A few thoughts on business architecture for emergent strategy

 Note: I originally published a version of this post as a comment on the Forrester blog in response to Gene Leganza’s article here , entitled “Aligning to Emergent Strategy". Gene’s article offers an idea for how to approach Business Architecture when business strategy is emergent – that is, when many different business groups’ actions are only recognizable and rationalized as a collective business strategy after the fact. I thought readers here might find this interesting, as well.   

Gene, I think you are on the right track here, and +1 for bringing Mintzberg into the discussion. I like the ending vision of "street level strategy". That said, I think your core recommendation is fatally flawed:

"The solution is to go out and interview all the decision-makers who are making all the short-term decisions that will look two years from now like the strategy of 2009. Yes, all of them."

Two reasons I disagree with this advice:

1. It's not practically achievable in most cases – the world is  littered with strategies that look elegant on paper but can’t be practically executed or utilized… especially in Enterprise Architecture (EA).
2. It doesn't accommodate for the ontological uncertainty so often in play - whether strategies for business architecture are built top down, bottom up, or middle out, it doesn't really matter – they won’t produce the expected results if the business environment is changing faster than strategies can play out in the real world.  (For more on this front, check out my post on Ontological Uncertainty here .)

Instead, I suggest that for large organizations that have a business-IT liaison group and also an Enterprise Architecture group, these be integrated into one organization. The IT people who are responsible for understanding business issues and strategies as they emerge, and also helping business units find innovative ways to apply technology to make the business better, should be the people who drive Enterprise Architecture.

In too many organizations the EA group, even when there is a Business Architecture movement, is isolated from the business within an Application Development or Infrastructure organization, and may only interact with the IT-Business liaison people for project and architecture reviews. That doesn't work well because changes in direction, whether to avoid a cost or capture an opportunity, are often disruptive at that point. Projects may be in flight, egos are on the line, business unit and executive expectations already set, etc.

While people who understand business, technology, AND architecture well enough to flourish in this role are rare, they do exist.

Bottom line: Enterprise Architecture, and business architecture in particular are very valuable organizational capabilities – these resources need to be "pushed out to the organizational edges" where they can best make a positive impact. This optimizes for flexibility and agility to support emerging business strategies in "real time".

My 2 cents. Appreciate hearing other thoughts on this.

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