How to use Enterprise Architecture to deliver the right solution

Introduction
Change is inevitable, constant, and permanent. Today´s world is characterized by
uncertainty and change. Organizations must continually evolve and adapt to survive, grow,
and develop. Evolution and adaptation is achieved when organizational structures and the
relationships between them are transformed, and move the whole organization from an
actual state to a desired state according to a previously defined strategy.

According to the Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge (EABOK) (MITRE, 2004) an

Enterprise Architecture describes how the elements of an organization (business processes,
business functions responsible for them, capabilities, and infrastructure) fit together now
and in the future. Enterprise Architecture also describes how such elements evolve from the
actual state to a desired future state to support the organization’s strategic plans.

When transformation needs arise the Business Analyst acts as the “host” of change. He or
she welcomes change and makes any arrangements to understand and manage all
transformation needs at all organizational levels. Through system thinking (Bunge, 1979),
the Business Analyst is aware that the change will impact the enterprise architecture as a
whole.

This article sets out a tried-and-tested way of using Enterprise Architecture as a road map
for the Business Analyst when liaising between stakeholders to understand the structure,
policies, and operations of an organization, to recommend solutions that help it achieve its
goals, and to continuously monitor whether these solutions meet business goals, needs, and
targets.

What is Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise Architecture is defined by Gartner as “a discipline for proactively and
holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing
the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA delivers value by
presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting
policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant
business disruptions. EA is used to steer decision making toward the evolution of the future
state architecture.” (Gartner Group, 2013)

Enterprise Architecture could basically be described as consisting of several highly

independent, highly cohesive architectures, as in the model below:

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 Fig 1: Enterprise Architecture.

 Business Architecture (BA): is the bridge between strategy and the running
business. Each time the environment interacts with the business is through the
Business Architecture.
 Application Architecture (AA): describes the structure and behavior of applications
used in a business, and focuses on how they interact with each other and with users
to support Business Architecture components.
 Technology Architecture (TA): is technology used to support Application
Architecture components.
 Security Architecture (SA): is a cohesive security design, which addresses the
requirements (e.g. authentication, authorization, etc.) – and, in particular, the risks
of a specific environment/scenario, and specifies what security controls are to be
applied and where.
 Information Architecture (IA): is a combination of organization, labeling, and
navigation models, and retrieval mechanisms, within an information space.

Why use Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise Architecture is a means of putting system thinking into practice to analyze the
organization as a whole from a system management theory perspective.

The need to use system management theory for organization management was a result of
organizations trying to adapt to rapid change in the business environment related to
technological, economic, and social changes in the second half of the twentieth century. It
emerged from Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory (Bertalanffy, 1968) and studies an
organization by analyzing its elements in its environment.

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Systems are needed and created to support organizational strategy by putting it into action.
People, processes, and information work together to support business functions. To be
competitive, adaptable, and proactive the organization must behave according to the
concept of zero latency, i.e. responding instantly to environmental stimulus (Business
Dictionary, 2013). To achieve this systems have to be independent but highly cohesive,
sharing consistent information and collaborating to support organizational goals. When
systems fail to have this degree of cohesion they are said to operate in “silos” (Hurwitz,
2008) In this type of organizational architecture the solution created fails to achieve the
organizational goals for which it was originally created. It is vital for each Business Analyst
to avoid this type of situation by using of system thinking because, as stated in the Business
Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) of the International Institute of Business Analysis
(IIBA), he or she uses business analysis to work on recommending solutions that help the
organization achieve its goals.

When to use Enterprise Architecture?

Tasks included in BABOK’s Elicitation knowledge area are performed from the outset and
throughout the business analysis process. During Elicitation, the Business Analyst is faced
with needs and, as an archaeologist, investigates the needs to unearth “Undiscovered
Ruins”: the features, services, functions required to satisfy the needs. Enterprise
Architecture helps the Business Analyst stay alert to the “whole picture”.

During Enterprise Analysis, “GAP Analysis” between current Enterprise Architecture (put
in place because of actual strategy) and desirable future Enterprise Architecture (put in
place according to future strategy) is the key to finding the needs that define the problem
situation to be solved (see Figure 2).

Fig 2: In search of the problem situation to solve

When the transformation is complete and the change is implemented, new changes are
generated in the environment, and a new cycle gets under way. The Business Analyst

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proactively helps organizations to constantly regenerate themselves by continuous
improvements to their Enterprise Architecture as a means of gaining in innovation,
differentiation, and adaptability. At this stage, Enterprise Architecture drives tasks
contained in the BABOK knowledge area, Solution Assessment and Validation.

When Planning and Monitoring the work of business analysis, Enterprise Architecture is
used to define the best course of action to perform the business analysis tasks (Enterprise
Architecture is one of the components to consider when choosing between plan-oriented or
change-oriented lifecycles), to identify and analyze stakeholders (Enterprise Architecture
acts as a “road map”), to decide the best means for requirements management and
communication (Enterprise Architecture is useful, among other things, to determine
geographic distribution).

How to use Enterprise Architecture?

There are several models, frameworks, or tools for working with Enterprise Architecture.
Each one of them tries to answer the question: “how to create an organizational architecture
as flexible as possible to rapidly adapt to environmental changes when they occur or to
generate the change?” The model described here is “The 7s model”, originally developed
by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman for McKinsey & Company and later described in the
well-known book “In Search of Excellence” (Peters and Waterman, 1982). This was
originally used to analyze both large and small firms by looking at their architecture and
offering a broader explanation thorough seven elements – strategy, structure, systems, style,
staff, skills, and shared values – hence the name “7s”. Managers should take into account
these factors to successfully implement their company’s strategy, since all seven elements
are interrelated, and failing to recognize one affects how the others are perceived.

Fig 3: Waterman, R. Jr.; Peters T.; Phillips, J.R. (1980)

“Structure is not organization” Business Horizons, v23/3, p21.

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Each element in the model has to be discovered and analyzed using a criterion or method.
Much of the literature from the 1960s could be used as “tools” to discover and analyze each
element.

The process for working with the model could be divided in two main steps: elicitation and
analysis. To elicit, the techniques and processes described in BABOK’s Elicitation key
process area could be used. To analyze, some authors (Peters and Waterman, 1982)
recommend following this path:

 Start with your Shared Values: Are they consistent with your structure, strategy, and
systems? If not, what needs to change?
 Then look at the hard elements. How well does each one support the others?
Identify where changes need to be made.
 Next look at the other soft elements. Do they support the desired hard elements? Do
they support one another? If not, what needs to change?
 As you adjust and align the elements, you'll need to use an iterative (and often time
consuming) process of making adjustments, and then re-analyzing how that impacts
other elements and their alignment. The end result of better performance will be
worth it.

Strategy
This involves planned actions that the organization will perform in response to changes in
its external environment or to create changes in its external environment.

The focus is on being aware of the Corporate Strategy (the Strategy followed by the
organization as a whole), the Business Unit Strategy (the Strategy followed by the
organization to compete in a specific business), and the Functional Strategy (the Critical
Success Factors, or CSFs, and the Key Result Areas, or KRAs, defined by the organization
in order to remain focused on what really matters when competing in a specific business
and organizing all organizational efforts behind them).

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 Fig 4: Corporate, Business, and Functional strategies

Literature on the subject includes Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy (Porter, 1998),
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and Carl Von Clausewitz’s On War.

Structure
This involves setting up organizational critical success factors and key process areas, and
grouping activities and responsibilities into an organizational architecture.

Structure follows strategy, so this is the most important thing to validate. Traditional
structures could be Bureaucratic, Functional, Divisional, Matrix, Team, and Virtual.
Literature on the subject includes Max Weber’s Essays in Economic Sociology, (Weber,
1999) Derek Pugh’s Organization Theory: Selected Readings, (Pugh, 2007) and the book
Virtual Organizations and Beyond. (Hedberg, 1998)

Systems
These are formal and informal procedures to support strategy and structure.

Process and procedures used by the organization to administrate and control day-to-day
operation must be analyzed. Information systems, “formal” and “informal” systems that
help the organization to operate according to the strategy must be considered; especially
those intended to support the organizational implementation of Critical Success Factors.

Literature on the subject includes James Martin’s Strategic Information Planning

Methodologies (Martin, 1989) and McMenamin and Palmer’s Essential System Analysis.
(McMenamin, 1984)

Style
Organizational Culture, Management style and Leadership style are analyzed here.

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Management style and Leadership style are the leader’s style of providing direction,
implementing plans, and motivating people. One important thing to be aware of is that
nobody will find organizational culture formally defined on a piece of paper.

Edgar Shein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership (Shein, 2010) is a benchmark for
this subject.

Staff
This includes the processes and efforts used to develop managers, socialization, and the
shaping of basic management values, as well as ways of introducing young recruits to the
company.

The People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) is a framework created and maintained by
Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, and a model that could be used to analyze
how the organization attracts, develops, organizes, motivates, and retains its workforce
according to the organizational strategy. The P-CMM consists of five maturity levels.

More information can be found at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/.

Skills
The key here is to find things that make the organization “unique.”

These are commonly called “core competencies.” A core competency is a specific factor
not easily imitated by competitors. It can be reused widely for many products and markets
and must contribute to the end consumer's experienced benefits.

Michel Porter’s Competitive Strategy (Porter, 1998) and Hamel & Prahalad’s Competing
for the Future (Hamel, 1996) can be considered benchmarks in this area.

Shared values
The central premise behind creating shared value is that the competitiveness of the
organization and the health of the communities around it are mutually dependent.

Values must be shared and accepted by all internal and external human resources. An
organizational value is a belief that a specific mode of conduct is preferable to an opposite
or contrary mode of conduct. Values help the organization to differentiate itself from
others, so, as with the other 7s elements, it impacts strategy formulation and
implementation. Organizational values are usually explicitly defined in corporate
foundational statements, such as mission, vision, and so on.

Conclusion
Endeavors to transform organizational structures and its relations are initiated by the need
to evolve and adapt to environmental change. It makes sense to see Enterprise Architecture

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as a way of focusing on the use of system thinking ability as a tool to integrate and align all
organizational levels toward a main objective, to recommend solutions that help the
organization achieve its goals, and to continuously monitor whether solutions are meeting
business goals, needs, and objectives.

References
(Bertalanffy 1968) Ludwig von Bertalanffy . 1968. General System theory: Foundations,
Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller, revised edition 1976: ISBN 0-
8076-0453-4

(Bunge 1979) Mario Bunge. 1979. A world of systems. Dordrecht; Boston, Reidel.

(Business Dictionary 2013) http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/zero-

latency.html

(Gartner Group 2013) Gartner Group. Gartner IT Glossary. http://www.gartner.com/it-

glossary/enterprise-architecture-ea/

(Hamel 1996) Gary Hamel & Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad. 1996. Competing for the
Future. Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN-13: 9780875847160

(Hedberg 1998) Bo Hedberg, Goran Dahlgren, Jorgen Hansson, Nils-Goran Olve. 1998.
Virtual Organizations and Beyond. Discover Imaginary Systems. Willey and Sons. ISBN-
13: 9780471974932.

(Hurwitz 2008) Judith Hurtwitz, 2008. Leveraging information for Innovation and
Competitive Advantage.

(Martin 1989) James Martin. 1989. Strategic Information Planning Methodologies.

Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-1385-0538-1.

(McMenamin 1984) Stephen McMenamin and John Palmer. 1984. Essential Systems
Analysis. Yourdon Press Computing Series. ISBN 0-1328-7905-0.

(MITRE 2004) MITRE. 2004. Guide to (Evolving) Enterprise Architecture Body of

Knowledge.

(Peters and Waterman 1982) Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. 1982. In Search of
Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. Harper Business Essentials.
ISBN 0-0605-4878-9

(Porter 1998) Michael E. Porter. 1998. Competitive Strategy. Techniques for Analyzing
Industries and Competitors. Free Press. ISBN 0-6848-4148-7

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(Pugh 2007) Derek S. Pugh. 2007. Organization Theory Selected Classic Readings. Viking
Penguin. ISBN-13: 9780141032702.

(Shein 2010) Edgar Schein. 2010. Organizational Culture and Leadership. Willey, John &
Sons. ISBN 0-4701-9060-4

(Weber 1999) Max Weber. 1999. Essays in Economic Sociology. Princeton University
Press. ISBN 0-6910-0906-6

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