One of the deliverables that TOGAF® suggests and which I found very useful in my projects is the Road Map.
In TOGAF® standard is said: “This deliverable is incrementally developed throughout Phases E and F, and informed by readily identifiable roadmap components from Phase B, C, and D within the ADM®”
Why do I find it useful?
Because, already in early stages of project implementation, when there aren’t available many details, it can transfer import information, captures relevant elements by stakeholders feedback, gives a comprehensive timeframe of change initiative, steer the implementation of the project. Moreover, because it doesn’t use specialized notation, it can easily speak to different project stakeholder with different professional background, business and technical people, so this gives the possibility to collect different perspective contributions and engaging the stakeholder since the begin and through all the project over time.
Contents of a project Roadmap can be different, TOGAF® suggests these:
■ Work package portfolio:
— Work package description (name, description, objectives, deliverables)
— Functional requirements
— Dependencies
— Relationship to opportunity
— Relationship to Architecture Definition Document and Architecture Requirements
Specification
— Business value
■ Implementation Factor catalog, including:
— Risks
— Issues
— Assumptions
— Dependencies
— Actions
— Inputs
■ Consolidated Gaps, Solutions, and Dependencies matrix, including:
— Architecture domain
— Gap
— Potential solutions
— Dependencies
■ Any Transition Architectures
■ Implementation recommendations:
— Criteria measures of effectiveness of projects
— Risks and issues
— Solution Building Blocks
The work packages involved, their responsibility, their relationship and how they arranged over time is typically graphically depicted by a diagram. The Roadmap View is a specific type of view that is proposed in the ArchiMate® model to this purpose.
Below I give an example of road map view for a project that aims to migrate to a new version of a department system.
This is what I know …so far.
Archimate® and Business Process Architecture + Business Process Network
The ArchiMate ® Enterprise Architecture, by The Open Group Standard, is a modeling language to express Enterprise Architectures by diagrams. It offers different concepts for viewpoints of specific stakeholders and relationship between a source and target concept to define structural, dependency, dynamic, or other types of interlationship.
My viewpoint is that of a Business Process Analyst and I found in Archimate® elements very useful to express in a synthetic way the Business Process Architecture, that model the hierarchy model of processes, the Business Process Network, where is showed the interrelationships between processes, but also, these two aspects in a unique diagram.
The above Archimate® diagram, using process element and relationship elements, composition and aggregation, shows very well the hierarchy of Maintenance Plan business process (one of the business process of Quality Process), but, also well indicates the relationship between some subprocesses of this macro process.
So, how do you read this diagram?
The Plant Maintenance process is the aggregation of Planned Maintenance and Not Planned Maintenance processes.
Planned Maintenance process can be express in term of Maintenance Plan which is composed by zero or one Event Maintenance Execution processes which in turn is composed by one or more Activity Maintenance Execution processes. An event maintenance execution can’t be exist with a maintenance plan, this has not meaning, and the same you can say about an activity maintenance execution that can exists only in relationship to an event execution case.
The Not Planned Maintenance process can be express in term of Maintenance Request and Extraordinary Maintenance Execution where the cases of these two processes can exists even if one of them doesn’t exist: a request can generate an extraordinary maintenance execution or not, and a case of extraordinary maintenance execution can exists without in relationship with a request.
This is what I know …so far.
Critical Succes Factors
Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), by D. Ronald and Jack F. Rockart, is a method to define and measuring business objective and assure that these are aligned to the organization vision and goals.
When you have identified the organization’s strategic goals/objectives, then, for each of them, you have to ask your yourself, ” which key areas are important to achieve these set of goals?” These are your “candidate” CSFs, then, you have to choose which are relevant for your company and for each one you have to define at least a measurement (KPI) and target. So, based on this method an
Objective = CSF + KPI + target
For example, a strategic goal for an IT company could be: “delivery more high quality software”, then, the candidate CSFs could be:
– Increase training hours for new programmers
– Increase hours to allocate to system test activities
– Retain programming team members
Some KPIs for each of them could be:
– Starting from the new next hires and for all the next year, increase training hours for new programmers to 200 hours
– Starting from the next delivery and for all next year the hours allocated to the system test for each new module release must be at least the 50% of the time allocated to develop the new release
– For this year and for all next year increase the manager training hours to 8 hours for months
Note that the goals could be express in more detailed term, and it could an objectives itself: “each module delivered in this and next year must have at maximum 3 bugs claimed by customer”, but the method to define CFSs and KPIs doesn’t change and permit to have business objectives that decomposition method of goals in objective could not identify immediately.
At least, note that Business Motivation Model defines CSFs and KPIS in different way: “If a metric is particularly important, it may attain a special status and be called a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), or a Critical Success Factor (CSF), or something else. The choice of signifier is unimportant. The enterprise will decide on many different things to be measured2. Each of these measurements will have differing degrees of importance relative to the attainment of some Objective or set of Objectives. The fact that the enterprise has decided to measure, evaluate, and act on the results of the metrics is the important thing.”
To know more on CSF, I suggest to read this short free article: “https://www.12manage.com/methods_rockart_csfs_kpis.html. Subscription is necessary.
I find Balanced Scorecard a great model for every company which want to establish a continuous improvement thrive process and maintain a competitive vantage over a large period.
The term was coined by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review, “The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that Drive Performance”, in January-February of 1992.
The article was followed by a successful book: “The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action”. (Harvard Business School Press, 1996) where they expanded their ideas.
The BSC is an approach to measurements (but not only this) based basically on two ideas:
it’s heathy not to rely too heavily on financial accounting measures but consider a scorecard that takes multiple measures into account, capable to capture different perspectives of the organization
to establish an effective improvement program is necessary to align measures to strategies.
Measures Scorecard
About the measures set to consider to take in account company multiple dimensions, the Balanced Scorecard that considered four types of measures:
Financial Measures, which answer to the question: How Do We Look to Shareholders?
Internal Business Measures: What Must We Excel At?
Innovation and Learning Measures: Can We Continue to Improve and Create Value?
Customer Measures: How Do Customers See Us?
The following figure is a BSC of a hypothetical company discussed in Kaplan and Norton’s January-February 1992 article, “Electronic Circuits Inc (ECI)”.
Some my personal considerations about these examples of measures.
I found Share of key accounts’purchases and Ranking by key account two significant measures in Customer Perspective because these means that it’s have been done a serious effort to identify the customer profile and its needs that is intentioned to satisfy. A company that really has a mission to satisfy the customer needs has to classify and rank its customers responding to the question: am I able, and, a really want to satisfy this kind of customers?
This kind of operation is a serious and respectful approach to the customers that the company intends to serve and also to customers that decide not to serve.
Also, Number of cooperativeengineering effort is significant measure in customer perspective because it means the company’s will to deeply know the business processes and needs of a type of customer. This kind of operation is also useful in Innovation & Learning Perspective because often in the business arena you find customers with innovative and brilliant ideas and just they are looking for a partner to share this idea and strengths to face the challenge.
About measures in Innovation & Learning Perspective, those given in figure above are clear examples of these, but in my opinion good measurements are also: Number of cooperative projects with business partners and Number of startup created by the company and former employees.
Align measures
In their HBR article in 1993 (“Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work” HBR, Sept-Oct, 1993), Kaplan and Norton offered an operative overview of how the Balanced Scorecard could be used to server corporate strategies. The following figure provides an overview of the approach they proposed:
What is argued in this article is that for a serious and effective process improvement, there ought to be a systematic link between the company’s vision and mission, its strategies, its goals and the measures established to determine if the goals are being met or not.
How disagree with this straight approach?
The Vision, Mission and Goal definitions are a mere formal and academic exercise without definition of measurement linked to these, and measurements not aligned to goals, and going backward to the strategies, mission and vision are not only useless but also a great expense of resources, time and money for a company.
I leave you with a Kaplan and Norton thought: “an organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of managers and employees”.
The kind of measures you establish for your organization have a strong influence about the company culture and so on its all employees. If a company strongly, or only, relies on financial accounting measures (these are the more well known and easy to establish) all the organization turn off the light on the important company perspectives: innovation, customer, internal process improvements.
Through these areas passes also the satisfaction of the people who work for the company, because the economic and financial aspects have never been, by themselves, motivational factors, and by the satisfaction of its employees it’s a key factor of the prosperity of every organization.
A really nice surprise this wine produced by Cantine Cifarelli, a winery in my city. The color is a beautiful red, tending towards garnet. The nose is harmonious, intense, with hints of toasted tobacco and grilled bread. In the mouth it has a full, intense taste, an acidity that binds harmoniously with the densely textured tannin. The aftertaste is of dried plums, pleasant and with a medium persistence
Summer in appennines
In deep summer, let your steps and thoughts be guided by the sound of the stream, the songs of birds, the rustle of leaves, the noise of the grass trampled by me or Balù, with which we alternate in choosing the direction in which to get lost.
Business Motivation Model
What is the Business Motivation Model and why it’s important for each company to define it, it’s well explained just in the introduction of OMG® standard that formalize it:
“The Business Motivation Model provides a scheme or structure for developing, communicating, and managing business plans in an organized manner. Specifically, the Business Motivation Model does all of the following:
Identifies factors that motivate the establishing of business plans
Identifies and defines the elements of business plans.
Indicates how all these factors and elements inter-relate.
Among these elements are those that provide governance for and guidance to the business — Business Policies and Business Rules.
The structure of the BMM provides the basis for logical design of easily-constructed tools for storing, cross-referencing, and reporting the elements of business plans for business enterprises.”
In modelling processes, the BPMN standard specifies two general type of sub-process:
Sub- Process (Embedded Sub-Process in BPMN 1.2)
Call Activity (Reusable Sub-Process in BPMN 1.2)
A Sub-Process is a set of activities and it’s fully dependent on one specific parent process, it does not exist as a separate process.
A Call Activity is a set of activities that is possible to call from different processes defined for the organization. Also, it’s independent process and not necessarily it’s activated by another process.
In BPMN standard they share the same shape, a rectangle with rounded corners, except that the Call Activity boundary have a tick line.
Above it showed a model where it used a Call Activity.
The modelled process is a not executable process (it’s used just to gather and specify business process analysis) for Supplier Non-Conformity process.
In Action Plan step the NC Analyzer role defines the action plan to resolve non-conformity and can instantiate no one, one or more activities, each one assigned to an Activity Responsible.
More Activities can be activated by other organization processes, e.g., Customer Claim, Production Non-Conformity and so on. So, during the time, a person can be responsible for different activities each of them triggered by different parent processes, but, to him can be assigned also activities that not necessary born in a context of a parent process, this because the Activity process is just one of business processes defined in business process architecture of the organization.
In modelling processes, Intermediate Event indicates something happens somewhere between the start and end of a process. It will affect the flow of the process, but, will not start or (directly) terminate the process.
In BPMN® standard there are twelve types of Intermediate Events. For each of them is used a circle that must be drawn with a double thin line, and a different icon, placed in the center of the Intermediate Event shape is used to distinguish one from another, based on the kind of trigger associated with it.
Also, there are two ways that Intermediate Events are used in BPMN:
an Intermediate Event that is placed within the normal flow of a process can be used for one of two purposes: to respond to (“catch”) the Event trigger, to set off (“throw”) the Event trigger.
An Intermediate Event that is attached to the boundary of an Activity can only be used to “catch” the Event trigger.
About Intermediate Event placed within normal flow, when a token arrives, one of two things will happen
If the Event is used to “throw” the Event trigger, then trigger of the Event will immediately occur and the token will move down the outgoing Sequence Flow.
If the Event is used to “catch” the Event trigger, then the token will remain at the Event until the trigger occurs
Above it showed a model where I use an intermediate sequence flow.
In this model it’s showed a None Intermediate Event (one of twelve type of intermediate event available in BPMN standard). This kind of Intermediate Event is used when there is no specific trigger for this Event, so it is displayed without a marker.
What is modeled in that diagram?
In Incoming Inspection Control process of incoming goods, when the inspection phase is terminated with a non-conformity, follow a step where a Quality Manager check that non conformity and decide if to open or not a Supplier Non Conformity process, after that, he close the inspection control. So, in this example the Intermediate Event is used to start a new case of process.
Collaboration Diagram is one of the most useful and used BPMN diagram. It is a diagram that models the interaction by two or more participants.
Above there is an example of this diagram.
In that diagram there are all the main elements that compose this kind of diagram.
Participants
In this example, these are the Quality Department of our company, for which we are modelling the processes, and a Supplier of our department.
In BMPN standard each participant is modelled by Pool. This can show the process, with its activities and sequence flow, or it can show nothing of them. In the first case we speak of “white box” poll, in the second case we speak of “black box” poll. We model by black box poll a process external to our organization about which we don’t know anything or when we are not interested in the process performed by that participant.
Message
It’s the message exchanged by the participants that are prepared to send and receive message. In this example this is an email, the Supplier Non-Conformity Report, whit attached the homonymous report attached to it.
In BPMN standard the messages are modelled by Message Flow .
A Message Flow must connect two separate Pools. They connect either to the Pool boundary or to Flow Objects within the Pool boundary. They must not connect two objects within the same Pool.
This is what I know …so far.
Value stream, Capability and Business Process
What is the relationship between value streams, capabilities and business processes?
“Analysis of the value stream leads to identification of the business capabilities that will be required to provide value in each of the steps of the value stream”
“Business processes describe how the business performs, or implements, the given capability, and how capabilities connect to deliver a desired outcome.”
For a good definitions of these concepts and their relationship I suggest these two articles by Mike Rosen:
Instead of asking about the quality of the training, ask about the impact.
All of us know how much important is the training and development for attract and retain employees.
About this topic I suggest you this HBR article, where the part where I completely agree is where is said that the training to be useful must be applied!
Indeed, the important questions about training is: “Instead of asking about the quality of the training, ask about the impact. How should team members apply what they learn? How did they? What blockers might be in the way of them applying it more effectively?”
TOGAF ® – ADM® Phase A – Architecture Vision – Driver/Goal/Objective Diagram – Part 2: Goals
In my first in-depth article and application of the concepts of the enterprise architecture standard TOGAF® [Ref.1] I focused on the first phase, A – Architecture Vision of the Architecture Development Method (ADM®) and I deepen the source of Motivation Concepts: the stakeholders, the drivers and the assessments.
In this second in-depth article, I am going to focus on goals.
Goals are motivations concepts, and the same are the principles, the requirements, and the constraints that we don’t see in this article to leave it brief.
Goals are mains elements of stakeholder viewpoint that leads to the realization of the Driver/Goal/Objective Diagram.
To illustrate this motivation concept I will continue to reference the case study NewComponents[Ref.5], and Archi® [Ref.2] an open source modelling toolkit for creating ArchiMate® [Ref.3] models and sketches.
Motivations Models
In the following figure, taken directly from ArchiMate® 3.1 Specification, I repropose the metamodel that defines the Motivation Concepts:
Fig. 1: Motivation Elements Metamodel
where
the actual motivations, or reasons are: goals, requirements, principles and constraints
the sources of these motivations are: stakeholders, drivers and assessments.
Goals, principles, requirements, and constraints represents answer to the questions WHAT.
Goals and objectives
“A Goal represents a high-level statement of intent, direction, or desired end state for an organization and its stakeholders. In principle, a goal can represent anything a stakeholder may desire, such as a state of affairs, or a produced value.” [Ref.3]
Examples of goals are: to increase profit, to reduce waiting times at the helpdesk, developing new lines of business, moving into EMEA market, Introduce an Incoming Goods Inspection System, Introduce a Supplier Non Conformity System, Introduce a Gauge Management System, Introduce an Asset Maintenance System.
Generally, a goal tends to define long term achievements and is defined qualitatively rather than quantitatively, but, it should focused enough so that the Objectives, that break down the Goals, can be defined for it.
“An Objective is a statement of an attainable, time-targeted, and measurable target that the enterprise seeks to meet in order to achieve its Goals.
Attainable – It is self-evident that Objectives should be attainable. If they are not, the business plans are unrealistic and will likely fail.
Time-targeted – All Objectives should be time-targeted. This means that either an absolute time frame (e.g., “by January 1, 2007”) or relative time frame (e.g., “within two years”) should be included in each Objective. This time frame indicates when the Objective is to be met.
Measurable – Objectives should be measurable. This means they must include some explicit criteria for determining whether the Objective is being met in practice. This criteria may be fairly exacting (for example, “on-time 95% of the time”). At the very minimum, the criteria must provide a basis for making a “yes or no” determination (e.g., “up and running”). Such criteria may be the basis for certain Business Rules, created specifically to compute or derive the relevant evaluation.
This understanding of ‘Objective’ is consistent with the industry’s popular “SMART” criteria that an Objective be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based.” [Ref.4]
So, it can be said that an Objective quantifies a Goal, that is, it provides the basis for measures to determine whether the Goal is being achieved.
Examples of objectives are: by the end of 2022 increase profit by 10%, on or before 30 June reduce waiting times at the helpdesk to 3 minute on average, by the end of this year moving into EMEA market.
When we came to identify and define goals and objectives an import step is to define priority of these. In real situations, the enterprises very often are in face to choose which goals and objectives to pursue at the expense of others.
This phase of prioritization is due, healthy, and useful in the path of implementation of the company strategies. A technique used to compare goals/objectives is on the basis of the their importance and difficulty of achieving them .
An easy diagram like the below can be used as support to the choices:
So, based on the example above, it is easy to decide to retain “7,” “6,” and “4”, because they are accessible and extremely important, and to defer “3” and “5”, because they are not easily accessible and have limited importance. It it will be more difficult to decide about goal “1,” which is important but difficult to attain.
Defining the enterprise Goals set is very important because these are strategic choices identified to satisfy assessments concerning identified internal or external enterprise business drivers.
“Starting with the goals (why-questions) means, that we first try to identify the root cause(s), the purpose, the inner motivation to do something. The Goals View can be a starting point for each change initiative.” [Ref. 5]
This Goal-Driven Approach (GDA) focuses on goals first before any actions are to be taken and permits that all enterprise architecture project actions intrinsically addresses the goals. In other words, this approach enable that every choice is aligned and goes towards the direction of attainment of enterprise goals.
This approach helps to define in more detail the problems and if we do so we are in way to better understand the solutions and how to achieve them just in the first phase of change initiative.
Also, this helps to emphasize, to full understand the value that the change initiative wants gain. This gives a clear direction, an evident and strong justification and support to the motivation of company people engaged, at different level, in implementing project activities and doing day-to-day activities.
In ArchiMate®, the enterprise architecture graphic modeling language, the Goals and Objectives are represented by the following notation:
Fig. 3 Goal Notation
Driver/Goal/Objectives Diagram and Catalog
Typically, the goals are already known previous the Architecture Vision phase, often they are expressed in informal mode, but in this phase and in the following, the Business Architecture phase, these are analyzed, structured hierarchically and a formalized giving a priority level and definition in term of attribute.
A goal can be break down in sub-goals, so that they can be better understood, and down until to identify objectives, that must be defined in SMART terms, and that they have to be also assignable to identified person.
In fact, “Most of the time, goals are corporate-level goals, in other words, goals are frequently assigned to theentire enterprise, while objectives are allocated more specifically to people. Where they are assigned toorganization units or business processes, the responsible element is always clearly identified (theprocess owner, the organization unit manager).” [Ref. 6]
Finally, we can say that Driver/Goal/Objective diagram is mainly a breakdown hierarchy that starting from drivers and assessment decompose goals down until are identified low-level, SMART and assignable objectives.
Here below a clear description of this diagram [Ref. 6]:
Fig. 4 Drivers/Goals/Objectives description
The Driver/Goal/Objective catalog is equivalent than the diagram and could be defined in alternative or it could be compiled to report details that are not possible write in homonymous diagram. It could contain the following information:
Name
Description
Organization Unit Owner
Driver/Assessment
Goal/Objective Indication
Father Goal/Objective
Measure
Target value
Current value
NewComponents: Driver/Goal/Objective diagram
Based on what has been said so far, we can draw the possible Driver/Goal/Objective Diagram in the enterprise architecture project of NewComponents.
Below is how the diagram could be designed to respond the Effective and Efficient Incoming Goods Control driver identify for this company:
Which are the Most Useful ArchiMate Diagram Types?
This is the question that Eero Hosiaisluoma try to answer in his clear article: “The Most Useful ArchiMate Diagram Types”
He declares that the most useful diagram types are as follows:
1. Motivation View – to define the value and meaning of the development target (with ArchiMate Motivation elements). 2. Layered View – to define all the relevant elements into one overall view (with elements from different layers and aspects) 3. Interaction View – to illustrate information flows between the actors or processes or applications.
These diagram types can be used for analyzing the following questions:
TO WHOM this is meaningful?
WHY this is important and valuable, why we need this?
WHAT exactly needs to be achieved?
HOW we can get this, or how to go there?
WITH WHAT building blocks this can be implemented? What are the behavioral and structural elements, and how they interact with each other?
I particularly agree with him when he says: “Starting with the goals (why-questions) means, that we first try to identify the root cause(s), the purpose, the inner motivation to do something. The Goals View can be a starting point for each change initiative.”
This Goal-Driven Approach (GDA) focuses on goals first, before any actions are to be taken and permits that all diagrams, that are subsequently defined, intrinsically addresses the goals.
This approach helps to define in more detail the problems and if we do so we are in way to understand better the solutions and how to achieve them.
Also, this helps to emphasize and to full understand the value that the change initiative wants gain, giving a clear direction, an evident and strong justification and support to the motivation of company people engaged, at different level, in implementing project and doing day-to-day activities. Enjoy the reading: https://www.hosiaisluoma.fi/blog/useful-archimate-diagram-types/
“5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently”
I found very interesting this article by Ron Friedman in Harvard Business Review.
In the article is said that when it comes to building extraordinary workplaces and high-performing teams, researchers have long appreciated that three psychological needs are essential: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Desire to feel connected to others, has always been the trickiest for organizations to cultivate.
The study presented in the article revealed that high-performing teams do differently manly five key things, all of which highlight the vital role of close connection among colleagues:
High-Performing Teams Are Not Afraid to Pick Up the Phone
High-Performing Teams Are More Strategic With Their Meetings
High-Performing Teams Invest Time Bonding Over Non-Work Topics
High-Performing Teams Give and Receive Appreciation More Frequently
High-Performing Teams Are More Authentic at Work
Also, I found very interesting the section where is explained why would expressing negative emotions at work yield more positive performance: “It’s because the alternative to expressing negative emotions is suppressing them, and suppression is cognitively expensive. It involves expending valuable cognitive resources attempting to hide emotions from others, leaving less mental firepower for doing the work”.
In sum, the study suggest: “…that creating a high-performing workplace takes more than simply hiring the right people and arming them with the right tools to do their work. It requires creating opportunities for genuine, authentic relationships to develop”. In my opinion to achieve this goal is fundamental the role of management: it should genuinely believe in genuine, authentic relationships to develop in workspace.
