Enterprise Architecture, IT Architecture, Work »

Robert Handler of Gartner is presenting.

This is one of seven Key Initiatives for Enterprise Architecture.

“Failure to… change the behavior of others leads to failure itself”.  You must understand the people aspects and you must sell EA to succeed.

They had 600+ clients take a maturity survey to see where they are at in the area of EA maturity.  The degree to where you can develop and maintain stakeholder support was at the most-influential dimension of EA maturity.  Business/IT alignment was the top EA driver.

Effective skills:  communication, persuasion, marketing.

Communications Specialists, Change Management Specialists and Facilitation Staff were under-represented in EA groups.  This highlights a need to bring these skills into the EA staff either through training and development or additional staffing.

Shannon/Weaver model for communications.

If you start with those basics (stimuli, purpose, receiver, channel, message); you can predict what you need in EA. 

Marketing and Sales of EA.

Marketing:  Identify and segment the market.  It’s the enterprise.  Create the products/services.  Create the delivery systems.  Deliver the appropriate communications to the market.  Optimize the price.

EA market segments:  Senior leaders.  Business units.  IT Leaders.  IT Groups.  These are all people/groups that need to change behavior.    Then you need to figure out what each segment will need (to do their daily jobs with).  These are your products and services.  Then figure out the best delivery system of the products and services for each segment.

You need to make it such that doing EA is cheaper than not doing EA.

A Mission Statement is a fundamental part of marketing.  Branding is also key for communications and positioning.  You need to determine your purpose (mission statement), determine the stakeholder perception.  Create a targeted message that is clear, simple an concise.  Create a logo.

You need communicate success shamelessly with branding and logo.  You need to manage the EA brand.
Sales:  Identify leads/suspects/prospective clients (stakeholder analysis).  Present the product or service.  Close the deal.  Provide ongoing customer service.

Sales activities:  Identify targets, categorize targets, identify their issues, develop solutions to their issues, create an deliver the pitch.  Close the deal.

Identify the targets and categorize targets maps to Stakeholder Analysis.  His analysis includes: Name and Title, Level of Influence (Decision makers, influencers, gatekeepers, participants), Friend or Foe, Decision Style, Issues and Opportunities, Others (hobbies, idiosyncrasies).

Decision Styles from Rowe and Mason:  Conceptual-big picture people, Directive-bossy ones, Behavioral-how are people feeling, Analytical-want all the data.  62% of Senior Executives are Conceptual types.  You could also do Myers-Briggs analysis.

You can create a Chain of Pain:  a map going up or down the organizational chart.  Looking at what the stakeholders problem/pain points are.  Example:  Person: Director, Pain: too much change, Reason: monolithic applications that aren’t very agile.

Persuasion Skills: Dr. Robert Cialdini has a rich body of work on persuasion skills.  There are a set of principles for persuasion:  Contrast, Reciprocation, Scarcity, Authority/Credibility, Trust, Consistency, Liking.    Contrast – this is like the current state – spaghetti map for infrastructure compared to the future state clean infrastructure map.  Reciprocation – do favors, give them information, give them insight.  Ask for support of EA in return.  Scarcity – we are going to do EA but we only have 3 spots and this needs to be the best and brightest.  Consistency – people want to know that others are doing the same thing.

Three conditions to create lasting commitments:  make the commitment active (e.g. writing down the change), make the commitment public and un-coerced.  You can do this through a charter.  Create an EA charter, have people sign it, make if public and publish it on an EA sight.

Recommendations:

Ensure that adequate support exists.  Train people in the soft skills (communications, persuasion, marketing).  Hire or borrow skilled and experienced resources.  Use persuasion to your full advantage.  Be great at communication, persuasion and interpersonal skills.

Technorati Tags: Change Management, Enterprise Architecture, Gartner, Leadership

Life in Madison »

I had an 8:30 AM meeting this morning, it was raining and I was running around looking for my rain gear (helmet cover, shoe covers, leg warmers, etc). It was 92 degrees F yesterday – the warmest day of the year. This morning, the remnants of Gustav rolled into town. They will go North with me up to Door County for my century ride on Sunday but that’s another story.

I finally race out of the house running about 10 minutes behind when I should have left. I get on my bike and I start cranking it out to get into work. I see a guy (Mike it turns out), riding past the house on a cargo bike.

He is going North on Gilbert (which runs on the West side of our house). I head out East on Dorsett. We are traveling perpendicular paths to each other. I turn left on Luan and I see Mike on Hammersly. I turn right on Hammersly and Mike is ahead of me also heading for the South-West bike path.
We climb the fly-over and head out on the trail proper. I pass him on the flats and say, “Good morning”. He says, “Good morning”. I ‘m still cranking away because I’m running late. I get to the first stop sign and I realize that he is in my draft. He says, “You’ve got fenders so I can draft properly” and we both laugh. We get a break in traffic, both cross Midvale Blvd and take off. Mike pulls out in the lead like he is going to pull for a while.
First off: this is strange. I get a lot of people who suck my back wheel into or out of work. Rarely to they swap leads with me.
Well, I’m glad for the help because it is raining and I’m late. He pulls for a while, I swap and take lead and cruise to the next stop. We cross Odana and Mike pulls out. I start to chase him down to get in his draft but he is flying. I look at my computer – 25.3 MPH. “Man, this guy is cranking on a cargo bike. He must be a monster.” I pull out the stop and get in his draft for while then it is my turn to take lead. I pull out around him.
(I will say that he looked surprised when I took the lead again.)
I’m thinking to myself, “well, if he is going pull us at 25 MPH, I’ll pull at 25 MPH.” I’m on my commuter bike with full fenders, a rack and a 12 pound pannier with lunch, change of clothes and all my miscellany in it. I’m working hard but if we’re going to do a 25 MPH pace, then dammit, I’m going to take my pull.
Suddenly Mike (as I later learn his name is) pulls along side and says, ” You do know I’m cheating don’t you? I mean, I hate to let people think that this is all human power. Have a look down there.” He nods his head, pointing back behind his legs. I look down. He has an electric assist motor. It provides 100-300 Watts of assist to his pedaling!
Ha! I’m killing myself to pull a guy with a motor. He does do a long commute as I learn (about 15 miles each way).
We had a good laugh and a good chat on the rest of the way in.
That’s what love about bike commuting – the laughs and camaraderie.