avoiding the bimodal disaster - new life for enterprise architecture

Avoiding the Bimodal Disaster

New Life for EA

Jason BloombergPresident

[email protected]

@theebizwizard

Copyright © 2016, Intellyx, LLC

Copyright © 2016, Intellyx, LLC3

About Jason Bloomberg

• President of industry analyst firm Intellyx

• Agile digital transformation thought leader

• Write for Forbes, several blogs, biweekly newsletter the Cortex

• Buy my latest book, The Agile Architecture Revolution


What is Bimodal IT?

• Traditional IT (Mode 1) is slow, focused on reliability over agility, removed from customer

• Fast IT (Mode 2) focuses on agility, takes Agile/Kanban approach, business-centric

• Digital Transformation efforts are driving this splitEveryone agrees this situation is common – the disagreement is

what to do about it

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The Digital Mandate

• The web drove ebusiness reinvention in the 1990s

• Mobile disrupted technology consumption worldwide

• Additional touchpoints exploded the digital challenge

• Now the IoT is layering on further complexity

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What is Digital?

Customer preferences & behaviordrive technology choices

Range of technology touchpoints is exploding

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What about Transformation?

Internal organizational change is necessary to maintain focus on the customer in today’s

digital world

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What is Digital Transformation?

• Customer pressures driving technological and organizational change in companies

• Enterprises rethinking:– How they serve

customers– The role IT plays– How they build & manage

teams– How they innovate

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Today’s Agile Imperative

Organizations must capitalize on disruption to achieve greater innovativeness and resilience in the face of digital transformation priorities

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Gartner’s Advice

• Both modes are essential

• Slow, Mode 1 IT should co-exist with fast Mode 2

• If your IT organization isn’t bimodal, it should become bimodal

Vendors of Mode 1 gear pay most of Gartner’s bills

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Let’s Poke Some Holes…

• Gartner says: Mode 1 IT shouldn’t focus on agility– But: IT must be agile to

support changing end-to-end digital needs of enterprise

• Gartner says: It’s fine for Mode 1 to take waterfall approach– But: waterfall fails over 85%

of the time! The definition of insanity… Ph

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Three Dimensions of Digital Diversity

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• Front to back– End-to-end from the

customer to the systems of record

• Breadth of interaction– Diversity of customer

touchpoints an form factors

• Depth of community– Broad ecosystems of

vendors and services


Let’s Poke Some More Holes…

• Gartner says: Mode 1 should be IT-centric, removed from customer– But: in the digital world, everyone

must focus on the customer• Gartner says: Mode 1 governance

should be plan-driven, approval based, while Mode 2 governance is empirical, continuous, & process-based– But: traditional approaches to

governance will either slow everyone down or lead to Shadow IT issues

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What About Governance?

• IT governance should focus on security, compliance, and alignment with business goals generally– Slow processes for enforcing

slow policies the “scar tissue” holding back agility & innovation

• Dividing security & compliance into “slow” & “fast” a recipe for vulnerabilities & breaches

Security & compliance must be comprehensive to be effective

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But Wait, There’s More…

• Separating slow, “dull” IT from fast, “interesting” IT– Everyone wants to be on

the interesting side!– Leads to morale issues– Very difficult to recruit

new people for “dull” IT

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Big Mistake: Shifting Digital Away from IT

• Leads to digital efforts disconnected from IT

• ‘Legacy’ systems of record act as limitations

• No effective cooperation between Digital & IT (CDO & CIO for example) Ph

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Don’t fall for bad bimodal advice!


Follow the Money

• Budgets for separate Mode 1 & Mode 2 efforts can squeeze Mode 1 budgets– Carving off part of IT as the

“business-focused” part leads to poor allocation of funds

– The digital mandate requires customer-driven, end-to-end budgeting

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Shifting the Center of Gravity

Center of gravity is the IT infrastructure

Center of gravity is the customer

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Traditional IT

The Digital World


Essential Tool: Self-Organization

• Traditional hierarchical organizational models limit or eliminate self-organization

• “Skunkworks,” startups, and DevOps organizations work best when self-organized

• Should digital efforts be self-organized?

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Self-Organization Thrives on Disruption

• DevOps-style self-organization essential for agile, innovative digital transformation

• Challenge: scale upself-organizationfrom small teamlevel up to enterprise level

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Innovation hangs in the balance


The DevOps Mentality

• Self-organized teams deploy when ready

• Deployments are increasingly granular

• “Fail fast” mentality

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Resilience becomes part of the culture


The DevOps Virus

• DevOps proves self-organization can scale across organizational silos

• Digital transformation requires end-to-end reorganization

Let DevOps infect your organization

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EA Shouldn’t Be City Planning

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• The more planned a city is, the less agile it becomes

• How do we get the results we want from an unplanned city?

Facilitate & Leverage Self-Organization


The Center of Digital Enablement

• Team responsible for end-to-end best practice across digital effort

• Where the enterprise architects fit in

• Essentially becomes an innovation competency center Ph

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Let CODE self-organize


Getting to ‘Square Zero’

• Digital transformation can’t start in earnest until you clean up the worst messes– Does IT know what apps it’s

responsible for?– Does IT know which systems

talk to which?• Fix what’s broken

– Iteratively– With constant focus on

customer priorities– Avoid being dogmatic

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Rise of Self-Service IT

• Rise of the ‘citizen’– Citizen integrator– Citizen data

analyst– Citizen developer

• IT empowering self-service across the board

The ‘app store’ model for IT services

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“Demise” of Enterprise IT Department

• Out:– IT as cost center– IT as gatekeeper, slowing

things down– IT as owner of all technology

• In:– IT as service

provider– IT as

marketplace– IT as facilitator

of security, governance, and access to systems of record

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The Core Business Goal

AgileDigital

Transformation

avoiding the bimodal disaster - new life for enterprise architecture

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