Organizational Change Management (OCM) does many things with regard to change initiatives: it raises awareness, manages impact, mitigates resistance, and helps improve adoption. And while these benefits should apply to any change initiative, it is my experience that organizations invest in OCM primarily for technology changes that they expect to have a profound impact on the way they do business.
In previous articles I have attempted to make the case for the role of the Business Architect in Organizational Change Management (OCM) and the role of OCM in driving Business Architecture (BA). Clearly this author believes that BA and OCM are tightly coupled. In this article, I present my view on how BA contributes to business transformation through OCM.
Recently I described the role of the Business Architect in developing a formal Organizational Change Management program. As a result, I had an interesting conversation with a CIO. This CIO had a good understanding of and appreciation for business architecture.
I am often asked to describe the role of the Business Architect; the role is new enough that most Resource Managers do not have a job description on file. Of course, the answer depends on the context within which the question is asked. Sometime I describe what the Business Architect “does.” Other times I describe what the Business Architect “accomplishes.” Yet other times the inquirer really wants to know what “skills” the Business Architect should possess.
As a Business Architect, I look at the business with the same eye for structure that I had when I worked in IT. So the first time a client asked me to develop a formal Organizational Change Management program for them, my thought was “What does a Business Architect know about organizational change management?” Not being one to back away from a challenge, I immediately set out to answer my own question.
The concept of business architecture and the role of the Business Architect did not exist when most people today entered their respective industries; no curriculum was available to prepare anyone for the role and, as far as I know, there is still no certification available for today’s Business Architects. So from a practical sense, what does one look for when hiring a Business Architect or promoting someone to the role of Business Architect?
Every executive and business unit leader has a strategy, formal or informal. Every business unit and IT organization has a set of initiatives designed to achieve some objective. And every initiative was funded based on anything from a formal business case to informal common sense. Most of these initiatives are launched without the benefit of business architecture and some of these initiatives actually succeed in meeting their respective objectives.
So why does the enterprise need business architecture?
I have had the pleasure of leading several Business Architecture Centers of Excellence (CoE). They have not always been called that, however. Centers of excellence have been around for a long time but with regard to Business Architecture they have only been around for a couple of years.
When we formed those centers of excellence we did not have a blueprint or any kind of reference model. What we had was a need to see the big picture of where the business needed to go. We knew the strategy and we understood the goals and objectives.
I have been in this business for 27 years and somehow never managed to do any supply chain work. So when a client asked me what I knew about the Supply Chain Operations Reference-model (SCOR1 ), developed and endorsed by the Supply-Chain Council (SCC), I had to admit “nothing.” So, being a good consultant, I set about familiarizing myself with SCOR: I did some reading, downloaded some PDFs, and attended a workshop. Admittedly, this does not make me an expert. It does not even make me particularly knowledgeable. It only makes “familiar” with SCOR.
Any Business Architect can make a case for developing and maintaining business architecture for any business situation; it is the best way to create agility, align IT with the business, and establish the governance that keeps the business focused on the stated strategy. However, there is one situation that benefits from business architecture that is more obvious than any other – merger/acquisition.
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