Complexity | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

IT Complexity Exploration

enterprise architecture, strategic planning No Responses »

Nov 062009

I had a great phone call with Roger Sessions (@RSessions), CTO ObjectWatch a month ago about IT Complexity. Over the past few weeks, I got a chance to read about Roger’s approach Simple Iterative Partitions (SIP) in a series of white papers:

Some key points that resonated with me:

Autonomous Business Capabilities (ABC)
Mathematical Basis for Understanding Complexity

Years ago, we used a simplified model to articulate why we needed to build our Enterprise Architecture practice. The central premise of the argument was that as functionality increases so does complexity. We proposed using IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture to manage complexity. See the slides here.

Roger has published a new white paper – The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity on October 22, 2009. The main sections of the paper are:

The Coming IT Meltdown – calculating the costs
Cause of Failure – measuring IT complexity
Designing Simpler IT Systems
Impediments to Simplicity
Call to Action

Here is a part of the section on calculating the cost of IT failures from page 5 from Roger’s paper.

Calculating the Cost of IT Failure

To find the predicted cost of annual IT failure, we then multiply these numbers together: .0275 (fraction of GDP on IT) X .66 (fraction of IT at risk) X .65 (failure rate of at risk projects) X 7.5 (indirect costs) = .089. To predict the cost of IT failure on any country, multiply its GDP by .089.

The following table performs this calculation of various regions of the world.
Region    GDP*               Cost of Failure*
World          69,800.00           6,180.48
USA                    13,840.00           1,225.47
New Zealand            44.00                    3.90
UK                         2,260.00               200.11
Texas                   1,250.00                110.68
Canada                1.564.00                 125.00 <– I added Canada – my country

*USD Billions
Table 1. Predicted Annual Cost of IT Failure

Next, Roger explores reasons for IT failures. Some suggested causes where poor communications between IT and the business and the increase on functionality but neither match the increase in IT failures. Roger introduces complexity as the issue and uses Glass’ Law which describes functionality as indirectly related to complexity. A 25% increase in functionality results in a 100% increase in complexity. Here are the 3 main points: Read more...

complexity increases with functionality
complexity decreases with partitioning
complexity increases with system connections

Microsoft’s “New Efficiency” Campaign for Windows 7

strategic planning 2 Responses »

Oct 292009

I attended a half day seminar offered to IT leaders in Vancouver today by Microsoft Canada. Essentially, this was the launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 to the Vancouver market. There were about 100 people in attendance.

Here is my Twitter stream from the session today … http://twitter.com/#search?q=leodesousa msft

The day began with an engaging keynote by Jim Carroll – Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert. Jim spoke laid out themes of :

Run the business
Grow the business
Transform the business

Next, Jim provided examples from his consulting engagements to highlight the themes. One of Jim’s quotes was “Success comes to those who evolve.” Another quote, “Many kids going to elementary school will have careers in fields that don’t exist today. Think about a “location intelligence” professional.” With the huge growth of spatially related data, there is a real need for people skilled in location intelligence.

Jim also talked about the “new economy” typified by:

A relentless focus on growth – changes in construction mgmt focused on green sustainable initiatives
Speed to change product lifecycles – auto makers who can retool production lines in 10 days vs 10 months
Ability to speed up business cycles - new video games maximize sales in the first 4-5 days

The rest of the morning was Microsoft folks building on Jim’s themes and relating them to the “New Efficiency” slogan. Microsoft’s proposal is that the 3 following things make up the “new efficiency”.

Run the business = create cost savings
Grow the business = increase productivity
Transform the business = ability to innovate

Microsoft also played on the old saying of “Do more with less” by pushing “With less, do more”. A bit too much marketing for me.

One last factoid that struck me was Microsoft’s investment in research. Microsoft spends $9.5 billion USD on R&D annually – that is more than most company’s value!

My big ask would be that Microsoft fully adopt open standards and focus on reducing IT complexity in the technologies they provide the market. Overall, a valuable morning with good information and a bonus that I got to catch up with my good friend @whitebill.

Using ITG and EA to Manage IT Complexity

enterprise architecture, it governance 1 Response »

Oct 222009

Reading Roger Sessions (@RSessions) work on IT Complexity reminded me of a set of slides we created to articulate the value of IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture.

We (my colleague Dave Cresswell and I) used a simplified model to articulate why we needed to build our Enterprise Architecture practice. The central premise of the argument was that as functionality increases so does complexity. We proposed using IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture to help manage complexity. The slides resonated well with our senior leadership and in the many EA talks I have given over the years.

The example we use in the slides involves the change in functionality of collaboration services. (Note the curves shown are representative and not based on statistical data – so please no complaints about statisical significance) The slides show how collaboration functionality increased over time from green screen, text only email on the mainframe (IBM PROFS) through client server email (Lotus Notes) to fully web enabled collaboration spaces and community of practices. Unfortunately, the IT architectures used to deliver the new functionality increased in complexity at an even quicker rate. Where the two curves cross is a point of diminishing returns because more effort is spent managing the complexity resulting in no resources available to deliver the new functionality.

See the slides on my SlideShare here or in the Presentations tab of my blog. Looking forward to your comments and feedback. I am working on another post on Roger’s work and how I would like to leverage it … stay tuned!