Enterprise Architecture: What Color is your Hat?

I am neither a WhiteHat nor BlackHat. I am of the new breed known as a GreenHat who focuses on innovative ideas and off-the-wall creativity...



The GreenHat provides an opportunity to look for new answers to the question under discussion. Questions come up all the time where there seems to be only two or three options. A GreenHat loves to expand the possibilities by looking for other ideas.

A GreenHat believes there is always another option you haven't thought of and that maybe the decision can be deferred or made unnecessary by some other action affording the opportunity to think deeper about it.

The BlackHats are known for exploring negative consequences and the worst things that could possibly happen, while the WhiteHats are the polar opposite and stand for altruism. Of course, we got RedHat which is all about what you think in your heart and goes with gut instinct. This of course drives the notion of being open. We also have BlueHats which are into MetaThinking and tend to be from companies such as IBM that push Process over People...

Enterprise Architecture: Stop Outsourcing, Start Open Sourcing...

In 2003, at the industry's first enterprise architecture conference, I stood on stage proclaiming that enterprises should avoid outsourcing and instead concentrate on open sourcing. Let me share some rationale as to how this benefits the enterprise...



In the United States, there are hundreds of Property and Casualty insurance companies, all who are pursuing outsourcing redundant work to destinations such as India, Sri Lanka and Trinidad. Enterprises using this model, have gotten limited savings by taking advantage of rate arbitrage (difference in salaries of workers) but otherwise haven't unlocked sustainable savings.

Within the insurance ecosystem, every single insurance carrier has at least one policy administration system. These systems cost a lot of money to purchase and maintain, yet provide zero competitive advantage. Since much of the insurance industry is regulated, many carriers are paying hundreds if not thousands of people in an outsourcing context to do the same work across companies in order to comply with regulatory compliance.

The possibility in eliminating waste by figuring out ways that the work could be done one time and shared across the industry still continues to be unexplored. What if carriers made their non-competitive systems open source such that they could retain US jobs and share across company boundaries over outsourcing redundant work?

As the United States unwinds from a fiscal crisis and bailing out the insurance industry, with the largest bailout being AIG, did the federal government explore all possibilities in unlocking value?

There are many challenges that would need to be overcome. I can envision the challenge of enterprises suffering from the lack of having a software vendor spoonfeeding them information and instead requiring them to step up and understand for themselves as the first impediment. We can also count on the fact that many industry analyst firms either are incapable of covering this type of activity and would not align with magic quadrant thinking.

I can also see the challenge of executives not understanding that competitive advantage in this scenario as CIO would need to revisit thinking around championing functionality that favors their business over functionality that benefits the entire ecosystem equally, but does that mean we should leave money on the table...

Should your CIO champion Telecommuting...

Collaboration is important, but fiscal responsibility is more important...



The vast majority of CIOs are leaving money on the table. They already know how to achieve productive IT workforces in an offsite manner. Isn't it ironic that you can outsource thousands of jobs to another country but won't trust a local coworker to work from home?

As an Agilist, I believe that the best architectures are built via face-to-face conversations, but even I also acknowledge that collaboration isn't something required every single day in a face-to-face manner. Has anyone ever thought about cultures where executives hide behind the excuse of collaboration and calculated the cost of interruption? The ability for anyone to start a conversation randomly with anyone else at any time is both empowering and self-destructive. Does anyone in their right mind not believe that the potential for productivity can increase if you remove interruptions?

Telecommuting isn't happening on a larger scale for one and only one reason. Let's face the reality as it almost always boils down to a lack of trust! No process, methodology, HR policy and so on will address the root cause. This is a leadership challenge that every organization faces regardless of telecommuting or not.

Has anyone ever considered how much real estate costs on a per-employee basis? Consider the scenario of a thousand person IT shop where people have to work a variety of shifts. You aren't just paying for real estate for IT personnel, but also need to account for additional real estate tied up in parking lots, the cost of security guards and even subsidies provided to feed these people in the cafeteria. If you happen to be located in a metro-area such as Boston, New York, Chicago, etc, you may be paying even more for parking and even putting your employees at risk. Think about the potential and the liability for a woman walking from their place of employment at night to a remote parking lot simply because she wanted to do a good job at work late?

Working from home is not for everyone. There are people who prefer to come to the office because they like the face-to-face interaction with their colleagues and find it easier to communicate and work with others personally rather than virtually. Working from home takes a certain amount of discipline, to stay on schedule. Yes, many employees who work from home, may satisfy the urge to do housework, shopping for Black Friday or watch TV but this shouldn't really matter. If I am an onsite employee, my mind may be thinking about shopping anyway and isn't it better to also people to remove this type of distraction vs letting it linger?

Corporations need to rethink the traditional models of hiring employees. An employee assessment and signed agreements might play a role. The 80-20 rule would certainly be a major factor (20% of the people participating would cause problems for the 80% by abusing their privileges). These 20% are the same ones who continue as problem children even without telecommuting.