It Governance | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

Reorganizing An Application Service Delivery Model – an update

enterprise architecture, it governance, management No Responses »

Aug 022011

I wrote a post titled How Would You Reorganize an Application Service Delivery Model? in March 2010 and thought it was time to update you on the changes we made to our Application team.

At that time, my team was structured by role: DBAs, Developers, Application Administrators, Email Administrators, etc. Over that time, we had some successes with the structure and some challenges.

Some challenges with the role based structure included:

separation of developers and DBAs – resulted in delays, rework when developers did not meet coding standards expected by DBAs, and disconnected teams
separation of services that had tight integration like our portal environment from the ERP platform
mixture of platform skills that caused service support issues when service recovery work crossed team boundaries
challenges in providing minimum staffing coverage and training when support spanned team boundaries such as Identity Management, Project Management and Business Analysis work

In September 2010, we had an opportunity to reorganize our team. After consulting with our team members and team leaders, we changed the structure to suit the two main architectures that our team supports – Microsoft and Oracle. Essentially, we moved the developers to the platforms they predominately worked in and realigned the services that required tight integration.

Comparison of Role Based Structure to Platform Based Structure for Application Services

Role Based Structure		Platform Based Structure
Support Team	Oracle DBA	Oracle Team	Oracle DBA
	Document Management		Business Intelligence
	Business Intelligence		Document Management
	Project Management		Enterprise Portal
	Business Analysis		ERP Administration
	Identity Management		Java/Web Services Developers
			Oracle Developers
Email and Collaboration Team	Email Administration		Identity Management
	Calendaring		Business Analysis
	Instant Messaging		Project Management
	Collaboration Platforms	Microsoft Team
	SQL Server DBA		Email Administration
	Microsoft Applications		Calendaring
	Enterprise Portal		Instant Messaging
			Collaboration Platforms
Developer Team	Java/Web Services Developers		SQL Server DBA
	Microsoft Developers		Lotus Domino Developers
	Oracle Developers		Microsoft Applications
			Microsoft Developers
			Identity Management
			Business Analysis
			Project Management

We have been running with the structure for almost a year now and are seeing the benefits of aligning our Application Services team with our main support platforms. I will revisit this structure annually to ensure that our team is organized to best serve our client community.

Build your Application Portfolio to Support EA Governance

enterprise architecture, it governance 2 Responses »

Jul 252011

Nick Malik wrote a great post titled The Rule of EA Governance that hits to the core of EA and IT governance. It is a must read and I highly recommend it. Nick asserts that:

All Enterprise Architecture will be implemented according to the structure of ownership and governance that exists in the enterprise.

Next Nick explains why this is important by using an example of a CRM implementation in an organization. He specifically states that:

If you have two business customers who both want a CRM solution, and you have one governance body, you will end up with one CRM system. If you have two governance bodies, you will end up with two CRM systems. If you have four business units who want CRM, and you have three governance bodies, you will end up with three CRM systems.

This rule plays out repeatedly. I’ve never seen it fail.

The failure to recognize “The Rule of EA Governance” is one of the causes for the failure of an EA program.

I too have seen this throughout my career and my work with multiple organizations to introduce enterprise architecture practices. We have seen many reports and stories about how EA programs have failed and I completely agree that a lack of ownership and governance contributed to the failure.

Now I want to suggest a practical approach to help your EA practice make “The Rule of EA Governance” tangible. Build an application/service portfolio and ensure that you associate an Executive Sponsor and a Business Owner to each item in the portfolio.

Once you have done this, start showing it to people … it is amazing when people see their names or their departments associated to a particular thing how interested they get! Nick had a good quote:

The business doesn’t care about nice drawings and great designs. They care about “stuff they own” and “stuff they don’t own.”

If people never see what they own, how can we expect them to govern usage especially when it is a shared service? Nick ended with an approach to help all of us move our Enterprise Architecture practices forward:

So if you want to know if your Enterprise Architecture can be implemented, count the “things” in it. Then count the number of those things with exactly one owner (and clear governance). Those are the things that will be implemented just the way you describe it. Everything else is a free for all.

Simple and brilliant – thanks Nick! Read more...

Response to: The Progressive CIO’s Model for Project Success

enterprise architecture, it governance, leadership, management No Responses »

May 172011

I scanned my Twitter feed on Monday May 16th and found a post by Todd Williams called The Progressive CIO’s Model for Project Success. After the last couple of months of having to put our IT Services PMO team in place to rescue “business” led projects, I am compelled to question approach proposed by Todd.

Todd makes the point that IT organizations have been unsuccessful in building systems that meet their customer’s needs and fail in schedule, usability and scope. This is a true statement as long as it is taken in context. These symptoms of project failure (note: I did not say IT failure!) represent organizations that have a low levels of IT and Project Governance in their IT departments and in the rest of their organization. Todd suggests that “progressive CIOs” need a new approach which is opposite to today’s practices.

I disagree … progressive CIOs need to recognize that IT touches all parts of the organization and that IT is one of the only places in a company where a broad enterprise view can be well understood and supported. Growing and maturing a PMO (project,program,portfolio mgmt) in IT is the first step. Then moving that mature PMO out of IT to serve the entire organization should be the mission of a progressive CIO.

Next Todd suggests that because a business unit can use MS Office tools like Excel and Access to build small departmental applications on time, schedule and budget that we in IT should consider handing this work back to the business and concentrate on infrastructure.

If the user is better at creating useful applications and IT builds better infrastructure, then create an organization to mimic that model.

This is a huge generalization and does not come close to the complexity and scope of what an enterprise system project can entail. I will have to write a different post about the massive technical debt that our organizations carry due to all these departmental systems built with Microsoft Office tools!

There is a reason for having specific departments in organizations and that is to deliver on their specialized services. Human Resources should deliver HR services. Finance should deliver financial services. IT should deliver IT services. PMOs should deliver project services. Creating redundant Project Management services and IT implementation services in multiple departments adds cost, complexity and creates silos within organizations. Another big problem is this approach causes issues in departments that end up relying on individual experts who get sick, go on vacation, on training or leave the company. This makes the department vulnerable to not being able to deliver on service commitments to the organization. The level of risk of not being able to deliver a key departmental service is not something any senior leader should accept for their organization. Read more...