"The World is Flat" by Thomas L.Friedman

Shape of world is changing from Round to Flat. This brilliant book finds out the forces behind it and impact of them on our day to day life.

A must read book for every organization & individuals who wants to survive in Flat world. Rules of game are changing. Countries & Corporation who will adapt to changing rules will grow and others will fight for their survival.

I feel, in another decade, people in India & China will face the same challenge and difficult time as faced by people in West today. It will be opportunity and concern at the same time.

Another thought, all flatteners are happening to reduce TIME spent in chores. Time is becoming most precious and whatever we think of today is time consuming, will not be done by us in future. It will be either outsourced, off shored, in-sourced, automated, extinct or ignored.

Check Convergence II chapter in book, vertical silos are replaced by Service ecosystem in businesses. It reflects that World is also adopting concept SOA in its own way.

Mindset of Companies

First thought, do companies too have mindset? Entirely based on my own experience, I agree, companies have mindset. I am being lucky to work in companies with different mindset.

Second thought, Is it possible to categorize the mindset? It could be based on size, domain, geography, business model and vision. Most popular or known to me ;) categorization is based on business model like Product, Service and End user companies. Another popular one is based on size like Start ups, mid size or large Enterprises.

Now further talking about the Mindset based on business model. We all agree that Product and Service companies have different way of working. What about End user companies? These companies who don’t have IT as there core business and still build there own IT systems. If I put the Product and Service companies on opposite ends and now want to put End user companies between these two ends. Will End User Company aligns more to Product or Service Company? Thought is still vague, context and taxonomy is missing. Lets define in next paragraph.

Product companies generally have better vision and strategy. They have more focus on non functional aspect of IT system like extensibility, flexibility, modifiability, manageability, scalability etc. Service companies generally have wider experience of domains & technologies. They maintain the resource pools. They have more focus on delivery. Due to this non functional aspect gets less attention unless conveyed and agreed before signing off. Any changes after delivery means more revenue for Service Company.

Now, lets again think about End User Company, they are building systems for themselves in competitive market. This means they have to focus on Time to Market and aligns more to Service Company. But they have to maintain the system after delivery too. They can’t ignore the truth; maintenance & enhancements cost is much more than original development cost. This is fact and leads to conclusion that End User Company should be more aligned to Product Company Mindset.

Tactical Projects and Flyover in City

Just a thought, if Enterprise Architecture is analogous to City planning than Tactical project becomes analogous to flyover in City.

Flyover is constructed to reduce the bottleneck at one junction/crossing. Similarly Tactical project is executed to provide the short term solutions.

Flyover results into traffic jam on subsequent crossing after the flyover. Now we need to build another flyover to remove this bottleneck. Is it right approach? Or do we need long term planning to handle increasing traffic and a better public transport to take care of public. A better infrastructure and proper city blueprint to avoid all these traffic jams.

Same thing happens to Tactical project, which results into another tactical and another tactical. We need Enterprise Architecture to prepare Blueprint and vision of enterprise. This will help in reducing risk and cost of IT.

Improving Architectural Skill

Few tools to improve the Architectural skills are -
1. Reading books & best practices
2. Defining & Assurance of System Architecture
3. Attending seminars & conferences
4. Discussions with experienced Architects, colleagues & team
5. Reading white papers & blogs
6. Writing blogs and books
7. Registering for daily updates on technology and domains from Internet sites

Fastest way to improve skills is through point number 4, Dangerous way is to be dependent only on point number 1, Slowest & safest way is through point 2 and Impressive way is through point number 3.

ROI from Enterprise Architecture

It is difficult task to measure the ROI on Enterprise Architecture. Few activities of Enterprise Architecture includes -
1) Defining standards and guidelines.
2) Preparing reference architecture
3) Defining and maintaining IT roadmap
4) Governance activities.
5) Consultancy
6) Defining Strategy for moving from "as-is" to "to-be" architecture

Point number 1 and 2 produces various kinds of artifacts about Application, Information, SOA, Security, Content Management, B2B architectures. Various teams refers to these document and extend project architecture from these artifacts.
ROI - Is it possible to find out how reference architecture benefits the project architecture. How it saves time, add value, improve quality of project?

Point number 3 produces the IT roadmap for different elements across the layers. Any project should refer to this roadmap before finalizing the technology stack and aligns with it.
ROI - Is it possible to find out the operational and maintenance cost saved by aligning with predefined roadmap? Is it possible to find the effort saved by project when it adopt the preferred technology from roadmap instead of evaluating different products, technology and protocols.

Point number 4 includes activities like reviewing and approving architecture for projects. Assuring that projects are following standards and guidelines.
ROI - Is it possible to find the value of improved quality in project due to assurance from EA?

Point number 5 includes EA mentoring, coaching and guiding Solution Architects to align with standards, directions to follow best practices, refinement of the solution architecture of projects.
ROI - Is it possible to find the whether directions were right or wrong, whether they are adopted or not?

Point number 6 requires vision and leadership qualities. EA defines the long term strategy inline with Business Architecture. This helps in reducing the cost of IT in long term. It increases the agility of business. It simplify and standardize the architecture and implicitly increasing the stability, flexibility and extensibility of IT.

Above points shows lot of activities, but is it possible to measure the extent of benefits from these points. These benefits increase with time, they are like snowball which gathers momentum and becomes bigger as it falls. All these points prevents problems to occur in future.

May be it is easy to measure the benefits at enterprise level instead of project level. Identifying major architecture issues in enterprise like re engineering of legacy application, producing enterprise level reusable components, product engineering, improving integration of various application or deciding Build vs Buy. All these benefits of EA provides the ROI and help in building the metrices for EA ROI.