Tom Graves / Tetradian

Another follow-on to the earlier post ‘Helping others make sense of my work‘, just a quick note to let you know about two current book-projects.

The first has a working-title of The enterprise as story: the role of narrative in enterprise-architecture. This has been a major theme on this blog for the past couple of years or so: more than 40 posts here on various aspects since ‘The enterprise is the story‘. And as in the post ‘The no-plan Plan: architecture as story‘, it’s one of the five key-themes in my ‘no-plan plan‘ for my current and future work-direction. So it’s something I need to get down on paper, in more direct, usable form.

There’s a definite deadline of end of February for this one, because I’ll need it available in time for my presentation ‘The enterprise is a story: a narrative approach to enterprise-architecture‘ at the Integrated EA conference in London on 6-7 March 2012.

The second has a working-title of The business-anarchist: enterprise-architectures for the edge of chaos. This has perhaps been a less prominent theme on the blog, but it’s turned up quite a few times, such as in the post ‘Analyst, anarchist, architect‘. In essence, it’s about being deliberate and responsible about working with disruption in the business-context, preferably before that disruption is thrust upon us – a concern which is rapidly becoming more and more important almost by the day.

I’ve been nibbling at this one since mid-2009, and even wrote a fair chunk of it at various points last year, but didn’t finish it then, in part because it didn’t feel like the right time. Now, post-Occupy and suchlike, it does feel more like the right time, so I need to get it done. It’ll have to come after The enterprise as story, but with luck and lack-of-distraction it should be ready somewhen in April.

There’s also another enterprise-architecture book I’ve been working on for quite a while now with a colleague in Guatemala, Michael Smith. We don’t have a working-title for this one yet, and it’s rather further away in time – somewhen mid to late next year, probably – but it’s probably worth mentioning at this point. It’ll focus on the Five Elements theme that comes up in quite a few places in my work – for example, the structure of the effectiveness model used in SCORE strategy-assessment and the book Real Enterprise-Architecture, and the core of the market-cycle that’s used in conjunction with Enterprise Canvas.

Will let you know when any of the books become ready and available, but thought I’d keep you up to date with this part of work-in-progress, anyway.

Okay. Seems there are indeed times when I have to accept that, yes, it is 3am, and I have indeed been woken up by an idea that isn’t going to let me sleep until I’ve written it down. Oh well. So best just get on with it, I guess.

In a comment to my earlier post ‘Making plans, sort-of‘, Robert Phipps asked:

even though you do not have a plan, [...], you probably have a few themes [...] that will feature regularly, and although we can probably infer some from the tone of recent posts and discussions, perhaps you could offer a kind of ‘version 0.1 cut’ of your new programme. Is it still recognisably EA ?

To answer the last part first:

• Yes, it’s all enterprise-architecture

Whether it’s ‘recognisably EA’ is probably another question entirely… – depends on who’s doing the ‘recognising’, I guess? Main point is that it does seem to be about a much larger scope and scale than most current ‘enterprise’-architectures: a ‘really-big-picture enterprise-architecture’, if you like.

But yes, there do also seem to be some distinct themes in there. I’ll summarise them here, and then expand on them in separate posts, so that this one doesn’t get too long (and also so I might be able to get back to sleep, too…).

Quickest overall summary, to paraphrase an old Heineken advert, is that “it’s about the parts that other enterprise-architectures cannot reach”. (Probably it’d be more accurate to say that it’s more “the parts that other ‘enterprise’-architectures don’t reach”, and I don’t know why they don’t reach them, but there ’tis.)

• It’s about the ‘why’ of architecture

Almost all of the current architectures seem to focus on structure, on the ‘How’ and ‘With-What’. In Zachman terms, they also seem to focus almost exclusively on row-3 (‘Logical Model’) and row-4 (‘Physical Model’) with occasional forays up to row-2 (‘Business Model’), but that’s about it. What I want to know about is what happens in the ‘why’ above that, the reasons behind the architecture in the first place – all the stuff that goes on in row-2, row-1, the row-0 that I had to add to understand the idea of ‘the enterprise’, and the row-00 that I seem to be adding now for the ‘really-big-picture’ of where ‘the enterprise’ comes from in the first place. There’s also a strong cross-link there with an emphasis on effectiveness – rather than solely on ‘efficiency’, as in too much of current architecture-work.

• It’s about architecture-as-story

A theme that’s come up a lot for me over the past few years is on ‘the enterprise as story‘. It’s picked up even more momentum since finding building-architect Matthew Frederick’s ‘two points of view‘ about architecture, one of which was the regular view of architecture as ‘an exercise in structure’, but the other of architecture as ‘an exercise in narrative’. Story also seems to be linked both to the exploration of the ‘why’ of the architecture, and the active, living, expression of that ‘why’. Beyond that, I just know that it feels important, so keep following that thread and see where it leads.

• It’s about the architecture-as-change

In part this is what I’ve called the ‘business-anarchist‘ theme, but again it’s very tightly linked to that question of ‘why’ in an enterprise-architecture. It’s also strongly associated with the theme that way too many people still seem to avoid, namely the sense-making / decision-making space that in the SCCC-categorisation is described as the Chaotic-domain. I suspect that there’s a huge breakthrough in there somewhere, on the scale that Taylorism was back at the start of the last century, and which we’re sort of skirting around with ‘design-thinking’ and the like. Dunno quite what it is, but I can sense the general shape of it in there somewhere, and also that it’s definitely important.

• It’s about the dynamics of architecture

This one will still take quite a bit of further exploration and explanation, but it seems to be about how we move between those different sense-making / decision-making domains. It’s also about designing for change – which is going to be kinda important as we head into what’s clearly going to be a period of massive change – and also about breaking free of the dead weight of some frankly daft ideas such as ‘future state’ of an architecture.

• It’s about people in relation to architecture

This is another screamingly-obvious gap in most current ‘enterprise’-architectures: people barely come into the picture at all. Since one of the core definitions of ‘enterprise’ is that it’s all about people and people’s choices and people’s needs – “the animal spirits of the entrepreneur” – it does seem like it’s kind of an important omission, wouldn’t you think? I’ll freely admit I’m not much of a ‘people-person’, but someone has to address this point in enterprise-architectures, and since this obviously links up very strongly with all of the other themes, it may as well be me…

Enough to answer that ‘no-plan Plan’ question for now, I hope? – more detail to follow on each of these themes, anyway.

So can I go back to sleep, please?

Okay, I’ve moved on to a different garden: what next? What’s the plan?

Uh… probably that ‘The Plan’ is that there isn’t one? In fact that’s the whole point?

(Or, if you simply must have a plan, I could paraphrase a former colleague and say that the plan is to not have a specific plan.)

Why? Simple reason, really: the purpose of a plan is to control something. And since ‘control’ is itself little more than a rather forlorn myth – especially in this kind of context – then it really doesn’t make sense to have a plan, because ‘control’ doesn’t make sense either.

I do have a sense of the direction I’m headed, though. Call that ‘a plan’, if you like. Sort-of.

It’s still enterprise-architecture. But a much bigger view of enterprise-architecture than you’d normally see associated with that term.

[As an aside, one of the joys of this shift is that I won't have to waste any more time arguing with the IT-obsessed and, now, the business-obsessed, about their misuse of the term 'enterprise-architecture'. I know it's wrong, they know it's wrong, everyone knows it's wrong, and just about everyone knows the damage that that term-hijack is causing, too. But hey, if they really need to keep on 'pissin' in the pool', best to just leave 'em to it, I guess. At least when you come here, you do know that when I talk about 'enterprise architecture', I do mean 'enterprise', and 'architecture', and the way they fit together - and not some piddling point about how two IT-boxes talk to each other. Unless we do need to talk about that. Which we do sometimes, of course. ]

What I’m really aiming at is the architecture of the biggest enterprise we have: the human enterprise. All of it. Which takes place within a broader ecosystem, usually referred to as ‘this planet’ or suchlike. Which is, yes, kinda big…

[In Twitter and elsewhere I'll use the hashtag #rbpea to indicate this type of 'Really-Big-Picture Enterprise-Architecture'.]

Why? It’s because I can see there are some big, big, BIG architecture-type questions that just about no-one else seems to have addressed so far, if at all. Or even noticed, in most cases. Kind of ‘oops…’, if you like. A very big ‘oops…’.

Which means that someone needs to be doing something about that ‘very big oops…’. And I look around, and I can’t see anyone else doing it, or putting their hand up to do it. Which, uh, kinda suggests that it’s my turn to do something about it. Yikes… Yeah, kinda challenging, coming face to face with that…

It doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily be much good at it: others would probably be a lot better for this than I am, no doubt about that. But it’s clear that someone needs to hold the fort for now: and right now that ‘someone’ seems to be me. Oh well…

I certainly don’t claim to have ‘the Answers’; at the moment I’d barely claim to have more than a few good questions. But at least it’s something. And I do have some relevant skills and experience, so in that sense I do have some ’response-ability’ here. Hence, in that sense, my responsibility.

So that’s the ‘plan’, really: be responsible. See what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel, and then literally ‘be response-able’ about that. Be like Wangari Maathai’s hummingbird – or perhaps, in my case, more like a weary, wary old toad – just doing the best I can.

Not a big plan. Not a complicated plan, with a nice big complicated roadmap from ‘as-is’ to ‘to-be’ and crop-circles an’ all that, like what all those real, proper certififificateded enterprise-architects do.

But a plan. Sort-of.

Hmm…

There’s one part of this plan, though, that a fair few people may not like – and I perhaps ought to apologise for that in advance. (Though might be better to just stop apologising for everything anyway?) It’s just that being responsible also means being honest: and being honest about what I see is going to annoy a few folks – because to be blunt there are a heck of a lot of ideas and actions out there that are just plain dumb. Stupid: the definitely-not-a-good-idea kind of stupid. Often the darn-lucky-if-we-survive-this-one kind of really stupid, too. Sorry, but it’s true.

One example of that kind of ‘really-stupid’ is the notion of ‘rights‘, which just does not and cannot work, no matter how much people try to kludge to make it it look as if it does. It’s bullshit: it’s a ‘kiddies-anarchy’ view of the world, built around evasion of any notion of responsibility. And we need to stop pretending that it’s anything more than that – so that we then do have a chance to rebuild something that actually can and does work.

Ditto the entirety of what’s laughably called ‘economics‘. Ditto the whole notion of ‘intellectual property’ – or most any current form of so-called ‘property’, for that matter. Ditto, behind it, the entire concept of ‘possession‘. All of us know it’s all bullshit, a made-up fantasy to prop up the pretences of people whose idea of ‘making a living’ consists almost entirely of untrammelled theft – an ‘economy’ based on theft-without-end. Gosh: that’s an ‘economy’??? – doesn’t look like one to me… not in any sane sense of ‘economy’ that I’ve ever heard of, anyway… So why not say so? – before we really do all end up in drowning in this bullshit?

Sigh.

In that old fable of ‘the Emperor has no clothes’, it’s a naive kid that unknowingly calls everyone’s bluff, by saying the truth about what he see. But I’ve come to realise that in reality it isn’t some innocent kid: it’s a grumpy old toad like me. Which means that sometimes – often, perhaps – some people ain’t gonna like what I say about what I see. Too bad. Sorry, ’bout that, but there ’tis: there are only two choices here – it’s either be honest, or don’t bother, and from now on I’m a lot clearer about which one of those two I need to pick.

One thing I won’t do is put anyone else down. I’ll challenge the bullshit whenever I see it, and challenge hard about it at times (and expect others to challenge me about that, too): but it’ll always be about the ideas, the thinking, the action – not the person. I promise you that. So if you find yourself ‘taking it personally’ about something I’ve said, please look closely at yourself first, and before you come out all-guns-blazing at me – because it’s in that ‘taking it personal’ that you’re most likely to learn the most, and most likely to find out who you truly are.

Anyway, down to it. That’s the plan, sort-of. And yes, there’s a lot to do – and a lot to talk about with you, too, if you wish?

You what? “Say no to women’s rights” – you’re kiddin’ me, right? What kind of misogynistic claptrap is this…?!?

I’ll admit it: I’m being deliberately provocative here. (Did get your attention, though, didn’t it?  And don’t forget I did warn you that what I’m doing these days could be a lot more challenging for many folks? – well, this is what that looks like.  )

So cool it, okay? Calm down. It’s almost certainly not what you might think I’m saying. And don’t panic: ultimately this is more about a practical design-issue in ‘big-picture’ enterprise-architectures than about anything else. Serious, sure: but not misogynistic. Honest.

It’s true that there are specific problems around all closed-category ‘rights’ such as purported ‘women’s rights’ and the like – and I promise I’ll come back to those later. But that isn’t the real point here anyway. The real point is this: the whole concept of ‘rights’ could well be one of the most disastrous mistakes that humans have ever made. And we need to find a way back out from that mistake if we’re ever to achieve some kind of sustainable society.

In terms of well-meant stupidity, the notion of ‘rights’ is right up there with the toffee spear [thank you Terry Pratchett!] and the lead balloon: it doesn’t work, it’s never worked, in fact can’t work, because its cause of failure is built right into its very roots. Scrambled misunderstandings and misuses of the notion of ‘rights’ represent a huge failure-risk, right at the roots of all of our current ‘really-big-picture enterprise-architectures’. And to be blunt, the concept of ‘rights’ is so riddled with calamitous unintended-consequences that we really need to remove it, totally and permanently, from every aspect of every law in every land.

An assertion to which, at present, you might well disagree.

Which is fair enough, of course.

But perhaps allow me to explain?

(And yes, as usual, this is going to be a bit long… but I think you’ll find it worthwhile.)

Read more…

When I said I was moving on, in the previous post ‘Time for this on toad to move on‘, yes, I was serious: I’m moving out of mainstream ‘enterprise’-architecture.

Am I giving up? No, not at all.

Am I actually leaving the entire enterprise-architecture domain? Nope. (Sorry to disappoint a few folks there, but you’ll just have to put up with that. )

So what exactly am I doing, then?

All I’m doing here, metaphorically speaking, is that I’m moving along the road a bit: a few metaphoric houses up the road, if you like. Similar sort of work to what I’ve always done, in many ways, but a much bigger picture this time. A much bigger picture. I’m not going to be looking (much) at the ‘enterprise’-architecture of some small bits of detail-level IT any more: I’ll be looking at the ‘enterprise-architecture’ of the whole darn planet…

Arrogant sucker, ain’t I?

In a way, yeah, of course it is, to say something like that. But if you look around on this blog and elsewhere, in effect that’s what I’ve already been doing, for years. All that’s really different now is that I’m making it a bit more explicit.

And to be blunt, looking around a bit, it really does feel as if I’m one of the few people anywhere who has a freakin’ clue about what’s really going on out there (answer: an MQ-9 mythquake [kind of like a worldwide Richter-9 earthquake, only worse]), what chance we have to stop it (answer: none at all), what won’t work (answer: just about everything we might think of as ‘normal’ or ‘business-as-usual’), and what might work (very-tentative-suggested-answer: something on the lines of a responsibility-based service-oriented enterprise model for a global economics, with systematic eradication of any concept of possession – including all concept of ‘rights’ – and total restructure of every possible aspect of politics at every level. In other words, just a few minor changes here and there… ). Seems like there might be a real need, then, for someone with my kind of background in futures, social-dynamics, skills-development, creativity, complexity, innovation, sensemaking and strategy, across a whole swathe of different companies, climates, cultures and continents. Oh, and there’s also enterprise-architectures, of course: reckon that might possibly be useful, too.

Yes: a real big need for that.

Kind of a big anti-want for it, though.

A very big anti-want.

Oh well.

But no problem, really. Do I think I can make a living out of it? Nope, of course not: I’m not that crazy. But I’m not making any kind of viable living out of enterprise-architecture, either, so what’s the difference? As long as I can pay my way somehow in this increasingly-insane ‘economic system’, that’s all I’ll need. And given that I’ve survived somehow for all these years, without ever having suffered the indignity of being a so-called ‘permanent’ employee, I reckon I’ll manage to keep going for a while yet. Somehow. Doesn’t really matter that I don’t know how: the way things are going, pretty soon no concept of a ‘plan’ is going to make sense any more, so perhaps I’m just getting in early to beat the rush?

Yeah, sure it’s lonely at times: I don’t have any real support at all, no family, no partner since literally decades ago, and at my age pretty unlikely ever again. Good: it means that there’s no-one else to get hurt on my behalf if I screw things up.

Sure it’s scary, desperately insecure: I don’t even have a home of my own any more. Good: nothing particularly to lose, then; nothing of that kind that can be used as leverage against me. And I can just up-sticks and go anywhere that I’m needed. Easy. (In principle, anyway… )

I’m useless at organising anything, events, stuff like that. Good: instead of desperately pretending that I can do everything myself, let other people do that stuff instead – they’re much better at it than I’ve ever been or ever will be. Just do my part of the work, and let others get on with theirs. Simple. (Interesting challenges on trust, of course… )

Turn every obstacle into an opportunity. Live this stuff that I’ve been talking about: rather than ‘making a living’, much better to go for ‘making a life’.

Crazy? Sure. Of course it is: never said it wasn’t. But then I come out of a family-background with a long anarchist-style tradition (of the more constructive if occasionally-quixotic Quaker variety, rather than the brainless bomb-throwing kind), and it’s about time I put those principles into real-world practice. Time to give something back – especially as, at age 60, I probably don’t have that many years left in which to do so. That fact matters, a lot. It also brings its own rather interesting sense of urgency…

So what does all this mean, in plain, ordinary, everyday terms?

Various things I won’t be doing:

1. I won’t do any more work here on detail-layer analysis of IT-oriented ‘enterprise’-architecture such as TOGAF or Archimate (unless anyone specifically asks me for an opinion or whatever).
2. I won’t be presenting myself for any more contract-work as an ‘enterprise-architect’. (I’ll still be available to do spot-work commercial consultancy or training for most types of EA, in just about any industry that isn’t finance, banking or insurance – but I will expect to get paid for that, every time.)
3. I won’t offer any more ‘free’ advice on enterprise-architecture or whatever to people who can darn well afford to pay for it. (I’ll still be more than happy to help anyone in any other way – especially any of the upcoming ‘new generation’ of enterprise-architects.)
4. I probably won’t be going to any more ‘enterprise’-architecture conferences, not least because I won’t be able to afford it (unless someone pays at least my expenses, of course).
5. I won’t pander any more to people who to me seem arrogant, bullying, unwilling to think, and otherwise acting in an asinine or irresponsible manner (and yes, there’s been a lot of them I’ve put up with way too often over the past few years…)

Various things I will be doing:

1. I will be doing a lot more research and exploration on ‘big-picture’ themes, developing new types of tools and techniques to tackle those issues in a much more constructive way than as at present; and working with others to develop new toolsets and training-materials for these needs. (It’d be nice if someone else paid for some of that work, but being realistic I wouldn’t expect it, unless anyone else that I’m working with is getting paid for it too.)
2. I will be doing various types of consultancy-work with non-profits, citizen-groups and other organisations that are reaching towards a more constructive world. (Again, it’d be nice if I got paid to do some of that, but I’d only expect it from commercial organisations or government bodies, who should be able to afford to subsidise some of that other work at least.)
3. I will show the EA community and others how to apply those ideas, tools and techniques, within the conventional business context, such as with Enterprise Canvas and the like. (It would likewise be nice if sometimes people would at least offer to pay some of my expenses for doing this, but I do acknowledge that there are too many of us already in this same boat that I am with regard to ‘real-EA’.)
4. I probably will be going to a wide variety of conferences and other gatherings on broader-scope societal-change topics. (As ever, the real limit here will be my probable near-nonexistent income: so if you really want me at your gathering, please do find some way to subsidise my travel-expenses at least.)
5. Much of my work and writing will be a lot more ‘political’ and challenging for a lot more folks: in which case, sorry, but that’s just too bad, because none of us can afford to tolerate outright irresponsibility and abuse any more. (I am very clear about what is and is not abuse in the social context, by the way: see the ‘manifesto‘ on that, from my book Power and Response-ability.)

So that’s it: getting down to work in a different garden – a garden that’s a rather better fit, than that of current mainstream ‘enterprise’-architecture, for this admittedly somewhat-strange kind of toad.

Comments / suggestions / requests, anyone?

Strange things, metaphors: they kind of have a life of their own sometimes…

My mother tells the story of the first house she and my father lived in, some small place way up in the north of England somewhere, back when my elder brother was still a babe-in-arms. The garden they’d inherited there was an overgrown tangle, and they didn’t have much of a clue about gardening, but it seemed a friendly sort of place. It even had its own toad, hiding in the humid dankness underneath a sprawl of strawberry-creepers that had crept in from under the fence from next-door.

It didn’t take long to see why the toad was there. Next-door’s garden was regimented, ordered, everything under control, just so. And all a bit sad, because nothing was thriving there. Beneath all that would-be perfection, the strawberry-patch was a mess of slugs and snails, stunting all the growth; what few fruit were left were all tiny. Yet over on my parents’ side of the fence, those same plants were producing a lush spread of abundant greenery, enough strawberries to keep a grocery going all on its own – and one very happy toad, who’d made very sure that there was not a single slug to be seen.

My mother realised what was happening in the next-door garden, and even offered to send ‘their’ toad over there. But the neighbour was adamant that she wasn’t having “that disgusting creature” in her perfect space: no way! And continued to fret over the fact that her once-imagined idyll was indeed dying…

Hence interesting that I’ve been writing about ‘the toad in the road‘, because I guess that’s what I am myself right now, in this garden we call ‘enterprise architecture’. A toad in the road: right idea, wrong place. Right idea for somewhere, I’d hope. But wrong place for here-and-now. Oh well.

Yeah, enterprise-architecture. You know, this could be a really nice garden? Especially if you got rid of most of this mess of concrete, and let those tired plants in their cracked concrete tubs get their roots down into the dirt at last. Plenty of potential and all that: to get the water flowing again, you might have to take a stick of dynamite to that ugly-looking paddling-pool that the last lot of kids built for themselves, over in the corner called ‘IT-centrism‘, but hey, it’s all here. Why not do it?

You’d wondered where all the wildlife went, but can’t you see there’s not much that can thrive in this kind of desert? A few bugs and wood-lice and a lizard or two, perhaps, but that’s about it. If you want it to work, perhaps plant a few things that can actually grow here: get a bit of shade going an’ all that. There’s a few plants of my own that might grow well here too, if given a halfway-decent chance: the Enterprise Canvas, perhaps, or that notation-agnostic metamodel; or maybe even a bunch of ideas about value-trees, about the service-oriented enterprise and the structure of management – kinda strange-looking at first, I know, but they really do work in this kind of climate. Only a suggestion, of course: it’s your garden, after all.

I’ll have to admit, though, that this isn’t really my kind of place that you’ve got here. Partly my fault, perhaps: I do know I’m kind of an Outsider – always have been, I guess – though I really have tried, I promise you. It’s just I really can’t cope with all the broken-down bits of machinery parked all over the place, and the possessiveness that still pervades everything: they do kinda get in the way all the time. And a bit too grey, too cold, too lifeless: too corporate, I suppose you could say? I’m gettin’ old, I s’pose: I need somewhere that’s a bit more comfortable with having real people around the place, a bit more aware of the anarchic nature of, well, nature itself? I guess I could do with a bit more of the bigger picture, too: and I don’t mind all those mythquakes that we can see coming down the road a ways, though I know they do worry some other folks a lot.

I’ll still be around, of course: if you need me, you know where to find me. And I’m always happy to drop by in your garden – especially if you find a way to bring it more back to life again.

But yeah, I gotta face the facts: this kind of ‘enterprise’-architecture garden ain’t no place for the likes o’ me – and out here at present I’m just another toad in the road.

So it’s “goodbye and thanks for all the slugs”, I guess? – because it seems like it’s time for this old toad to be a-movin’ on.

An interesting follow-on this afternoon from the themes of the previous post, ‘Rethinking the architecture of management‘.

I was wandering around down town, doing the shopping. Outside this rather nice old traditional-style grocer’s shop, there’s a mob of 20-something students – Swiss, apparently – from the local ‘English as a Foreign Language’ college. Their lecturer is expounding about this shop, telling them in his somewhat condescending upmarket voice that it’s where they ought to buy real English food (??) to take home, and so on. Then he says:

If you see schoolboys walking down the road here wearing purple blazers, they are from the Royal Grammar School. They are the elite, the cream. At age 11 they have to take a special examination in mathematics and English, and only two percent pass that exam.

It’s kinda interesting to apply a services perspective to that assertion. All that the exam tells us is that it selects for ability in mathematics and native-language. Which means that those pupils will, in later life, probably be well-suited to doing tasks that deliver the kinds of services that make good use of those abilities. But that’s all that it tells us. Since every service is ‘just another service’, there’s nothing in there – nothing at all – that indicates that every one of those young students should therefore be described as ‘the elite’.

In service-architecture terms, everywhere and nowhere is ‘the centre’ of the enterprise, and every service is necessary to the viability of the enterprise, hence it makes no sense to describe any category of services – or the people who deliver those services – as ‘the elite’. (Individuals, yes, perhaps; a specific category, no.)

In short, the only reason why those students with that specific set of (proto)-skills in that location would be called ‘the elite’, is because people who are like them and have similar skills want to believe that they themselves are ‘the elite’.

In other words, it’s nothing more than a myth – the kind of circularly self-centric fantasy that’s guaranteed to cause serious dysfunction in a service-oriented enterprise-architecture.

Oops…

And yes, it gets worse! All the way through school, these young students will be told, time and time again, that they are ‘the elite’. That they are entitled to special privilege and special attention because they are ‘the elite’. Which they aren’t, because it’s just a self-aggrandizing fantasy.

Oops…

And wait – yes, it gets still worse! These young people go on to elite universities, elite business-schools, to become elite businessmen, businesswomen. Which they aren’t, because, again, it’s a fantasy.

Oops…

And now, yes, it gets worse again! – because they go on to become ‘the elite of the elite’, the ‘captains of industry’, the managers, who are ‘elite’ because they’re managers.

Yet management is ‘just another service’. There’s nothing inherently ‘elite’ about that set of services at all: every service is ‘just another service’, and every service is, by definition, essential to the enterprise. In a service-oriented architecture, there is no service that is inherently more important than any other: that’s the whole point.

Hmm…

So let’s ask a very simple question – a very difficult, dangerous, politically-explosive question: if every service is ‘just another service’, why is it that as a category, those who deliver the category of services that are called ‘management’ get to control more, and are given more, and paid more – often so vastly much more – than those who happen to deliver a different type of ‘just another service’?

Because as far as I can see it, from a service-architecture perspective, the only reason that they’re paid more is because they purport that they’re ‘the elite’. Which they’re not, because it’s just an arbitrary, self-important fantasy.

A whole load of smoke-and-mirrors to prop up the fantasy, of course – no surprises there. But beyond that there’s nothing of any substance at all: nothing more than a plaintive little chant of “the elite are the elite because they’re the elite”, and kinda hoping beyond hope that we won’t notice how empty that claim really is.

Oops…

Y’know, there might just be a problem there?

—

[And by the way, yes, I did indeed go to that kind of 'elite' school as a child. Which is why I do know, first-hand,  just exactly how vapid, shrill and empty those claims really are... Hey ho...]

What do I do, and how do I do it? What’s the nature of my work, and the methods that I use? And for that matter, why?

That’s perhaps the shortest summary to a request by Anthony Draffin, in a comment to my previous post ‘Not quite bus-pass day‘:

On a selfish note… It’s apparent that the common thread to dowsing, printing and enterprise architecture is your ability to look at a field holistically and apply logical thought to extract inconsistencies and errors, as well as looking at new ways of doing something more efficiently to meet the original aims. That’s a rare skill. Have you given thought to documenting how you go about doing this? While I imagine it’s the application of a number of taught skills, the way you put these together must be far from ubiquitous. Have you considered teaching this? Personally, as a 27 year old, I want to soak up as much of your approach and thought process as you’re willing to offer.

(Warning, this is going to be another (very) long one, mainly because there’ll be several case-studies.)

Read more…

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: the old Hegelian triad. But what’s that got to do with enterprise-architecture and the like?

Quite a lot, as it happens – though we might need to take a detour or two to get there, of course.

One point is that it’s not quite as simple as ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’. In the classic formulation, the antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis: it doesn’t really add anything, and the so-called ‘synthesis’ is then little more than ‘the thesis after we’ve gotten the antithesis to shut up’, which doesn’t add anything much either. All a bit pointless, really.

So to make sense – to get some real value out of it – we need, as usual, to go back closer to the source. And as the Wikipedia page on Dialectic puts it:

Hegel did use a three-valued logical model that is very similar to the antithesis model, but Hegel’s most usual terms were: Abstract-Negative-Concrete. Sometimes Hegel would use the terms, Immediate-Mediated-Concrete.

The formula, Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, does not explain why the Thesis requires an Antithesis. However, the formula, Abstract-Negative-Concrete, suggests a flaw in any initial thesis—it is too abstract and lacks the negative of trial, error and experience. The same applies to the formula, Immediate-Mediated-Concrete. For Hegel, the Concrete, the Synthesis, the Absolute, must always pass through the phase of the Negative, that is, Mediation. This is the actual essence of what is popularly called Hegelian Dialectics.

In other words, the antithesis is not a negation of the thesis, but a challenge to the assumptions on which the thesis is based – which then leads to a synthesis that makes real practical sense. And that starts to look a lot more like enterprise-architecture.

Or, more precisely, in the business context, the three distinct roles of business-analyst, business-anarchist, and enterprise-architect.

Which might need a bit more explanation.

The business-analyst role is well-understood, I think. That’s the ‘thesis’ part of the triad, the Abstract, the Immediate. As the name suggests, it’s all about analysis, often about what can be seen in ‘the Now’, about order, certainty, honing the algorithms, defining the ‘best-practice’ methods for making decisions. It’s very good at enhancing efficiency through careful calculation; very good at doing things right.

The catch is that the real world is not just about efficiency, nor only about doing things right: it’s also about doing the right things, about bringing it all together to enhance overall effectiveness. And with analysis alone, it’s all too easy to create something that is extremely efficient at going off at full-tilt but in the wrong direction – which, in terms of its effectiveness (or lack of it), can easily be worse than doing nothing at all.

Oops…

Which is why analysis alone is not enough.

Which is why we need those other two roles: the anarchist, and the architect.

The business-anarchist role is perhaps the least-understood of the three – certainly the least-popular, anyway. It’s the ‘antithesis’ part of the triad, the Negative, but also the Mediated. One of the key problems for analysis is that it’s entirely dependent on its assumptions: everything within that frame of assumptions would be valid enough if the assumptions are correct, yet analysis has no means within itself to test those assumptions, and make sure that they do indeed align with the real world of “trial, error and experience”. If no-one is willing to question the assumptions – or even admit that they are just assumptions - things can get kinda risky, or worse, very quickly indeed…

That’s a really crucial problem there, right at the core of all analysis; yet unfortunately it’s one that’s evaded all too often in a business context. And that’s especially true where the drive for ‘efficiency’ is allowed to override everything else. So if we’re going to get things to work well in the real world, we need some definite means to face those often rather unpalatable facts. And that’s where the business-anarchist role comes into the picture.

It’s an extremely important role, and also an extremely responsible one, too: namely, challenge every assumption. It’s not about ‘order’, but about ‘unorder‘ (to use Cynthia Kurtz‘s valuable term). It’s about challenging, but it’s not negative, not merely challenging for the sake of challenging: it’s about creating space for mediation, for sensemaking in a deeper, more directed sense. It’s not just about doing things right, but also about being sure that we’re doing the right things, too, making sure that every assumption has a solid basis, so that the analysts can do their job well.

And the architect role is about bringing it all together again. It’s the ‘synthesis’ part of the triad; but it’s also about the Concrete, about making things real, being effective – about doing the right things right in a concrete, practical way. It’s about bringing things together such that everything workswell  together, responsive to change as required, and as a unified whole. Where the analyst takes things apart, and the anarchist takes apart the thinking that takes things apart, the architect brings everything together again, by resolving the fragmentation in new, more effective ways.

Some people seem to think that the architect role is rather abstract. But it’s not abstract at all, because the architect is responsible for bringing everything in scope to real, usable, useful completion in the real world. It’s not abstract: in many ways it’s perhaps the most concrete that anything can get.

And yes, it does indeed all start from the abstract. Sort-of.

Yet the point here is that this is also a triad: thesis, antithesis, synthesis; analyst, anarchist, architect. None of these roles stands alone: each depends on each of the others, always in dynamic tension with each other, dynamic balance: “the Concrete, the Synthesis, the Absolute, must always pass through the phase of the Negative, that is, Mediation”. And yet they’re also distinct and often very different roles. Tricky, that…

One way to resolve the architecture of that architecture is to have just one person doing all of those roles – after all, they’re different roles, not necessarily different people. But that can sometimes be quite a ‘big ask’, because each of the roles does demand different skillsets, different paradigms, even different worldviews – again, somewhat tricky. (It’s true, though, that the real ‘business analysts’ of the 60s, 70s and 80s used to do all of that, and many advocates of ‘design-thinking’ and the like would do much the same now. Most advocates of ‘real enterprise-architecture’, too.) But there are many different ways to do it, of course: “whatever works” is probably the best guideline here.

In a small organisation, or a country that has only a small pool of specialist staff, we might not have much choice, because there simply aren’t enough people around to do all the roles required – that was certainly my own experience in Australia over the past decade or so. By contrast, in a large organisations, we might well have the luxury to have separate jobs for separate roles. But whichever way we do it, we have to make sure that all three roles are adequately covered, are adequately supported, and that they do indeed work together in a unified way.

Analyst, anarchist, architect; thesis, antithesis, synthesis. What part(s) do you play in that triad, within your own work? And what happens if any part of it is missing, or out of balance, within your overall enterprise?

Over to you for comments and suggestions, perhaps?

[Many thanks to Anthony Draffin for the initial Tweet that triggered the idea for this article. ]

Just how much are organisations themselves ‘their own worst enemy’ for the enterprise?

Have been thinking about this one for quite a while, following up on some great conversations with Kevin Smith (of PEAF fame) and Nigel Green (of VPEC-T fame) about Kevin’s concept of Enterprise Debt – an expansion into the whole-enterprise scope of Ward Cunningham’s concept of Technical Debt:

Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite… The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation.

In classic IT-oriented ‘enterprise’-architecture, Enterprise Debt occurs with any ‘quick-fix’ IT solution, or any solution that breaches the architecture guidelines. A lot of ‘shadow-IT’ fits into this category, of course. But exactly as with a credit-card, for example, the ‘debt’ doesn’t matter much if it’s cleared quickly: short-term debt is rarely much of a problem or risk, and if managed well does help us to achieve short-term goals. Likewise for longer-term debt, such as a mortgage or a car-loan: as long as we know that the debt is there, and that we’ve allowed for it and managing it, it’s not a problem. Yes, it’s a risk, but it’s a managed risk, and one that allows us to reach towards our longer-term goals. So, to take the metaphor back to IT-architectures, a large-scale solution that breaches the architecture-principles may indeed be a risk – but it’s probably not too much of a risk if we’re aware of it, are managing it and do have specific plans in place to ‘write down the debt’.

For enterprise-architectures and any of the other non-IT-oriented architectures, we take the same principles, and adapt them to the respective scope to identify and address the overall Enterprise Debt and concomitant risks. It’s really no different to Technical Debt, other than in its scope: the tasks to identify and address it are certainly much the same.

So far, so good. But it’s the hidden debt – the debt that we don’t notice or don’t know about – that can be the real killer here. Because we don’t know or notice that it exists, it keeps on building up and building up in the background, until suddenly the metaphoric bill is presented, and we have little or no way to pay it off. A classic example was Y2K – otherwise known as the ‘short-term thinking bug’ which comes back to haunt us again and again. In that context, the use of two-digit dates was a design decision that was sensible enough given the technical constraints of the time, but whose short-term expediency was never redressed, and came back to bite us big-time… a good example of a kurtosis risk.

In enterprise-architectures and the like, there are many sources for hidden risk of this kind, often quietly building up quite terrifying amounts of Enterprise Debt. Some examples to watch for:

• small ‘knock it up over a weekend’ applications and databases becoming used in business-critical processes [no documentation, lack of links to enterprise standards]
• a database for a single team, developed using office software tools such as MS Access or cloud apps, becoming used across a wider spread [security concerns, database stability in a true multi-user context]
• business-processes continuing indefinitely without review [loss of 'fitness for purpose', high efficiency but low effectiveness]
• anything that depends on or assumes specific silo boundaries or organisational structures [because those boundaries or structures may change at any time]
• anything that depends on a single individual or small team [serious maintainability-risks, risk of inability to review design-decisions]

We can tackle some of this with proper governance that provides an appropriate balance between the competing needs for agility and stability, such as in a ‘backbone’ governance-model. We also need a long-term view – often reaching out into decades, for many types of business-critical information and processes – and strategies and tactics for systematic ‘entropy-reduction‘ in the overall architecture.

To me, this is one of the most important tasks of an enterprise-architecture unit: addressing the issues of the past so as to support the needs of the future.

Yet there’s a really nasty booby-trap here, a huge source of hidden Enterprise Debt, of which we definitely need to be aware at every level, especially at an enterprise-wide scope. It’s a variant of Parkinson’s Law, often nicknamed the Shirky Principle after Clay Shirky’s aphorism: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution“. This is a classic wicked-problem whose symptoms include:

• people whose incomes and identities depend on ‘the problem’ not being resolved [very common in social-work contexts]
• ‘hero’-managers and other ‘fire-fighters’ whose prestige depends on having metaphoric fires to fight [hence have vested-interest against preventive strategies or tactics]

To say this is ‘political’ is an understatement… And unfortunately, by its business-anarchist nature, enterprise-architecture tends to highlight the inherent absurdities of these kinds of situations – which means that, when accidentally exposing this, architects themselves often tend to be attacked, often with extreme ‘irrational’ anger, in a classic shoot-the-messenger ‘defence’.

This does mean, though, that many organisations – especially in the government or non-profit sectors – are actually ‘their own worst enemy’. The people, the processes and even the structures will often in effect act to perpetuate the problem they purport to resolve. Tricky… especially for the enterprise-architects who work in those organisations…

There are some practical options, though, for enterprise-architects unfortunate enough to be faced with that kind of ‘mess’. These include:

• be careful never to describe any of this as anyone’s ‘fault’ – it’s a natural tendency at the systemic level
• use narrative or story-based methods such as SEMPER or Causal Layered Analysis to ‘surface’ the structural issues
• always reframe motivations and requirements in terms of being ‘for‘ something – never ‘against’ something

As enterprise-architects, we have to deal with the painful realities of Enterprise Debt as best we can. But first we have to learn to become aware of it: and warnings such as the Shirky Principle can be a lot of help in this.

Hope this helps, anyway – comments/suggestions, as usual?