There is something particularly exciting about Barack Obama’s plan to appoint a government chief technology officer.  Not only is this good for government, but it’s also good for the IT industry.  Like Ron Tolio of Cap Gemini has said: 

No half measures. And quite a strong message to many corporations that struggle with the role of IT in business. This is far from the marginalised position of an IT manager who apathetically reports to the CFO about cost cutting and risk management. This is a boardroom position, one that is supposed to create strong impulses for change and growth.

There is a real difference between a CIO that is charged with ’serving the business’ and one that is charged with ‘getting value from IT’.  You can serve the business by saying ‘it’s the business’s money therefore they get to decide how to spend it’.  But to commit to delivering value out of IT you have to commit to business benifits and a business return of technology spend.  You need to actually contribute to the strategy and deliver growth through technology spend.

It doesn’t matter what type of CIO you are.  As long as you know what is expected you can be successful.  But if you are successful purely because you have moved investement decisions to business units, who is ensuring that you are getting the most value out of IT?  Is IT actually contributing to the organisations strategy and growth?

Anyway, it’s also good to see a few of these sites popping up too.  ObamaCTO.org allows anybody to suggest ideas for the CTO role, which are then voted on and ranked.  Now this sort of system is still susceptible to manipulation by special interests.  But it’s transparent - and that’s all you can do.

The Enterprise Architecture Network Google Group has soon good disucssions.  Though it sometimes goes beyond what I would strictly call ‘enterprise architecture’; but most EA discussion do.  I would recommend joining it to connect with other architects.  You also have to be a member of the related LinkedIn group.

More for my own reference, here is a contribution I made to a recent discussion on the difficulty in determing an ROI for an enterprise architecture practice:

Hi  

I think it’s unfortunate when we are asked for an ROI for developing a EA practice.  This is like asking for the ROI of having a project manager.  It’s probably a good question, and I’ve asked it myself, but some things need to be sacred so we can just get on with the job.
I’d never ask for the ROI to set up an EA practice - to me this is sacred - because I’m sold on the idea already, as long as it’s small.  I think we need to sell EA more so less people ask for an ROI. But I also think that means changing slightly how we currently define EA.  It also means we need a response when people ask for an ROI…

This is why I’m so interested in how we define what EA actually is.  I think we should define EA solely as what some on this group might call Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA).  The other deliverables, work products, initiates, etc should be traced to that EBA but we shouldn’t call that the EA.  We also shouldn’t say the EA is complete only when all of the IT components properly align to it.  We should simple do the EBA - showing value streams, key customers, service strategies for the enterprise, etc - and trace to the minimum asset types required to get calculate baseline alignment to the EA.

The reason I say this is because you can’t define a return on investment for developing an EA practice except in terms of improving decision making relating to IT investment.  You are looking to improve alignment to the EBA over time, but you can’t do that from the EA practice itself.  You can only do that by influencing IT investment decisions.  Unfortunately, a more general tool already exists for improving decision making relating to investments.  And that’s the ROI calculation.

The problem is nobody ever asks ‘What is the ROI of determining the ROI?’, nobody ever asks the question ‘What is the quality of the ROI calculation?’, and nobody ever asks ‘How is the ROI process performing?’.  There is a bunch of IT effort being spent which roles up into the ROI calculation and unless you think your IT systems couldn’t be any better at this point in time, it’s not working.

Whether it’s formal or informal, organisations already think they are making decisions to maximize return on investment.  The problem is, in the area of IT investment there is no formal method of determing the inputs which go into the calculation of return on investment.  Also, the inputs must take into account the value streams of the business, IT costs, changes in IT cost structure, and changes in business cost structure.  IT initiatives move costs into IT while creating activities/costs to be performed by users outside IT.  As such, IT can’t determine ROI itself because the initiatives transform more than just the IT organisation.

An EA practice should formalise that process of determining the inputs into ROI calculations. It should also allow the performance of that process to be managed over time.  By the way, within the phase ‘IT initiatives’ I am also including that particular type of project I like which is technology-enabled business transformation.

Other initiatives - business initiatives - simply need to include the costs of IT in their ROI calculation.  IT cannot, by itself, commit to all ‘returns’ which are outcomes of IT initiatives.  This doesn’t mean IT can’t run business transformation programmes.  It simply means that any initative of this type requires communication, traceability, and modeling across multiple disiplines.  And it needs this even to calculate the ROI.

EA, in the strict sense of Enterprise Business Architecture, is the basis for not only IT strategy, but also for IT investment decisions.  EA, in this sense, is the baseline level of knowledge and process required to make ROI calculations for other IT initiatives.  So asking for an ROI for and EA practice which analyses the value streams of an enterprise and traces these to technical and organisational components is like asking for the ROI of developing high quality ROI calculations.

By the way, it’s possible that a particular CIO doesn’t have the responsibility for delivering value from IT investments.  In some instances the IT function doesn’t technically run even IT projects.  Instead these projects are ‘business projects’ relying on IT only to deliver a defined set of IT services.  However, this is a dangerous position for a CIO to be in.  It also just means that the EA practice should be sponsored by somebody else who does have that responsibility.  It doesn’t mean that (a small) EA practice shouldn’t exist.

Regards,
Matthew De George

The MWT/TEBT Collaboration Architecture recognises that when technologies successfully transform businesses they often do so through sharing and/or standardisation of business processes and data.  It is this standardisation which allows greater transparency of operations (and operational risk) as well as ultimately enabling the implementation of the market-based approach at the heart of the MWT Model.

However, when it comes to defining and selecting which technology-enabled business transformation (TEBT) initiatives to perform, there is an overlap between the MWT Model and the most useful parts of what is called Enterprise Architecture.

Where enterprise architecture relates is in developing the collaboration architecture (to use the MWT term) to enable the senior executive team to have discussions on organisational value - and ultimately what processes and data should be standardised and/or shared via technology implementations.

Many enterprise architecture treatments focus only on optimising the platform architecture of the enterprise.  This makes many enterprise architecture discussions far too technical.  Also, from an implementation perspective, standardisation on platforms may actually be too expensive to ever implement; while at the same time it may provide less value to the enterprise than other initiatives could have.  Discussions on enterprise architecture that fall into this category may in fact reduce IT spend while losing focus on the knowledge and related IT capabilities which could increase the value of IT.

One book that doesn’t fall into this trap is Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution.  I strongly recommend it as an introduction to this topic.  I have also added an Enterprise Architecture blog category to tag future posts on this topic.

Mises.org has released an interesting Bailout Reader of articles and other literature relating to the current ‘financial crisis’ in the US.  It basically says ‘Ha!  Look how clever we were predicting this; and look at the theory that we refer to when we predicted this because it has some interesting things to say about the proposed solution too’.  

I’m paraphrasing - but it sounds about as arrogant as that.  But you can sound arrogant irrespective of whether you are right or wrong.  I recommend reading a few of the articles and core literature because I think they are right.

What I don’t really understand is why it’s the corporations that need to be bailed out.  If you look at the bill itself its purpose is to save home values, collage funds, etc.  But these things can be saved more directly.  I don’t see why, in the scenario where somebody can’t afford to pay their mortgage, we give money not to the person who doesn’t have the money but to the bank that gets the house but can’t sell it for the full value!?!?

There is no avoiding it.  There is an overlap between some aspects of the MWT Model and what is increasingly called Multisourcing. 

The Multisourcing dicipline really is beyond procurement, outsourcing, and supplier management.  Multisourcing is both a strategy and a strategic capability of the client organisation.  It is the end-to-end process of service definition and management, selection of who will perform services, decisions on where services will be performed, and the related governance and performance management.  

Though in truth, the diciplines relating to Multisourcing can be relivant even to organisations which deliver services using predominately on-shore, in-house capabilities.   This is where it relates most interestingly with the MWT Model and service-based management in general.  

I have created a new blog category for posts relating to Multisourcing.  This is such an important disicpline I would expect these would be of interest to anybody with an interest in the MWT Model.

If you’re already keen to learn I recommend Multisourcing: Moving Beyond Outsourcing to Achieve Growth And Agility.

After my last post on Michael Costa, my wife accused me of having ‘a little man crush’ on Mr Costa.  To be honest I hadn’t yet decided what I thought of him due to lack of information.  This in turn being due to my generally underdeveloped interest in politics.  But I admitted to my wife that he had sparked my interest.  I wouldn’t say ‘man crush’, as such - it’s an intellectual, platonic thing.  Really it is.

In fact, up until last week - except for some vague notion that he had done something with the railway, and of course, that he was the NSW treasurer - all I really knew was that other politicians don’t like him.  I decided I needed to do a little research so that I could form my own opinion about him.  Because one thing I do know is that I’m not going to form my opinion of a politician based on what other politicians think about him!

I should note that I think trying to choose your favorite politician - or even one that you like - might well be like trying to choose your favorite episode of Friends.  In both cases they are essentially all the same.  In both cases, even if you do choose a favorite and decide to by the DVD, they come with a bunch of other episodes that you don’t like.

(I’m paraphrasing and otherwise bastardising a quote from a friend of mine in the above paragraph -  he said trying to remember your dreams was like trying to remember last weeks Friends episode)

I also know, or at least believe, the following:

• being right doesn’t always make you popular
• government might well be ineffective by design
• it’s the person who is actually trying to fix the problem who gets the blame
• sometimes everything is exactly the same as it always was but suddenly it’s your fault
• some jobs are hard or damn near impossible and it takes balls just to try them
• some of the way people behave can be explained by their context

Now, what I’ve learned about Michael Costa in my recent research is:

• he’s ‘Mr Fix It’
• he’s Bi-polar
• he’s Greek
• he’s apparently interested in working in the private sector (merchant bank)
• he bullies unions
• his hero is Ronald Reagan
• he yells sneers at 10 year-old girls (but in a funny way, I think)

To be continued…

Readers in Australia will know that the NSW treasurer Michael Costa was recently sacked - just before he became eligible for a pension from what I understand, and not long before the premier himself resigned.

Skip ahead a few scandals and Michael Costa has now written an essay for The Daily Telegraph with all sorts of anti-government (anti-state government, at least) statements.  Some say sour grapes; I would say it’s more likely PR for Costa’s private sector career.  But either way I hope it’s also able to cause a debate about politics and government.

According to Costa’s manifesto, most of the states politicians are ’spin merchants’ and ‘machine politicians’ who are unqualified to govern.  Now I might be cynical but I expect politicians who are actually in politics - as opposed to wanting to be in politics but not being able to gain entry to the club - are precisely qualified… to be politicians.  Nothing else is guaranteed.

That is surely true by definition.  People who are successfully in politics know what it takes to be successfully in politics.  Whether they are qualified to govern is a totally separate question and may even have a negative correlation with their qualifications as politicians.  I’m certainly not the first person to suggest this.

In the MWT Model there is a process above and beyond the process of management which allows you to tell the difference between a good manager and a successful manager.  Most organisations don’t have this process and politics certainly doesn’t have it almost by definition.  Costa talks of people being ‘qualified to govern’ but I’m sure this is the last thing on a politician’s mind.

Take for example this morning’s announcement that in Western Australia the National and Liberal parties have entered into a ‘power sharing’ agreement - not a coalition mind you, because I assume that not only doesn’t suit the parties; but also simply that the word itself has some ‘branding’ issues.  So when political parties combine it is to ’share power’.  It’s not to ’share responsibilities’, not to ‘combine capabilities’ like an organisational merger.  It’s to ’share power’.

I really don’t think political parties should be running around talking about ‘power sharing’.  It misses the point while it lets the cat out of the bag.  In contrast, premier Nathan Rees with his talk that ‘the people of NSW expect us to engage in one thing and that is simply the improvement of service delivery and infrastructure and that’s what we will go about doing’ is playing the government-as-service-provider card.

But if the argument stops being about who is more qualified and starts being about what the right way to govern actually is, politicians are likely to find themselves all out of a job.  While the specifics of how to govern are left out of the debate their will always be positions of power to scramble for - or share.

Even when they are attempting to convince us who deserves the power, they are often agreeing with each other.  Michael Costa got there first on the government-as-service-provider thing as he argues in his manifesto that the ’strongest argument for abolishing state governments is that it would remove a layer of political interference in service delivery.’

Michael Costa’s manifesto and Nathan Rees’ improvement of service delivery and infrastructure are two sides of the same coin.  But they are both simply PR so all it shows is that as memes: government as service provider is in - and limited government is rallying.

My wife has already said she likes what Mr Ree is saying in his first days as premier.  This usually means that eventually I’ll start to like him too.  This is just a process of empathising with my wife; but who knows whether that is the underlying force behind all politics.  Problem is my wife loved Kevin’07 too until he actually started talking as PM; so support or otherwise is fickle.

It’s that fickle opinion that politics manages.  Michael Costa’s essay says this like others before him.  If there wasn’t fickle opinion to manage there wouldn’t be any point to government.  That’s were a lot of the political effort goes.  But you can’t tell your boss that - because they will tell you that you have to be in government to govern.  This is true; but again it says nothing about your ability to govern.

Michael Costa’s essay doesn’t actually say anything new.  The reason I don’t need to read, for example, the Mises Daily Article, anymore is that it is pretty predictable.  The same few core ideological ideas over and over again.  But the fact that I don’t need to read the same ideas over and over again isn’t a failing of the ideas.  It’s simply that they stand the test of time.

Once we work this out there will be no talk of power sharing.  The only thing a politician will be able to do is inspire and motivate.  And quickly after that people will recognise that there are plenty of opportunities to be inspired and motivated in our daily lives and no particular need to decide up to four years in advance who should inspire you on a given day.

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Review of Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution to follow…

Link to the book’s companion web site

Buy the book from Amazon.com

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This is a category test. (updated)

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In the last post, we looked at the Context of the MWT Model.  In this post we will look at the structure of the MWT Model.  The diagram below shows the major components of the MWT Model; with the exception of the management transformation required to implement the model.

The components of the model are introduced on the main site here.  Blog entries relating to each of the components can be accessed via the Categories list on the right-hand side of the blog.

An alternative view of the model can be seen in the figure on the right.  This view begins to show the flavor of each component via the symbols that are used to identify each component.

The MWT Model is a management model.  Therefore, like the management model it replaces, it must scale to any level within the organisation.  While the model is presented here within the context of the entire organisation, the organisation actual contains multiple levels of the model operating in a fractal.

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