Some design is just bad.  Doors that you can’t tell if they push or pull to open, microwave oven buttons, the Ford Pinto, the list goes on and on.  Bad design is easy to spot and often easy to fix, but some design is really good and still fails…why???  Many companies have learned that that having the best products isn’t enough; today it is all about the end-to-end experience.  Delivering exceptional experiences should become the mantra of business architects everywhere and the best way to do this is to partner with a group already skilled at doing this: User Experience (UX) designers.  In this installment of Lessons from the Field, I would like to demonstrate how business architects, working closely with UX designers, can help deliver exceptional experiences.

Exceptional Experiences

So, what makes an experience exceptional?  This of course varies from person to person, but here are some common examples:

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” – Winston Churchill

You don’t need me to tell you that the pace of disruption and change in business is already immense and is accelerating. The Wall Street Journal several years ago published an interesting comparison of how long it takes for a new product to reach 50 million users. Updates to this have been popping up all over social media recently that demonstrate the acceleration:

Picture this: you get this fabulous opportunity to work with a business on bringing its new strategy to life. They share with you the fanciest PowerPoint slides you have ever seen describing their vision, mission, and the tremendous opportunities they see in the marketplace and how uniquely they are positioned to gain market share. You dive right in and open up your business architecture toolbox and get to work. You map out their strategy, document the business model, create a capability map and conduct a maturity assessment. Life is great and the energy level is high. As time goes on, though, you start to get an odd feeling that something isn’t right. You find pockets of disengagement across the organization. You are finding a growing number of major capability gaps. There are parts of the organization you really can’t figure out what they do. And worst of all: you can’t figure out why anyone would really choose to buy from your company versus a competitor.

2017 may go down as the year of ransomware, rogue software that infects a computer, scrambles the data, demands you pay money to get access back, and eventually destroys your files. In May the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack affected more than 200,000 users in over 150 countries and disrupted operations for numerous corporations. This was followed in June by a new variant of the Petya ransomware, with this cyberattack impacting over 12,000 devices in around 65 countries, along with some high profile corporations. While most ransomware still targets consumers, what is notable for business architects is that according to Kaspersky Lab, ransomware attacks on businesses increased 11x in 2016. So what is the role of a business architect regarding cybersecurity, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning? I honestly have no idea. In the spirit of never letting a serious crisis go to waste, let’s see how we can help. Cybersecurity Framework

The other day my daughter said, “Dad, I really don’t understand what your job is.” Many days I am not so sure either. I thought about saying, “I help to align strategic objectives and tactical demands,” but knew that wouldn’t lead us anywhere. Usually I answer this question by saying I go to meetings and read e-mails for a living, but that joke is getting old. This time I told her that I will explain it to her when she grows up. Part of the reason this has always been a hard question to answer is that my role seems to shift month to month and initiative to initiative. This is also part of the reason I love what I do. I believe that adaptability is a key trait exhibited by good architects, but saying you are adaptable and actually being adaptable are two different things. So what are some of the key ways to demonstrate your adaptability? Don’t get into turf wars, bring the right temperament, and think big, or rather act big.

Avoid Turf Wars

The other day I was contemplating what business capabilities were enabled by connecting a toaster to the Internet of Things. (Yes, this really exists. And no, I didn’t come up with an answer.) Clearly technology is having an impact on every aspect of our lives and many business architects now find themselves in a strange place: after years of trying to distance themselves from IT and technology and be seen as part of the business, now the business is trying to embrace technology and understand what a digital transformation could mean to their business model. So what is a business architect to do? Adapt!

Paradigm Shift

When people ask me what I do for a living I often joke that I manage chaos and keep people aligned.  In other words, I deal with the politics that plague every organization.  It feels like I spend the majority of my time clarifying what was actually said, convincing people that they agree with each other, and just trying to keep things moving forward.  Some refer to this as herding cats.  A key skill for a business architect is political savviness, meaning the ability to successfully get things done in a maze of egos, competing priorities, and organizational bedlam.  So how do you develop political savviness?  Let’s look at this from two different perspectives. 

Science

hot button word – Noun
i. a word that triggers a highly charged emotional or political response