resources therefore drives the need for a multi-dimensional perspective, since differences in perspective can be problematic if not acknowledged and properly addressed.

Furthermore, there is a really big and wicked problem in 'showing' these relationships as

• the interconnections are many-to-many,
• the resources are shared across the abilities, and
• abilities and conditions constantly change through time.

The connections exist but the connections are constantly beginning, growing, changing and ending, as I'm sure you can imagine.

But this apparent chaos does not negate the need to 'know', 'understand' and 'communicate' what these connections are. This is the complex part. This is the part which requires the perspective of both an architect and a manager to 'see', understand and communicate the entire situation-of-interest. This is the part which requires a view of the whole-situation, the view of the enterprise working in the external working environment.

Observing The Capability is Able

To see, understand and communicate the interconnections and interdependencies between working resources and the capabilities, the whole-situation must be capable of being 'seen' by all participants observing the situation-of-interest and the way it matures over its expected life span.

To understand and communicate the dynamic interconnections and interdependencies between working resources, everything must be seen and the relationships between structure, function and purpose understood and communicated as a function over time.

The enterprise has many resources and is dynamic. To 'see' the 'whole' as 'parts' of the whole change to a new desired state requires 'knowing' and understanding at any point in the life of the change, the should-be, the what-is, and the desired to-be states and having the insight needed to determine compliance.

Seeing the whole-situation requires observation through multiple views.

Being on the outside of the situation-of-interest and looking outward (outside-out) to see the needs for abilities (points-of-view: abilities, points-of-interest: needs).

Being on the outside of the situation-of-interest and looking inward (outside-inward) to see the capabilities realized by the needed abilities (points-of-view: abilities, points-of-interest: capabilities).

Being on the inside of the situation-of-interest and looking outward (inside-out) to see the abilities realizing the capability (points-of-view: capabilities, points-of-interest: abilities).

Being on the inside of the situation-of-interest and looking inward (inside-in) to see what is required of the capability (points-of-view: capabilities, points-of-interest: requirements).

Resources Working To Satisfy Needs

To summarize and move on, addressing the need for a philosophical view of an enterprise in the market environment requires an adjustment in architectural and managerial perspective.?A new view of an enterprise is needed. A new view is needed where capability requirements are balanced and aligned with the abilities of the people, tools, equipment and all other resources needed to realize the capability.

That realization may involve

• revision, reconfiguration, or reassignment/retraining of workers,
• revision, reconfiguration, or modification of tools and equipment, and
• changes to processes, information, technology and other resources

to provide the configuration of abilities into capabilities in a consistent and integrated manner.

Achieving that realization also involves describing a perspective of the enterprise where the ‘workings’ (functionality) of the enterprise, adaptive human behavior and the effects of stimulatory influences can be visualized, identified, acknowledged, and used to advantage.

An enterprise architecture team as with all product, service and need-driven business teams, is composed of people with varying functionalities, all working towards serving a common need.

Each person has (or a group of people have) a set of specific abilities (skills, knowledge and experience) related to a ‘discipline, domain, or specialty’, and understands the specifics of the specific functionality which satisfies their need.

Each discipline, domain, or specialty is assigned to roles with tasks, goals and objectives requiring the skill set of the discipline, domain, or specialty associated with their specific functionality.

Work products are produced by one role and used by other roles.?This creates process-oriented work product-centric dependencies where the work of each role is dependent on the work of other roles. These are ‘working’ interdependencies (‘needs’ for work product inputs and outputs) between the ‘network team’ members (skill-sets).

It is these work product needs which form time-dependent relationships in the flow of cross-functional work.

Cross-Functional Complexity

The complexity of managing and controlling the situation becomes evident in the flow of work (workflow), work products and information during cross-functional team efforts as there are multiple teams, each with a different goal and a different set of needs which drives team focus on the specifics of the team-specific process, at the expense of not fully supporting the needs of the other teams.

This makes the speed, quality and adaptability of the team processes (i.e., the ability to satisfy the ultimate need) a direct function of the speed, quality and adaptability of the process network (i.e., the ability to satisfy all working interdependencies).

Process networks must therefore be fast, precise and adaptable, working in tandem in a natural progression through the team processes.?This is achieved only through good communication and understanding of these cross-functional needs and interdependencies for work products between teams, team members, customers and stakeholders, and is paramount to the success of the team.

Proper timing between ‘network team’ members is required to enable and assure proper sequencing towards satisfying the overall need.?Additionally, the timely production and use of valid work products and information is essential for affordability and adaptability, efficiency, and effective, productive response to change through time.?Overall ability is throttled by the ability to access and retain refined work products, new information, and to use it with other work products and information learned to keep on course to the long term goal.

Considering these needs for proper understanding, communication, team work and timing, achieving a philosophical view for a working enterprise team therefore has several demands.?These include the need for

• clarity,
• logic, and
• fundamentally differentiated working roles by specific discipline;

associating each discipline with a set of

• responsibilities,
• work products,
• skills,
• abilities,
• knowledge,
• experience,
• goals,
• objectives

and a sharp focus on the ultimate needs of the mission, as well as success of the enterprise as a whole.

Achieving these key associations through a philosophical view, is what enables work that is well integrated, ultimately accomplishing enterprise goals and objectives.

Summary

Due to the new market environment, with involvement of practitioners from basically anywhere at any time, with differences in terminology, organization, roles and practice, the philosophical view needs to clearly, logically and fundamentally define functionality in terms of ‘who does what’ in an organizationally-neutral and common way, in order to enable and assure translation to/from the organization-specific terminology of any organization.

Therefore the total solution is to describe a holistic and philosophical view (i.e., an outside-inward, outside-outward, inside-inward, inside-outward multi-view) of the enterprise through a multi-perspective, work-oriented, integrated view of an enterprise as a dynamic operational system with desired capabilities needed balanced and aligned with actual working abilities.

Through a?multi-view of capabilities and working activities , with?specific goals and needs?independently working?towards realizing the?common goal?and needs of all, the points-of-views-and-interests of everyone and everything can be balanced and aligned with the reciprocal points-of-interests-and-views of everything and everyone.

?For an example of applying inside and outward views to holistically see a situation-of-interest, please see Tom Grave's post, "Digital-transformation is (much) more than just digital".

For more information on management and architecture please see "Defining Enterprise".