I see enterprises going through the following kinds of initiatives…
- SOA initiatives
- BPM Initiatives
- MDM Initiatives
- Process Re-engineering Initiatives
- Consolidation Initiatives
- Legacy Modernization Initiatives
- Service Enablement Initiatives
- B2B Initiatives
- Single Source of Truth
- Business Intelligence
- Data Warehousing
- Single Sign on Do-it-all “My…” Portals
- IT Strategy & Roadmaps
- IT Portfolio Management
- etc.. etc..
All of these so called initiatives have one of the following things in mind:
- Improve the enterprise
- Make it work better & deliver to customers
- Simplicity, Manageabilty & Flexibility
A lot of these initiatives are being taken Enterprise wide, which is a good thing. The talk of “horizontal end to end integration” & “breaking down siloes” is rampant but did anyone stop to see if they were commiting the same mistakes over again?
A lot of ‘breaking down the Siloes’ is now happening between the “business function” boundary lines. Procurement – Manufacturing – SupplyChain – Storage & Distributon are getting better end to end integration, at most times though.
Did they stop to ask “Why are all of my initiatives for improving my organization, running un-aligned?”
I know of so many organizations who have SOA, BPM, MDM, BI and other initiatives all doing enterprise-wide work unaligned.
They are once again working in ‘Siloes’ of another kind. Go figure! I was most surprised when I found some organizations with very different SOA & BPM initiatives with separate CoEs. Adding to it, a lot of Product vendors supported that.
To me its all one big thing. SOA BPM pretty much go hand in hand and so does everything else.
i.e. How an enterprise designs & articulates its “business services” are a function of the “service expectation” of the customer, how those expectations are “serviced” by the proceses of that enterprise which in turn execute on the shoulders of people, data & technology.
For instance, How a service is named, classified and designed is heavily influenced by the design, scope & lifecycle of the processes & data involved. They are all related entities. In essence, a seprate MDM initiative without taking into account Processes, or a BPM initiative without taking into account ‘Data Issues’, or an SOA initiative without taking into account BPM & MDM issues are all headed for trouble.
If you do not have all your initiatives “very closely” aligned then you are again working in Siloes. We all know what happens then. FINGER POINTING GAMES!
Who is to blame?
We are. People. People have ‘ownership’ issues; this is mine & that is yours mentality. The same nature of ‘my competency’ and ‘your competency’ exists not only within enterprises but also inside consulting firms that advise & service these companies. How many consulting firms with various practice areas have unified operating models?
The sooner & more closely these initiatives all get aligned the better it is.
Who can make it happen?
The key leadership team. They have to wake up and realize that for an Enterprise to work like a well-oiled & aligned automobile, things need to be better aligned. It has to come all the way down from the CXO level and penetrate through to the bottom, more significantly upto the major facilitators, directors & managers of these initiatives.
What do you need?
Service Orientation & Alignment ‘Generalists’. These are people who understand and can understand, speak & help align cross-competency initiatives. They can find the association points & create clear hand-off paths between them.
These are people who understand anything & everything from issues & abilities with Core Integration Technologies & Middleware, Business Process & Management, Data Architecture & Translation, Analytics, Intelligence & Presentation Frameworks, Functional Enterprise Value Chains, Organizational Siloes – (Political, Technical, Business) and can be “conduits” for facilitating communication & collaboration indirectly & resolving issues in tense scenarios.
They are empowered as well as aware of what the execs & CXOs want happening inside the enterprise. They are free from chains of command and can be “sentinels” that channel critical information straight to the top or appropriate levels before major issues arise. They are like the “Gistapo” in the German Forces, but ofcourse they are to be loved and not feared like the Gistapo. So, instead of taking things to the top they need to help people align when they see these issues.
I will attempt to outline more clearly what possibly consitutes the attributes of a key SOA Architect / Evangelist / Manager / Director & their teams….
Everything else: SOA products, BPM products are nothing but tools of the trade. These are only secondary to having a sustainable “Strategically Oriented & Aligned” Enterprise (SOE).
