Today I want to share a video about the key skills of workshop facilitation. Actually it’s not really a proper video, just a couple of slides. But the voiceline is quite interesting. Please click the thumbnail on the left side to find the key skills at a glance. I hope you find that video useful to become a phantastic facilitator.
Found at youtube.com
In 2009 the IT budgets were cut as a reaction on the worldwide economic crisis. Not very surprisingly, »Reducing the IT costs« was ranked second on the CIO Top Priority List 2009 – after rank ten and twelve in 2008 and 2007 (Source: www.gartner.com).
In these days the budgets for 2010 are planned. After massive IT budget cuts and a (at best) constant IT service performance some CEO’s may come up with the idea to cut the budgets again. In this case, the IT department may have difficulties with being an innovation leader and with supporting changed business processes efficiently.
So, how to break the never-ending cycle of »Reduced IT Budget« and »Expected Service Improvements«? How to avoid the sqeezed »IT-Lemon«? The answer is: The IT value proposition must be visible in the organization.
To increase the IT value transparency, I want to present a four-stage approach:
1. Aggregate the critical success factors within a strategy map. Find out which strategic objectives you should focus on. Let me give an example. To increase stakeholder value, your organization wants to expand the revenue opportunities. What you may need is a new product! You need to add new functionality to your existing products or develop brand-new products. To enable the organization to reach this strategic objective, the information technology must support the innovation process.
2. Take stock of the existing asset portfolio. Analyze how the IT portfolio is assembled. What projects have you planned? What projects do you currently implement? What are you assets (e.g.: Systems, Infrastructure, …)?
3. Make a model-based value analysis. Use context specific approaches such as Value Chains, Performance Measurement Systems, the McFarlan Matrix or the Gartner Business Value model, to give just a few examples.
4. Identify alignment gaps. Are there any non-considered risk scenarios left? For example, does the organization culture clash with the governance? Do you want to offer a »pay-per-use« option to your customer but your IT does not support the SaaS concept?
Note: The presented approach is just a framework. To make the IT value proposition visible, this four-stage approach must be used individually. I tried to give some examples to make the approach more tangible. In the end you need to find and apply applicable tools to make the IT value visible in your unique organization.
Aligning the Enterprise Architecture (EA) with the business strategy is a critical goal of every EA initiative. Many Enterprise Architecture teams can’t demonstrate the business relevance of their EA programs. As a result, they are either irrelevant to the business success or they fail to deliver a business value. To ensure that the business value is delivered and demonstrated in the organization, Gartner has proposed a selection of best practices for enterprise architects. In the following post I want to present them to you. I hope this will help you to align your Enterprise Architecture with your business strategy.
1: Engage internal and external stakeholders
A truly aligned architecture effort requires significant input from pretty much everybody in the enterprise and its ecosystem. Getting the buy-in from internal stakeholders (e.g. line management, business operations, IT operations, support functions) and external stakeholders (e.g. service providers, outsourcers) is a critical success factor for every EA initiative. This buy-in requires engagement, so reaching out to each of these constituencies is necessary.
Engaging with a wide range of stakeholders can provide insights into the strategic drivers of the enterprise – a better-informed EA team and a “360-degree” view of the business strategy are the results.
2: Never go in with a blank sheet of paper
As every stakeholder group has a different view of the required detail level, open-ended questions are not the best idea when engaging any of the stakeholders. Because most of them are not familiar with EA deliverables, open-ended questions can make them defensive. To engage the stakeholders at the appropriate level of detail and to structure the discussion, it’s more productive to present a straw model as a basis for refinement and further development.
3: Validate, socialize, then validate again
So, what are the steps that need to be taken to align the Enterprise Architecture with the business strategy?
This process is highly iterative and requires collaboration with the stakeholders at every step along the way. To successfully execute this process the EA team needs strong interpersonal and communication skills.
4: Go to the business strategy, if the business strategy is not coming to you
A lot of companies don’t have an explicit business strategy. However, this doesn’t mean there is no business strategy! In many cases the enterprise is a collection of business units with different business models and therefore different strategies. A big effort is required to articulate the business strategy of an enterprise with highly autonomous units, because the specific strategies of the different units must be considered and consolidated. When formulating an integrated business strategy, common strategic objectives must be established and differences in priorities or conflicting objectives must be noted as well.
5: A less formal approach for the Common Requirements Vision (CRV) process
If your EA team encounters difficulties to persuade the company that a structured CRV process is needed, apply a less formal approach. Adopt the CRV constructs, but presents them in a less formal manner. Simply ask some questions:
The CRV components are still the same, but the less formal structure increases the chances of acceptance. The following figure provides an example of how an informal CRV might look.
Figure found at gartner.com
6: Use the EA to inform other strategic and governance initiatives in the enterprise
Most enterprises are running different strategic initiatives at the same time. These initiatives were typically started in different parts of the organization with different objectives and different decision rights. The Enterprise Architecture should provide specific guidance to all the strategic and governance initiatives of the enterprise. Take the requirements identified in the figure above:
In this example, the strategies include attracting high-net-worth customers with excellent online capabilities and deepening the relationship with those customers to achieve greater customer profitability. These strategies will drive substantial changes in the bank’s business, including the creation of a personal banker function and the associated account management processes. There will be a need for profitability information by customer and channel, which will be provided by a customer analytics initiative supported by data warehousing and business analytics technologies.
These requirements give specific guidance to the business process competency center, which will need to design the new processes and drive the organizational changes as well as to the business intelligence competency center, which will need to focus on providing customer profitability data to business management. Such information also provides guidance to the EA team, which needs to incorporate data warehousing and business analytics technology into the bank’s enterprise architecture. There will likely be a number of projects in the bank’s portfolio that support the customer analytics program. It is the job of the program and portfolio management functions to ensure that these projects deliver the business value that is envisioned.
The Enterprise Architecture guidance principle supports the evolution of the enterprise to the desired future state.
Over 1,000 IT executives in 15 countries were interviewed for the Symantec 2009 Global Green IT Survey. Here are the key findings:
I found the result of this survey very logic. To bring it one simple point: As most IT departments need to pay for their energy consumption, there is a business case for “green” investments – that’s why Green IT is an inherent part in most organizations.
How “green” is your organization by now?
Do you have ideas in your mind, but you don’t know how to visualize and share them? Maybe I have a solution for your problem. On exploratree.org you can find a set of different templates to visualize your ideas. Using these tools as thinking guide, you can structure your vague ideas and get them to the point.
Just go to the page, have a closer look at the tools and let me know what you think about it. Are they helpful to structure ideas? Would you use these online tools to share business ideas with your colleagues? Do the templates require special knowledge or are they self-explaining?
I was playing with the templates a little bit and wrote down the plus and minus points of the tool. Click at the picture to see my findings.
For an actual study, McKinsey asked nearly 1,700 executives from around the world, across a range of industries and functional areas how they are benefiting from Web 2.0 technologies and how their organization is using these technologies. The executives were asked about the value they have realized from their Web 2.0 deployments in three main areas: Employees, customers as well as partners, suppliers and external experts.
Today I want to summarize the key findings of this survey for you.
The Benefits of Web 2.0 Technologies
According to the survey, the three major benefits of Web 2.0 technologies are better knowledge access, reduced costs and increased stakeholder satisfaction. Let’s have a short look at the TOP 5 benefits for the single stakeholder groups:
TOP 5 Benefits for Employees:
TOP 5 Benefits for Customers:
TOP 5 Benefits for Partners/Suppliers/Experts:
The Usage of Web 2.0 Technologies
The survey shows that the most popular Web 2.0 technologies among enterprises are blogs, wikis, social networks and (video-)podcasts: Not very surprisingly the same tools that are popular among consumers. Here are the TOP 5 Web 2.0 technologies for the single stakeholder groups.
TOP 5 Technologies for Employees:
TOP 5 Technologies for Customers:
TOP 5 Technologies for Partners/Suppliers/Experts:
Who is gaining the Web 2.0 benefits?
What are the critical success factors of Web 2.0 adoption?
The survey results confirm that the tool integration into the daily workflow is the most important success factor. To encourage the continuous use, traditional approaches such as financial or performance measurements are inappropriate. In the Web community, status and reputation is often the No. 1 driver for making meaningful contributions. These findings confirm the Web 2.0 success factors I’ve posted earlier in this blog.
For more information, please find the entire survey on mckinseyquarterly.com. I also want to recommend an interactive presentation, which visualizes the key findings of the survey in a very pleasant way.
Considering the vast amount of literature concerning the »management« of change the title is quite a bold promise. But decide for yourself:
Click to enlarge. Found via FlowingData.
