Gartner’s slide deck entitled “The Five Step for Defining Effective EA Governance” (n.d.) inspired me to take a retrospective look (using the five steps as my measuring stick) at the IT governance process implemented by my company last summer. We’re an SMB with no formal EA practice who’s fighting to survive right now, so this is not meant to be viewed through rose-colored glasses or to be cynical in any way. It’s just meant to be real-world experience from a company trying to find it’s footing when it comes to the business and IT working together more effectively.
Step 1: Incorporate IT and Corporate Governance Principles
We start off the retrospective a little weak with regards to our principles, which are basically implied rather than expressly written down and promoted. Right now, it’s like a “do the right thing” approach where we all assume we know what the right things are. There’s no substitute for writing important things down and there’s little doubt that individual perspectives vary widely, so a set of written principles would serve us well. We’ll need to work on this area.
Step 2: Identify Your EA Archetype
This is an easy one. Gartner provides a magic quadrant of governance archetypes where the lower-left is the least capable and the upper-right the most capable. We’re so new to governance that we easily fall into the lower-left. Right now our governance meetings tend to be focused on providing status updates on recent IT issues rather than on strategic matters. Given time and commitment, I’m sure we’ll progress to better quadrants. I’ll know we’re making progress when we spend less time talking about recent failures and more time on planning for the future.
Step 3: Identify Your Organizational Culture
I feel like we’re doing well here. The Gartner presentation notes (from The Five Step for Defining Effective EA Governance) talk about how organizational cultures often must change to keep pace with the transformations brought on by EA. In our case, the current transformation taking place isn’t brought about by EA, but is instead about embracing the principles are EA. In other words, we’re transforming our culture to one where the business and IT work together to plan for change and sound governance is expected. Our execution isn’t where we want it to be yet, but our cultural commitment feels real, which bodes well for the future.
Step 4: Identify Your Governance Style
Our governance style is very much akin to a the business monarchy model, which emphasizes a centralized approach, with a tilt toward business representation, and where the executives tend to make the decisions (Broadbent, M., 2002, p. 4). Even though we’re a collection of five companies plus three law firms doing business in eight states, our governance is completely centralized. Historically, we have had a diversified operating model, but we are gradually shifting to a unification model, so our centralized governance approach makes sense.
Step 5: Match Your Governance Style With Your EA Approach
We don’t have a formal EA program, at least by name, but we operate in a de facto manner as an EA program. We are a collection of business and IT leaders planning for change, suspending, if you will, your recollection of Step 2, where I admitted we largely spend our time talking about recent IT issues. Our pseudo-EA approach is definitely traditional, with one centralized voice and direction for the enterprise, which, fortunately, matches well with our monarchy governance style from Step 4.
Conclusion
There’s little about our nascent governance approach that is clicking at this point, other than good intent, which strikes me as normal growing pains. If we stay positive, diligent, and committed, I’m confident we’ll reach the upper-right of Gartner’s EA Archetype Magic Quadrant (Step 2) in due time.
References
Broadbent, Marianne. (2002). CIO Futures– Lead With Effective Governance. Retrieved from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan011278.pdf
Gartner, (n.d.). Five Steps for Defining Effective Enterprise Architecture Governance. Retrieved from Penn State EA-872 L08 class material.
Scott,
ReplyDeleteI can see that you are truly making use of the Gartner discussions on governance. I also agree that they provide a great set of guidance for understanding how to select governance mechanisms tailored and shaped to the specific context of the target organization. From my experience, the so-called "best practice" must also be tailored to the limits and constraints of the organization, no matter what the size of the company - small business or large global enterprises. Sometimes, when governance is implemented as "one-size-fits-all" package, I think there's a tendency to be the ‘best practice’ variety that demands a lot of work, for that governance to work properly.
It's great that you are starting out governance while your client's organization is still "young" with respect to governance, and still very malleable. I think Gartner's point on evolving governance rings significantly true to your case. As we continue to appreciate more, change happens through a process where change agents (like EA) should identify the need for change, and then find and fit contextually relevant governance, as mechanisms which are politically accepted and practically possible.
It's great that you are there to guide the organization. Best of luck, and thanks for your post.
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Scott, nice assessment of your organization. It provides some really good perspective of another organization's practice. One thing that really resonates with me is the "do the right thing" mentality. It's common in my experience that groups behave in that way. Often times, even when things are written down, there's no measures or metrics so it's still a "please do the right thing" kind of attitude.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that I agree with and see a lot is the diversion away from governance. You're in a meeting to discuss those practices and process and work on formal governance. The meeting digresses to a "where are we on this project" kind of thing. I see that quite often and have had to schedule follow up meetings and so on to address the actual intent. Sometimes a firm agenda can help with that and setting deliverable timelines can provide leverage to move back on topic.
Good post, thanks!
g888
The governance plan is only the start. But these steps do provide for a good direction.
ReplyDeleteAs with any governance procedure, it takes identifying these areas as a starting point in which to build. Until the style is defined and adopted, the rest is kind-of mute.
At my workplace, our development methodology has built-in an architectural governance review. And from that review, we have an escalation path to a central architecture review board if needed. Sounds good on the surface, but here are some of our challenges.
ReplyDeleteIf there's no solution to develop, architecture isn't always engaged. So we end up being IT Architects and not the Enterprise Architects that we strive to be. "Don't call us, we'll call you." So instead of playing a role shaping strategy, we end up being the "no police" at the end of the project having to explain why the proposed solution is a bad idea architecturally.
If it's development of a business managed IT solution, then we really have the potential to be bypassed.
Lastly, our architecture review board only meets once per month. If a project needs to get escalated to the review board, they may have to wait a few weeks just to be reviewed. Sometimes the review results in 'no' that won't work and teams then have to go back to the drawing board.
So our processes work, but there are some gaps and a large opportunity to speed things up. Just wanted you to know that you were in good company.