Cutting the EA cloth in 2020 - Moving from Strategic to Tactical ICT Enablement During a Crisis.

Reading various materials of late providing conventional advice to organisations struggling with the impact of a global pandemic has led me to question some of the advice on offer, so I thought I would share some thoughts from a systems perspective – hope it provides some advice of value.

This short article is divided into three parts, each stratum on its own provides some food for thought, with ;

1. General introduction – providing insight to those reading in future years.
2. A Mapping of the stack in terms of Enterprise Systems Architecture with activities for architects to consider
3. Some thoughts to move forward with

 

For those of you who want to skip some of the pretext – you may want to go straight to part 2. However, all parts when consolidated provide a framework of actions when confronted with a drastic change in your Business Operating Model (BOM) as we have seen with the COVID-19 global pandemic.

General Introduction 

Mike Tyson once famously said ;

 “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth” 🥊

and like most things in life, it’s not a plan that delivers the value, but the response and execution of that plan, in short how you get up and manage your subsequent actions that define success.

We begin by stating - we will try and avoid the following terms; 

Figure 1 Terms we choose to avoid on purpose 

We avoid these terms as they can be misleading in respect to the current climate and provide an incorrect narrative, missing the point in relation to the underlying problems (cause / effect) organisations are facing or have faced i.e. a drastic change to the Business Operating Model.

 

By highlighting the enviornmental drivers below we can provide clarity as to why we ignore them and subsequently why organisations need to adjust thinking, actions and focus.

Figure 2 Disruptor drivers, Impacts and Outcomes

The above disruptors (drivers) have created an unprecedented time for provision of IT services with demand and supply variables moving overnight resulting in C-Suite executives (CIO/CTO) having to address several opposing challenges, firstly how to scale (up / down) to deliver flexible but automatically reactive IT capabilities with little or no additional funding and secondly addressing immediate economic and social challenges.

 

The path to successfully addressing the drivers is not a simple one, nor binary becoming grey when one considers the industry / organizational characteristics. One approach is to structure various activities to the ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing’ paradigm [Tuckman 1965] which can be viewed more simplistically via four phase deconstructions as discussed below, each phase a blog in its own right;

Figure 3 The 4 Phase Path to Normalisation

Maintain

When confronted with any problem , the natural reaction is to halt all activity and assess the situation, however this can be counterproductive and result in the creation of non-visible debt, it is important to ‘keep the lights on’ where possible i.e. continue to consistently be able to meet demands of stakeholders and more importantly maintain technology service levels irrespective of the demand for those services.

Although “do-nothing” can be an understatement, to keep the lights on can be a difficult task in times of a pandemic but it is prudent to stand down or shutdown projects/systems gracefully allowing an easier restart. 

The rationale to continue temporarily  with existing projects is based on the fact that when ‘pulling the plug’in an unstructured way one may lose important knowledge and artefacts mid-way through production e.g. High Level Designs (HLDs) or Solution Designs (SDs) etc. which need completing or documenting to avoid future inception costs.

Adapt/Adopt

When the fog clears in terms of economic, social and technological factors it may become more apparent that a new business model is required and the process of planning to support the new way of conducting business.

During this period existing customer insights or information collection techniques may not provide adequate diagnostics for what’s to come. Plans based on historical trends (days, months, years) have no place in the new operating model, thus technology capabilities need to be adjusted to either support the new model of customer requirements e.g. click and collect or reduced transaction levels. 

Cutting one’s economic cloth for IT could include one or more of the following actions; 

• If your organisation has adopted an agile continuous delivery model, then you may need to halt the production line.

• Cutting costs immediately within contractual agreements e.g. terminate all contingent workers obviously in a structured way enabling reinstatement if required.

• Standing down non-core project activity - subject to Impact Assessments e.g. minor upgrades to stable systems.

• Renegotiate services with 3^rd party suppliers of labour, services and products – see recommendations.

• Review ‘Shovel-Ready’ projects with the exam question to ask ‘will they provide capabilities we can leverage during the next outbreak?

• If demand for service has increased rapidly then harden all systems to guarantee continuous operations. If this demand is not temporary, then adapt accordingly 

• If your technology staff are working remotely it may be prudent to explore plan b for workers who may fall ill.

Obviously, there are other actions that can be taken; however, these will be subject to the circumstances you face at that point in time.

 Normalise 

Having survived the impact on the BOM and the subsequent demand on your IT systems the next step will be to normalize and instill confidence in the delivery of your services i.e. restore the IT services and associated capabilities to the state prior to the changes in the BOM. During this phase it would be prudent to continue with projects that still meet the initial business case made at the time of project initiation.

Whilst normalization is a fine position to adopt in terms of a recovery point objective (a term I said I would not mention) , in the world of the ‘new norm’ it is not an ideal path to adopt ,especially as new lessons have been learnt from recent events,  hence the transitional to the next phase.

Re-calibrate (strategies / plans / budgets)

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  

George Santayana.

When moving forward one needs to approach planning through a new lens. As architects we look at historical system performance data, ignore random spikes and provision accordingly. Moving forward low frequency, high impact events need to be considered at the enterprise architectural capability level. 

When designing IT capabilities, we design for non-functional requirements i.e. ‘bake in’ some form of resilience to possible systems failure subject to the risk appetite and tolerance for data loss which will continue but evolve and encapsulate bespoke demand in terms of elasticity and responsiveness.  

Enterprise Architects during a steady state focus much of their attention on capability management development and supporting the associated governance for project activities. But with a change in the BOM it is now time to consider future planning techniques to encapsulate delivery of services during a pandemic. 

 

Above I have played back four stages that should be used to adjust one’s core thinking and maybe planning (what -if scenarios) for abnormal changes to the Business Operating Model.
The above will be subject to change and tailored towards your particular industry.

Next I will present some activities to consider i.e. activities Architects may want to undertake during a period of uncertainty.

Architectural Activities during a major unplanned incident 

One of the biggest challenges faced by the systems architecture community (Enterprise and Solution) is;

“How do we as Enterprise Systems or Solution Architects support, continue to remain relevant and deliver value to our organisation during a turbulent period?”

Before we address the question again, I would stress that there is a dependency on the size of your architecture team, the organisational characteristics, the markets you operate in etc. 

It must be noted that I assign the Control-Inform-Direct (CID) criterial in table to structure a mapping between the diagram (fig 4) and the activities below

From previous blogs and most recently my book I have introduced an ESA Stack which provides a check list for Enterprise Architects (with the Systems bias) to ensure they cover the wide spectrum of the technology landscape. This check list can be used during a critical change in the organizational BOM and can be used by the EA/SA community to focus and align their activities and attentions to areas delivering most value.

Figure 4 Suggested EA Focus Areas during a rapid modification to the BOM  

Layer	Domain	Architectural Assignment	CID Action	Rational	Outcome	Value
0	Business Operating Model	All Team EA Members	Inform   Government Directives, Any regulatory advice and actions.   Competitors’ reactions but avoid emulating unless value is proven.	During a turbulent period, Government Actions will drive possible demand for products and services so it would be prudent to keep abreast of any news.	Impact Assessments On dynamic situation with analysis and more importantly real-time predictive analysis of performance of downstream enterprise processes.	Any new analysis at this layer during a period of ‘keeping the lights on’should be reduced
0	Business Operating Model	Business Architects	Control   Funding / Cashflow – Work with your stakeholders and finance departments.	Know your new budgets or what will be taken away during readjustment.   Stop any unnecessary spend	Recalibrate / Adjust   projects and their funding’s areas and priorities	Deliver more for less or stop projects
0	Business Operating Model	Architectural Business / Data	Monitor Industry Rivalry Inform	Monitor both Suppliers in terms of the supply chain and any logistics disruptions and fine tune where appropriate.   Customer behaviours and any insights into dynamic trends on ‘real time’ data will enable the focus of resources moving forward.	Insights from dynamic trends ‘real time’ data enabling re calibration of service chains.	Focus areas for delivery and establishment of areas to ramp up or down?
1	Business Process	Business / Process	Direct Processes that support the existing business should be maintained and any robotic process automation steps in process should be expediated or halted for now	Very much about ‘keeping the lights on’ and ensuring processes are optimized where possible	Process Execution is maintained at a steady, consistent rate.	Addressing any interruptions as and when they occur to ensure consistency in delivery.
1	Business Process	Process / Infrastructure / Business Analysts	Inform  During this period, it would be prudent to monitor process cycles and associated times together with a cursory review of   controls	Very much about keeping the lights on an ensuring that processes are optimized where possible	Measurement and Control of the flows through organisation. Visual Graphs relating to process times and any hotspots identified	Maintain
2	Capabilities	Business / Analysts	Control   No Action during this period and maintain existing capability maps.	Work with key stakeholders to establish if any capabilities are required that do not exist or any that are obsolete.	New Capabilities for exploration when normalization occurs.	Maintain
3	Execution - Application	Application Specialist /	Control Steady State execution is required with consistent connectivity maintained.	Very much about keeping the lights on and the ‘engines running’ during this turbulent period	MaintainReporting especially for regulatory purposes.	Analytics / reporting / SLA Monitoring
4	Data & Information Services	Business Analysts / Data Specialist	Inform Define and capture data for analysis to extract patterns, trends, associations in any human behavior (customer/supplier)	Establishing any enablers for moving the organisation through the turbulent period	Insights / Trends	Targets maintenance or advancement
5	Technology Services (Logical)	Application / Service Delivery	Control The Network &Security Operations Centers must be most vigil during this period	During this period anyone wishing to do harm or install any malware on your systems will attack.	Logs / Events should be closely monitored to establish any anomalies - all systems should be patched, and digital perimeter defenses should be closely monitored	Digital Asset Protection
5	Technology Services (Logical)	Infrastructure / Service Delivery	Control Ramp up or maintain Processing Power relating to core services (registry, directory, naming etc.) with the hardening of device management. Focal point is Capacity & Performance figure.	If observing a shift in pervasive nature of the workforce, then it is important to ensure that core services are performant all subject to capacity / performance demand metrics	Capacity Allocated to enable the mobile workforce and the channels requiring additional power due to increased usage	Stable - Consistency       Capacity / Performance
6	Technology Services (Physical)	Infrastructure / Service Delivery	Control Maintain service levels – may have to throw more tin at any problems  If Offices are now empty – use this opportunity to perform general maintenance on all desktops and devices (printers, scanners) etc.	The profile of system usage (geo locations, device types etc.) may change and must be accommodated.	Note if you are charging for printing – revisit print counts to ensure that the cost is reflected in subsequent invoices from the printer suppliers	Maintenance / reduced Peripheral costs
6	Technology Services (Logical)	Service Delivery	Inform If you do not host your own servers i.e., use an IaaS, AaaS, SaaS model from a third party ensure that the capacity, bandwidth and performance is delivered as per contract	Cloud based providers may see spikes in usage that they have not provisioned for and must be held to the contractual terms of the service they provide	Maintain	Contractual Obligations from Cloud Providers
7	Hygiene / VAS	Security	Control Increased Security Protection for all Devices, Applications and Information Assets	During extreme times is when most companies are vulnerable and therefore criminals will try to exploit	Invest	Daily Reports / Analysis – Digital asset protection, Threats(internal/external), Counter Measures and general Posture
7	Hygiene / VAS	Service Delivery	Direct Agreed Services levels MUST be maintained during any turbulent period.		Invest	Maintain

Possible Control, Inform and Direct areas for Architects to Focus attention on

Moving forward 

It is a sad fact of life that some businesses will not survive, recently the following school of thought was presented to me;

“If a business is not prepared, and cannot survive because of an external environment shock, then their business model is flawed, and they should have considered multi-dimensional delivery of product/services or product/process innovate.”

However, I would argue that in essence the business models of some failing companies were not flawed but simply ill prepared, like many, for a radical disruption in their industry BOM with closure of premises, lack of inbound cash flow etc. 

However, the strong survive and for those that do it is important, more so than ever that value is derived from its technology investments. With most things in life, although it is important to take calculated risks, if the risk is brought to fruition then you must have the willpower to abandon the investment of resources and commitment, take a step back and execute a Plan B.

"important to get out quick rather than lose more money – so that you can return to fight another day"  

Moving forward we architects must simply promote and increase the level of automation, both at the systems and process layers, within our organisation and will need to consider adopting a greater geographical mobilization policy, where the production can be relocated / failed over to a whole new continent and working from home need not mean working in the same country.

 

Below I have listed some takeaways for you to consider and reflect on and have segmented these into two parts ; firstly things to consider when a radical change happens to your BOM i.e. when you are deep in the eye of the storm and secondly when the storm passes and you need to start thinking about moving forward ;

🌪 In the Eye of the Storm 🌪

• Keep the lights on – deliver a consistent level of IT service
• Focus on the problem at hand but look beyond the crisis of the day 
• Use the opportunity to discuss with suppliers of labour, services or products for immediate price reductionson their margins 
• Oil the engines i.e. maintain systems undertaking any patch, upgrades etc. 
• Optimize resources – If you have resources idle then use them to do maintenance tasks that have been put on the backburner e.g. functional upgrades
• Stand down non-essential projects and ensure projects that are stood down are done so gracefully and can easily ramp up again if required avoiding any steep learning curve for the team.
• Contingent Workforce should be stood down or redeployed if contractually bound

🌤 Post the Storm 🌤

• Reduce technical debt / shadow IT systems where possible and invest in required capabilities.
• Invest in further automation at both the systems layer and business process orchestration layers.
• Ensure ‘click and collect’ is part of your B2C operating model if you sell physical products 
• Examine suppliers who refused to support your business during the turbulent period i.e. not enter into a margin reduction conversation and if possible, explore ways to phase them out of your organisations value chain i.e.  find suppliers willing to make 0 profit in times of crisis, maybe it can be added to contractual agreements when deciding future supply terms?

No one can truly predict the future but there are some lessons which can help us prepare to avoid this level of disruption with the key message being manage the situation, plan for tomorrow and invest in the future business model by controlling what you can control, not worrying about what you cannot control or nudge.

I thought I would end this blog with a quote from my son Rajhan who, after proof reading this blog, added the following comment  

“We have heard wide speculation of the new normal, but it will be interesting to see the new adaptation techniques and resilience measures. Hopefully we prevail with a “new era” of robustness to systemic shocks in the IT landscape, the backbone to any organisations operability.”