Writing IT strategy

The IT strategy development logic is the following:
Business strategy -> business architecture TO-BE -> application + information architectures TO-BE -> technical architecture TO-BE -> IT (or EA) AS-IS -> IT roadmap

Main topics in the IT strategy document are the following:

1. Executive summary (½ page – summary for senior management, e.g. the Board members)
2. Business context (½ page – WHY the major directions in the IT strategy have been taken)
   
   • Strategic directions for the IT as an enabler for the company’s mission and vision
   • Potentials of the IT as a strategic driver for the company’s business
3. IT contribution to business success (1 page - HOW IT capabilities and plans will contribute value to the business or delta in business is reflected by the delta in IT)
4. IT guiding principles (½ page – rationales to guide IT decision making)
5. Assessment of the current state of the IT environment
6. IT Roadmap (WHEN and WHAT to reinforce and build)
7. Etc.

Item 3 is illustrated by the following image:

Ideally, such dependencies can be generated from business processes and applications (i.e. from your EA repository).

In the real situation this illustration may become rather complex, so some techniques for better understanding can be necessary. For example, the selection of a rectangular highlights all connected rectangulars and links, as shown below:

And the final advise: be careful with arrows - people may interpret them differently.

Thanks,
AS

Relationship between #BPM and #SDLC and Software Engineering (SE)

In my experience, BPM and SE are very natural friends (with the help from SOA, EA and BA) which work well together within a proper architecture.

Some basics: Any complex system is a dynamic set of artefacts (or building blocks?), e.g. in case of a typical business system those artefacts are: processes, services, events, data structures, documents, rules, roles, activities, audit trails, KPIs. Artefacts are interconnected and interdependent. We have to anticipate potential changes: policies, priorities, compliance, technology, etc. Implementation of such changes necessitates the evolution of some artefacts and the relationships between them. It must be easy to modify all artefacts and relationships without causing any negative effects.

My main architectural principles for creating flexible systems:

• All artefacts must be evolved to become digital, external, virtual and components of clouds
• All artefacts must be versionable throughout their lifecycle
• All relationships between these artefacts are modelled explicitly
• All models are made to be executable

(See http://www.improving-bpm-systems.com/pubs/AS-AW08-keynote.pdf)

So, BPM (with the help from BA, see http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2011/02/explaining-ea-business-architecture.html) can derive the artefacts. And SE is responsible for creating good services for all artefacts.

Then BPM, EA and SE have to work together to make explicit and executable models. The best example of executable models is executable business processes. Any business process is a relationship between many artefacts: who (roles) is doing what (business objects), when (business events), why (business rules), how (business activities or other processes) and with which results (KPIs). At the same time, such a process is an explicitly-defined coordination of services to create a particular result. So, there is a recursive relationship between services and processes:

• all our processes are services,
• some operations of a service can be implemented as a process,
• a process includes services in its implementation.

This is the base of a modelling procedure (the core of the SE) whose purpose is to analyse a building block (processes or just activities – what is it supposed to do and should it be considered as a whole?) and to synthesize its implementation (how does it carry out its function and should it be considered as a composite?) as the explicit coordination of other building blocks (processes or just activities).

It is an iterative procedure – it can be applied until we only have left indivisible building blocks (i.e. activities). During modelling it is necessary to collect and refine the different artefacts. To avoid getting bogged down in detail it is useful to construct building blocks recursively, like Russian dolls.

Of course, owing to very nature of modelling as a creative problem-solving human activity, each person does it in his/her own way, and for the same subject two different people may produce two different models. The proposed modelling procedure can’t change this, but it does help to uncover the same artefacts.

Mode details are in my book http://www.improving-bpm-systems.com/book

Thanks,
AS

E-Tunisia / e-consultations: solution architecture

General

 Continuation from the previous post - E-Tunisia / e-consultations: overview

Definition

E-consultations constitute interactive “tell-us-what-you-think” on-line services where ordinary citizens, civic actors, experts, and politicians purposively assemble to provide input, deliberate, inform, and influence policy and decision making.

Privacy considerations

1. Only authorized person can actively contribute (i.e. add some text) in e-consultation services.
2. The identity of the person may is hidden.
3. The enrollment will include the identity verification.
4. Further a person can hide his/her identity under an avatar.
5. The correspondence between an avatar and the identity is secret, but may be disclosed in case of misbehavior. Example: Facebook.

Nomenclature of e-consultation services

 

Maybe this nomenclature is not full yet.

 

Question and answer discussion forums

It is a free form on-going thematic discussion initiated in a community of interests. Each contribution is named. A discussion may be closed (only within the community) or open for everyone (or even to the Internet). Examples: discussions in Linkedin.

On-line polls

A time-bounded questionnaire.

E-petitions or on-line testimonies

A person (or an association) initiates a formal demand to public services. Such a demand should start a process which should lead to a meaningful response. People, other than the initiator, can express their opinion (support or not) about the demand. Example: Reporting Damaged Roads and Paths https://www.contact.act.gov.au/app/answers/detail/a_id/22/~/reporting-damaged-roads-and-paths

E-panels

A time-bounded nominee-only group open discussion on issues of public interest.

Editorial consultations

A time-bounded multi-authoring of a document or a set of documents. There are several options about who can edit the text. A possible option is that many people can contribute to the content via comments and small (editorial) group can modify the text to reflect those comments.

Use of the e-government platform

E-consultation services are applications implemented on top of the e-government platform (see chapter 5). The latter provides different common services for facilitating the implementation of such application and keeping the same look and feel for better user’s experience. Each application is self-contained, developed in accordance with platform’s rules and may evolve without causing negative effects to others. Number of applications within the platform is not limited.

Enabling the public-private partnership

Systematic approach to very critical IT issues such as authorization, data security, access control, etc. clears a way for re-use of available data. It will be possible to estimate how the disclosure of some of those data will effect to the level of protection of remaining data.

Ability to open some data makes possible to employ private investments for improving some applications (it is considered that all applications are developed mainly by centralized capital investments).

Such investment attraction should be estimated for each application.

The big picture of e-government platform

E-consultation services are e-government services. The e-government (as one of its functions) provides (via ICT) to partners (citizens, enterprises, associations, etc.) the governmental services. To introduce the e-government without disturbances to existing governmental applications, it is proposed to position the e-government is a layer between the partners and the existing governmental applications (as shown in figure below).

The partners-facing part of the e-government is a collaborative extranet which is similar to popular social networking tools (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and e-banking. Its main functionalities are the following:

• secure repository for short messages, documents, and video;
• dedicated (including role-based) information and functionality;
• diverse services as small pluggable applications,
• direct channel to the governmental business processes; and
• unified view of central, regional and local governments.

The government-facing part of the e-government is the integration and coordination capabilities which are necessary to fulfill needs of partners.

Important that the whole e-government is separated from the existing governmental environment. This separation means operational and evolution independence.
The common functionality of the e-government platform is presented below.

Expected advantages:

• Quick implementation
• Easier maintenance
• Explicit security
• Uniformity for the users

Implementation principles

• Keep the conceptual integrity.
• Take into account socio-technical aspects, because how you do something is sometimes more important than what you do.
• Unity the infrastructure and reach different mobile tools
• Systematically use open source software
• Provide security at the level of private banking
• Ruthlessly validate the implementation by international experts and hacker groups and political parties
• Develop agile and deploy step-by-step within the common architecture
• Guaranty the total traceability and records management
• Exchange by electronic documents

Infrastructure implications

To cover the population, it is necessary to establish a network of social computing centres. The latter may be located at local community premises (e.g. a public library, “hotel de ville”, etc.). Those centres may also provide wireless access points.

Possible next actions

1. Validate of this architecture
2. Organise wide consultations with all involved partners
3. Solicit the feedback from international experts
4. Launch the feasibility study

Thanks,
AS

E-Tunisia / e-consultations: overview

Continuation from the previous post - E-government for Tunisia (E-Tunisia) : Help to move forwards

We, the people, are the government

E-consultations constitute interactive “tell-us-what-you-think” on-line services where ordinary citizens, civic actors, experts, and politicians purposively assemble to provide input, deliberate, inform, and influence policy and decision making. E-consultation is complimentary to existing practices.

E-consultations are also more formal and structured than discussions in the informal virtual public sphere. They tend to have a set duration, agenda, employ the use of moderators, with topics for discussion pre-defined by the host.

There are five common types of e-consultations:

1. question and answer discussion forums
2. on-line polls
3. e-petitions or on-line testimonies
4. e-panels
5. editorial consultations

Usual challenges:

1. population coverage
2. integrity
3. visibility
4. transparency and disclosure obligations are vital (with confidentiality only applying on matters of a personal nature)
5. usual distrust towards new electronic applications
6. balance of central and local power

Local challenges:

1. 10 million people
2. huge diversity in education and income
3. political instability
4. lack of a comprehensive Internet infrastructure

Local opportunities:

1. the top African country in the UN e-government study 2010
2. high level of the IT local resources

Solution architecture will be another post .

Thanks,
AS

E-government for Tunisia (E-Tunisia) : Help to move forwards

It has been proven that the deployment of e-government [E-government is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations] brings the following advantages:

• streamlining of the interactions of the citizens and business with the central, regional and local governments;
• increase in the performance of workers at governmental agencies;
• reduction in the possibilities for corruption.

How can an e-government implementation help Tunisia (which is already the top African country according to the UN e-government survey) to move forwards at this moment in its history?

Which e-government services (out of about 1000 items in e-government catalogues) should be the first priority?

Today, it appears that Tunisia urgently needs a much improved handling of political rights, provisioning of social security and, in general, establishment of trust between the population and the public sector organisations. Bearing this in mind, a list of potential e-government capabilities by domain could be the following.

Political domain:

• E-consultation as an umbrella for different means of expressing the voice of the people (similar to direct democracy): e-polls, e-voting, etc.  -- E-Tunisia / e-consultations: overview
• Transparency of the legislative powers (e.g. parliament, deputies, decisions)
• Easy access to the legal knowledge base
• Authorization of demonstrations
• Voting rights (different levels, as well as expatriates)

Social domain:

• Management of who is legible for different types of social support (“welfare”, social housing, etc.)
• Management of correct provision of social support

Citizen-to-government and business-to-government communication domain:

• Transparency of the governmental business processes with respect to promised deadlines, use of objective rules, and traceability of internal work
• Use of electronic means for exchange through secured documents

Potential benefits for African countries:

• Many elements of this e government project will be applicable in many African countries

Potential benefits for donor countries:

• Test some e-government solutions in a green-field project

Potential contribution from the development community:

• Coordination and help with overall architecture / technical solutions

Thanks,
AS

Linkedin: In one word, what is the single largest problem facing #entarch?

A quick statistical analysis of the responses (with some categorization, e.g.” cacophony” -> “chaos” -> “confusion”) in the linkedin discussion "In one word, what is the single largest problem facing Enterprise Architecture?" http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=43593317&gid=36781&commentID=45630743&trk=view_disc

• 373 unique replies from unique people (the first reply is used if not explicitly specified)
• signal to noise ratio is almost 1 to 4

So, a possible resume about the EA status is “immature (discipline, practice, etc.) with problems in many aspects (acceptance, people, tool, definition, etc.) which is requested to deliver results with higher speed”. Maybe executability will help?

Disclose: executability is my choice.

Thanks,
AS

Enterprise patterns: Petit Informaticien (PI) for "What is the key to getting business value from IT?"

As reply to EBIZQ.net question "What is the key to getting business value from IT?" http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ebizq_forum/2011/07/what-is-the-key-to-delivering-business-value-with-it.php

I use the algorithm or enterprise pattern “petit informaticien” (PI):

-1) learn the big picture
0) prepare an initial set of tools to implement incrementally business solutions within that big picture
1) systematically visit the users (similar to “milking tour”)
2) listen their needs
3) map their needs into the big picture
4) quickly deliver maybe-not-perfect-but-useful business solution
5) get the feedback
6) improve business solutions
7) sharpen tools

Thanks,
AS