A knowledge driven enterprise

It was great Peter Drucker who coined the term -”Knowledge Worker”. Drucker defined the knowledge worker as one who has more knowledge and skill than his manager. Drucker definition was appropriate for 20th century knowledge worker. The definition need to change for defining 21^st Century knowledge workers. A 21^st century knows worker is one who can do knowledge transformation – from explicit knowledge to implicit Knowledge and vice versa. Explicit knowledge is a knowledge which can be clearly documented and made available to all concern in an enterprise for consumption . Enterprises also have another kind of knowledge – the implicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge resides in the mind, attitude and behaviour of its workers. Employees learn explicit knowledge and apply it solve real life problems and issues. In the process they can acquire implicit knowledge. It is extremely difficult to identify implicit knowledge and document it as explicit knowledge. In a truly knowledge driven enterprise, knowledge worker do the transformation of explicit knowledge to implicit knowledge and vice versa.

A knowledge driven enterprise should document explicit knowledge and encourages its employees to consume it, use it and acquire implicit knowledge and the document it as explicit knowledge which can be consumed by others. 

It is continuous knowledge transform process which makes an enterprise a truly knowledge driven enterprise as shown in the following  figure. 

In a truly knowledge driven company, there are large number of 21^st century knowledge worker who are continuously engaged in knowledge transformation. In this process they continuously out learn and out innovate the competitor and provide truly sustainable long term competitive advantage to their enterprise. 

My definition of EA is given in the image above. EA enables optimum unification of Peoples, Processes and Resources which creates a Environment for excellence . Such environment is unique and can be called signature or finger print environment of the enterprise . In such signature environment people , process and resource work in harmony to create sustainable competitive advantage for the enterprise . Signature environment can not be easily copied by competitors. While creating a signature environment, the most important issues are people, process and then resource issues with their importance being in the same order. First an enterprise should look into people and process issues. Once people and process issues are resolved , the relevant and required resources should be considered. IT is one of the most important resource required for an enterprise. Other important resources are facilities and systems like manufacturing systems, production systems etc.

Addition of strategy layer to architecture domain as defined by togaf9

Recently i read an article by Tyson Brooks 0n "Principles for Implementing a Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture " . I specially liked the diagram given below. I particularly liked the idea of strategic architecture layer in addition to 4 architecture domain - Business, application, Data and technology, as defined by togaf9.

It will be good idea to add a specific layer - strategy layer, over business layer . The strategy layer will deal with enterprise vision, mission, values, motivation, goal and strategy. Business layer should focus on business processes, business rules business measures and GRC(Governance, Risk and Compliance) . Addition of fifth layer will make the over all architecture much more intuitive and closer to real business world .

Purpose behind business architecture

Togaf9 define architecture domains - Business, Information(application and data) and Technology. As per togaf9,the main purpose behind doing business architecture is that it can be the basis for developing application and data architecture. Is the business architecture is done only for IT architecture development? My view is the main objective of doing business architecture is to ensure that an enterprise is able to to successfully survive in an environment which is becoming more and more customer centric, globalized and competitive. The way an IT architecture defines products, solutions and systems which should be aligned, agile and productive, a business architect should facilitate in the design of business systems and processes which should help the organization in meeting its strategic business goals in current and future business environment. A business architect should work with all levels of management and should ensure that business systems and processes which emerge out of this exercise enables the organization to out smart its competitors .

A business architecture should facilitate the business person in following activities :

1. Defining enterprise vision, mission and values
   
2. Defining enterprise goals and objective
   
3. Defining enterprise business strategy for attaining its goal and objectives
4. Defining an organization structure which is in line with 1, 2 and 3 .
   
5. Defining a governance policy which is aligned to 1,2 and 3
6. Defining measures and KPI's which are in aligned to 1,2 and 3
7. An going process of reviewing steps 1 to 6 and changing them due to changed environments or in anticipation of future needs.
   

It should be emphasized that business architect act as facilitator during all above steps.

In fact, most of the time step 1 to 6 will be already define in some form(Implicitly and explicitly) . In most practical scenarios, a business architect will participate in step7 with the objective being to improve upon step 1 to 6.

He should able to take an out side in view of the business systems, processes and environment . Business persons , normally have an in side out view of the business . By providing an out side in view, Business architect can help business persons in an on going process of reviewing and improving steps 1 to 6 . .

It goes with out saying,that once business architect has been define, It should be be basis for the development of IT architecture .

Archimate - The language of Architecture

One of the best kept secret of open group is Archimate – a language for architecture. Archimate is developed and maintained by Archimate forum, which is the part of the open group. It is surprising that even togaf9, the latest architecture standard release from open group, does not mention any thing about Archimate. One of the best ways to understand architecture domains is to go through the documentation available at http://www.archimate.org/ . According to ArchiMate, an enterprise has two aspects – structure and behavior. The structure elements are of two types – Active and passive. The example of active elements is – OU, Location, Role, Responsibilities). The example of passive elements are business objects like purchase order etc. Behavior elements are business activities performed by one or more roles in order to meet enterprise objective. While performing business activities, roles manipulate passive structure elements or business objects like purchase order etc.
Archimate defines three layer of architecture – Business, Information (appl and data) and technology or infrastructure. Enterprise architecture has basically three layers

The Business layer offers products and services to external customers, which are realised in the organization by business processes (performed by business actors or roles).
The Application layer supports the business layer with application services which are realised by (software) application components.
The Technology layer offers infrastructural services (e.g., processing, storage and communication services) needed to run applications, realised by computer and communication devices and system software .
Above layers are shown in following diagram

Relationship between layers can be seen from two perspectives. While upper layer uses the service of lower layer. On the other hand, the lower layer also realised the functionality of upper layer. For example a business object which belongs to business layer , may be realised by a data object belonging to data layer.

Each of the above layers has active structure element, behaviour element and passive structure element. Like business layers, application and technology layers has components which play roles and perform behaviour and manipulate passive elements like data objects. An architecture done on this line will have traceability across business, application and technology layer. Such traceability is the key to reducing complexity, managing change (Agility) and ensuring that IT services are aligned to real business need. Complexity, alignment and agility are three main reasons why EA is done.
It should be noted that is Archimate a business role is typically assigned to a business actor. Business actors may be individual persons (e.g. customers or employees), but also groups of people and resources that have a permanent (or at least long-term) status within the organizations. Business processes, which may be triggered by events and manipulate business objects, describe the business behavior of a role or many roles. The externally visible behavior of a business process is modeled by the concept of business service, which represents a unit of functionality that is meaningful from the point of view Of the environment. A business process will have a business interface using which a business role will interact with the business process. The example of architecture diagram made by using Archimate is given below

If you want to try Archimate, you can get Archimate stencil from http://www.archimate.org/en/start_using_archimate/ and start using Archimate for your architecture work. Please do let me know your experience with this Archimate.

Toga9 (The open group architecture framework) version 9

I passed togaf9-level 2 exam one week back. Exam has 8 scenario based questions. I found few good ideas in togaf9. They are mentioned below:

• Separation of architecture concern via architecture domain – Business, application, data and technology. But there is very little detailed description of each domain
  
• The core of Togaf9 is ADM or architecture development methodologies. ADM define a process for developing architecture. All together there are 11 ADM phases – Preliminary, Vision, Business, application, data and technology development phase, Opportunity and solution phase, Implementation governance phase , migration planning, Arch. Change management and arch. Requirement phase
  
• Perhaps more useful most useful part of toagf is ADM guideline and technique. These are recommended practices like stakeholder management, Gap analysis and scenario development . Gap analysis based upon base line architecture and target architecture. Gap can be analysis at architecture domain level i.e. gap at business architecture level, application level, data level and technology level Scenario development: a very elaborate process for developing scenario is given. The process can help in understanding complex business scenario
  
• Architecture and solution building blocks: Togaf9 describes architecture building block as required business capability. A business capability can be delivered via one or more solution building blocks.
  
• Deliverables and Artifacts: A deliverables is some thing which has contractual obligation. A deliverable may require creation of one or more artifacts.
  
• Repository: A central enterprise wise repository for storing all architecture deliverables and artifacts is recommended. A central repository is becoming a part of all large scale, multisite software development effort. Togaf9 also talk of Architecture continuum which is basically classification of architecture content inside the repository.
  
• Toagaf9 also provides a content model. The content model is also organized on the line of architecture domain – Business, application, data and technology. Business architecture also includes a business motivation model. Content framework can be extended by plugging customized extension model.
  

  Some of the important part of the togaf9 is given below