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  • The Exploration of the Project Delivery Process

    The Exploration of the Project Delivery Process

    The enterprise architect walked through the architecture documentation that he had produced together with the head of departments in the AEC-company, and he correctly identified the need for him to look into this important process as-well.

    For most Architecture, Engineering and Construction companies most of the services and products delivered are delivered through a rigorous project delivery process, since costs can increase significantly if the methodology and planning processes are not dealt with correctly.

    The project delivery process does in the context of the AEC-company handle everything from project methodology, capacity planning, allocation of resources, project planning, project execution and project documentation. The insights the enterprise architect has at this point in time are not thorough enough for producing the relevant planning for the digital transformation of the AEC-company. Consequently, the enterprise architect will have to conduct a similar clarification process for engaging with the subject matter experts with the current findings and then elaborating based on the data how the AS-IS state is and how the TO-BE state should be for the process:

    1. The first workshop is about getting answers for specific questions.
    2. The second workshop is about getting insights on the business applications and the dataflow.
    3. The third workshop is to present the TO-BE version of the process design including its usage of business applications.

    For the first workshop the enterprise architect desires to ask the below questions:

    • When making a planning a new project what applications do you make use of?
    • Who will you be contacting and how do you do so?
    • Where do you store the project planning, capacity requests, and customer data?
    • How do you create an overview of ongoing projects and capacity?

    The primary scope for the enterprise architect is to clarify the business applications (Application Components), the business interfaces and subsequent application interfaces needed in order for the business process to be designed to deliver on the goals that must be realized as part of the business strategy (Course of Action) “Partnering for Green Construction”.

    The enterprise architect designs a high-level view of the “Project Delivery Process” for the TO-BE process beforehand, which makes the below view of the process a premature, and it will likely be updated after workshop 1 and 2:

    Line of Sight

    After the enterprise architect has designed the above view of the TO-BE (Preliminary) process design for the project delivery process, then it is possible to interact with the below line of sight for the specific application components in the model. The below illustration is created by filtering on elements (Application Component) and filtering of viewpoint to “Application Structure”:

  • The Exploration of the Bid Process

    The Exploration of the Bid Process

    The enterprise architect, armed with the documentation produced during the preparations for the preliminary workshop, then calls for the first, second and third workshop. During this the enterprise architect realises that there are certain perspectives that he would have to understand before moving forward with the workshop. 

    During the workshop he would have to approach the subject matter experts with an open mindset. This means that he would ask about how they work together and what tooling (Application Components) they are using in order to get the major steps in the business process working. This would require a set of open questions such as:

    • When making a bid for a new project what applications do you make use of?
    • Who will you be contacting and how do you do so?
    • Where do you store bid, project and customer data?
    • How do you create an overview of ongoing bids, project and customer data?

    The above questions are to lead to the overview of  business applications in scope and how the dataflow works as of today. The background information that the enterprise architect produced based on the workshop with the head of departments can be used as a source of inspiration and can be shared with the stakeholders before the meeting takes place, so they have the opportunity to provide relevant information during the workshop.

    The second workshop would be more about the exact business interfaces and the subsequent identification of needed integrations for supporting the dataflow among the business applications in the AEC-company. The secondary purpose of this workshop is to give the business stakeholders the necessary help to come up with improvements in the form of the TO-BE process. A bit prematurely, it could look like the below illustration, but it would have to be clarified:

    The third and the last workshop is to ensure alignment among the stakeholders on how the processes should be digitally supported. In between these workshops the enterprise architect will engage with the business stakeholders to get their viewpoints and refine the models and the recommendations.

    Line of Sight

    The enterprise architect has now the application view of how the business process likely would be like after the transition architecture will take place for the bid process:

    From the bid management capability view a lot of new information is disclosed:

  • Transition Architecture

    Transition Architecture

    The enterprise architecture of the AEC.company has now the overview of the as-is architecture of the AEC-company, and the enterprise architect revisits the high-level analysis that he conducted for the core business processes and the capabilities of the AEC-company, since this high-level analysis identified that the business strategy “Partnering for Green Construction” leaves some gaps that will have to be addressed by the enterprise architecture function and by the IT-department in the AEC-company in general:

    • The first gap is the lack of knowledge of how to digitalise the core processes in the AEC-company.
    • The second gap is the lack of knowledge of needed operating model improvements.
    • The third gap is the lack of knowledge of business process reengineering.
    • The fourth gap is the lack of an IT-strategic plan.

    These gaps will have to be dealt with in a coherent manner, since it would make no sense for the AEC-company to develop any deliverables of the IT-strategic plan without prior knowledge of how deliver better digitalisation of business processes, how to handle the operating model for the AEC-company in the 2030 plateau, where the business strategy “Partnering for Green Construction” will be delivered. The enterprise architect thought for a while and he realised that he would have to begin preparing workshops to capture the relevant information for the AEC-company to design the relevant architecture strategy and IT-strategy (Course of Action) for the AEC-company to succeed with the business strategy (Course of Action) known as “Partnering for Green Construction”.

    In order for the enterprise to assist the Chief Technology Officer and the IT-department filling the gaps, then he realises that he will have to call relevant stakeholders to a workshop. In this case he reuses the information he collected from the original interview of the heads of departments that he will have also to include the subject matter experts in the individual departments to gain the insights in the workshops. He decides to conduct three workshops for each of the core processes that earlier on have been identified as relevant to improve as part of the strategy, which also will improve the capabilities. The first workshop for each of the core business processes will be about the introduction of what is to be dealt with during the first workshop and the subsequent two workshops, and usually the first workshop is about identifying what is done today, and what is not working according to the subject matter experts. The second workshop will be about how the core business process looks like today and how it could be looking after it has been improved. The last workshop and final workshop for each of the core business processes will be like when implemented and what IT-systems will be when the core processes have been implemented.

    Since this approach is somewhat new for the stakeholders in the AEC-company, then the enterprise architect will have to come up with some suggestions up-front to inspire the subject matter experts during the workshops.

    The first process and subsequent capability that the enterprise architect starts with is the bidding process.

    The bidding process consists of a number of steps and it consists of a number of IT-systems that are used.

    The assumed most critical in these cases are the Office productivity suite since a lot of the communication and organisation of the bids takes place by initiating communication in the relevant departments and teams in the AEC-company.

    The enterprise architect realises that the primary application according to his preliminary analysis shows that Microsoft Office Outlook is to be considered a central business application in the as-is version of the core business process, and it is followed by Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel for the internal use for calculating a bid. Lastly, if the AEC-company’s bid is accepted, then Microsoft Office Outlook and the different business applications from Autodesk comes into play in order to provide the relevant visuals for the different stakeholders at the customer side, when or if this is needed:

    The Line of Sight

    The enterprise architect now has the opportunity to look into what the bidding process consists of:

    In addition to this the enterprise architect has the opportunity to use both the business process view and the application view to see what the business process consists of and how it is served digitally as-is. In practice the top-down approach is preferred for strategic planning (course of actions) and the application view can be used for identifying tactical opportunities for business optimization through better use of technologies. This is what the two below diagrams are showing:

  • Applications and Infrastructure

    Applications and Infrastructure

    The enterprise architect identifies that there is yet another layer to map in order to gain the line of sight on how the strategy is impacted by the current digital infrastructure that the AEC-company makes use of; and the enterprise architect realises that the current mappings so far has focused mainly on the As-Is enterprise architecture of the AEC-company. Nonetheless, as the enterprise architect thought for himself, the journey has to start and end somewhere. The end is the To-Be architecture and in between is the transitional architecture(s). 

    With the As-Is enterprise architecture in mind the enterprise architect begins mapping the AEC-company’s application landscape and puts it to the infrastructure that has been chosen in the past.  The AEC-company makes use of the product suits from Autodesk to produce the construction consulting products, the engineering consulting products, and sustainability consulting products.

    While doing the mapping the enterprise architect begins mapping out the AEC-company’s core business usage e.g., the Microsoft Office productivity suite, the Microsoft based ERP-system, Microsoft Dynamics ERP that is used in combination with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the HR-application suite and the salary management suite. The enterprise architect chooses to map the applications to the infrastructure that the vendors have informed the AEC-company that they are making use of, and in this case the enterprise architect chooses to map the cloud computing devices as devices and after doing so, the enterprise architect maps location to each of the infrastructure devices.

    Line of Sight

    The first illustration provides the enterprise architect with the view of relationships among the objects in the model that shows the As-Is architecture and that supports the engineering consulting product and the construction consulting products.

    The second illustration provides the enterprise architect with the insights into how the infrastructure (Technology layer) supports the sustainability product and the supporting processes of the AEC-company.

  • Products and Applications

    Products and Applications

    The enterprise architect continues his analysis of the AEC-company by continuing the modelling of the information that he collected from the workshop with the head of departments, and by reading through the notes from the workshop the enterprise architect could identify some of the  business applications  used to produce the products. 

    The reason for why the enterprise architect thinks in the terms of business applications and not in the terms of the ArchiMate Language’s use of the terminology is due to business applications are important applications and not “just” applications used for everyday purposes, and in most organisations then the enterprise architect will not be able to keep track of all of the applications used by the organisation. Nonetheless, to ease the communications of the ArchiMate Language the references to application(s) are used.

    The enterprise architect recalls that the AEC-company produces these products today:

    • Construction Consulting.
    • Engineering Consulting.
    • Sustainability Consulting.

    The enterprise architect chooses to visualize the applications by using the ArchiMate element “Application Component”.

    On a side note, then an application can consist of multiple application components, but for this example a business application consists of one application component only.

    The enterprise architect maps the products to the business applications. The enterprise architect identifies that the illustration provides a good basis for knowledge sharing and alignment, and that the AEC-company can make use of to support the IT-strategy of the company and a high-level overview of how digital disturbance can impact the business operations. The below illustration shows the relationship between the products and the business applications:

    The enterprise architect identifies that the products Construction Consulting and Engineering Consulting are supported by the same applications. This is due to the building information modelling (BIM) software capabilities of the applications so these can help with the calculations and the design of the different engineering tasks and with the planning and management of the construction sites.

    The enterprise architect reuses the model on products and processes and added the business applications to the illustration, so it becomes clear for him and other stakeholders in the AEC-company how the capabilities, business processes, products and applications are connected:

    Line of Sight

    The product of Engineering Consulting and how the applications are serving the production of it:

    The product of Engineering Consulting and how the product is realizing capabilities, served by business processes, realizing principles, and how it is served by applications:

    The product of Sustainability Consulting and how it is served by the application Product LCA (Life Cycle Analysis):

    The product of Sustainability Consulting and how the product is realizing capabilities, served by business processes, realizes courses of actions (Function strategies) and realizes principles:

    The product of Construction Consulting and how the applications are serving the production of it:

    The product of Construction Consulting and how the product is realizing capabilities, served by business processes, realizing principles, and how it is served by applications:

    From a capabilities planning point of view the line of sight from the capability “Construction Planning Management” it is visible that there is a portfolio of applications enabling it:

    The above illustration is considered 6 levels below the capability layer in the Archi-tool used to produce the ArchiMate mapping.

  • Products and Processes

    Products and Processes

    The enterprise architect had the opportunity to interview some of the department heads of the AEC-company to learn more about how the core processes of the AEC-company supported deliveries of the products that the company sells currently and in the future as part of the realisation of the company strategy “Partnering for Green Construction”. While interviewing the head of departments the enterprise architect identifies that there are four key processes in scope for the company:

    • The bidding process. 
    • The project delivery process.
    • The invoicing process.
    • The vendor management process.

    While the enterprise architect modelled the relations among these high-level processes, then he began adding the relations among the processes and the capabilities and products, which is illustrated in the below illustration:

    During the interviews with the head of departments it became clear to the enterprise architect that the current processes also would have to be dealt with in order to enable the needed improvements of the capabilities of the AEC-company. The enterprise architect maps the assumed gaps among the core processes and the capabilities. This is illustrated in the illustration below:

    You will see the four core processes have been mapped to four identified capabilities that they support the realization of. The four core processes and the four capabilities have relations to the “As-Is” plateau and all of them have realization relationships (pointing from) to the 2030 plateau. The enterprise architect is visualising that the core processes and capabilities exist today, but they will have to be enhanced as part of the “Partnering for Green Construction” business strategy, which is expected to be completed by the year 2030; and the enterprise architect identifies four major gaps to help enhancing the core processes and capabilities:

    • Knowledge of how to digitalise the core processes.
    • Knowledge of the operating model.
    • Business process reengineering.
    • IT-strategic plan.

    The enterprise architect already has an idea of what would be required before the IT-strategic plan is available to close the gaps:

    • Budget.
    • Guardrails.
    • Roadmap.

    The enterprise architect also realises that there are some knowledge gaps in the organisation that will have to be addressed as part of the implementation of the business strategy and essentially also the IT-strategy; and consequently a lot of clarifications will have to be conducted in order to get there.

    Line of Sight

    The enterprise architect can with his mappings among core (business) processes, capabilities and products see how these are impacting one another.

    The enterprise architect is now able to see how one of the core business processes is linked to two plateaus and must undergo changes:

  • Strategy, capabilities and products

    Strategy, capabilities and products

    The enterprise architect continued his work on sketching out the business strategy of the AEC-company. He decided to do so he could create a line of sight for the company’s CTO. The enterprise architect has begun mapping the business strategy to capabilities, principles, and the capabilities to products that are delivered by the AEC-company to its customers.

    The purpose of having such an overview as part of having an enterprise architecture programme (Please note an enterprise architecture endeavor is not a project) is to provide the overview relevant stakeholders on what the consequences of changes will be. Examples of this could be changes to the business strategy, changes to the business functions (Structure), products, and lastly how this will impact the business applications and digital infrastructure.

    The AEC-company provides three products for its customers:

    • Engineering consulting.
    • Construction consulting.
    • Sustainability consulting.

    Capabilities

    Since the AEC-company for historic reasons primarily sells the construction consulting products that are delivered as services, most of the capabilities owned by the AEC-company have been set up to support that specific product originally. 

    • Construction Site Management.
    • Construction Planning Management.
    • Construction Architecture Management.
    • Project Management.
    • Construction Technology Management (A recently created capability to support SMART-buildings and SMART-city trends).

    This also enforces a path dependency for the company, which means that adjustments and configurations will have to be done in order for the AEC-company to realise its business strategy. Construction of new buildings is one of the most CO2 emissions intensive activities that can take place, then the AEC-company will have to strengthen its existing capabilities and embed its existing practices from the sustainability management into the other capabilities as-well either as part of the business processes (Business practices).

    The path dependency will impact the AEC-company’s ability to adapt technologies minded for other types of consulting services to enhance its capabilities, its competitive position, competitive advantages or product line. Potentially this can become a risk for the AEC-company if its executive management does not understand the potential problems of not being able to navigate changes.

    The enterprise architect’s approach is to apply the top-down approach meaning that the line of sight must be based on the strategy elements (Course of action), drivers, goals, and products; which leads to the below illustration (Mapping):

    A Capabilities-Based Strategy

    The enterprise architect identifies that the AEC-company’s business strategy, Partnering for Green Construction, is reliant on a set of capabilities that provides strengths for the company and a set of capabilities that would need to be strengthened as part of the strategy period in order to ensure the completion of the strategy and its subsequent goals. One of many positive perspectives of approaching the business strategy from a capabilities-based perspective is that the capabilities can be used to identify areas that need improvements from four perspectives and each constitutes a value:

    • People with their skillsets.
    • Information technologies.
    • Data as in datasets and data products available.
    • Business processes and their states.

    The enterprise architect can with the above in mind use the capabilities to map the gap(s) and what would be needed to fill the gap(s); however applying the capabilities-based approach also enables the governance related deliverables needed to produce a system landscape that provides the business and IT-stakeholders the intended overview and possibility to ensure alignment across business demands and IT. This would also provide significant value for the AEC-company’s CTO in the discussions with the business stakeholders on how to enhance the capabilities of the AEC-company.


    The enterprise architect also realises by having this deliverable that enables the AEC-company to provide the foundational architectural services to support scenario planning and consequence planning; since there will be a trade off by each of the options that the executive management team will choose as part of the “Partnering for Green Construction”.

    The line of Sight

    The enterprise architect now has the ability to apply the level 3 depth of the relationships from the course of action element that represents the business strategy.

  • Business Strategy

    Business Strategy

    The AEC-company has recently launched a new business strategy. The enterprise architect of the AEC-company has decided to map it out in order to create the relevant line of sight from the business strategy to other relevant perspectives.

    In the ArchiMate language (3.2) the strategy is symbolized through the use of a “call to action” object. The AEC-company’s executive management has identified a bold title and theme for the business strategy: “Partnering for Green Construction” and the business strategy must be fulfilled before 2030.

    On a side note:

    Even tough the title for the above business strategy seems unique, then I can assure it is not. Many big Danish AEC-companies have used titles such as:

    • The Partner for Sustainable Change (and subsequently closing the gaps).
    • Future Now.
    • Greensition.

    Partnering for Green Construction

    Components of the business strategy are mapped firstly:

    • Principles.
    • Drivers.
    • Objectives.
    • Function Strategies.

    The enterprise architect identifies five significant principles of the business strategy:

    • We construct buildings by only using sustainable materials.
    • We design for biodiversity.
    • We must stop world poverty.
    • We refurbish buildings.
    • We only collaborate with sustainable vendors.

    In addition to the principles the enterprise architect identifies five targets that must be achieved by 20230 as part of the business strategy:

    • 10 % EBITA margin by 2030.
    • 25 % of all executives must be female by 2030.
    • 45 % of all managers must be female by 2030.
    • The AEC-company must be CO2-neutral by 2030.

    The enterprise architect also identified a primary driver for the AEC-company to actually embark on the bold new business strategy: The Danish economy’s sustainable transformation.

    Lastly, the enterprise architect also identified that four function strategies have to be developed in order for the AEC-company to succeed:

    • Circular economy transition (Strategy).
    • Energy transition (Strategy).
    • Recruitment (Strategy).
    • IT strategy (Strategy).

    The Preliminary Line of Sight

    The enterprise architect can with the use of an enterprise architecture tool e.g., Archi be able to map out the relations among the different components and over time add further relations. Some tools like Archi also adds the possibility to group the dept-level of relations to and from the business strategy.

  • Capabilities

    Capabilities

    The case-study that will be used to explain the architecting process is based on a fictive company within the Danish architecture, engineering and construction industry. Let us call the company for the AEC-company throughout this series of blog posts.

    The AEC-company has recently onboarded an enterprise architect. The person has an IT-background and the person has been anchored with-in the AEC-company’s IT-department reporting directly to the CTO of AEC-company. Since the business model of the company is designed for having as low as possible operating costs then the enterprise architect has chosen to make use of Archi which can express the enterprise architecture of the company in the ArchiMate language.

    The enterprise architect has been able to conduct a series of interviews with vice-presidents across the company and by transcribing the interviews identified a series of capabilities as depicted in the below illustration:

    Capabilities are key components of any resource based business strategy, and they can usually be validated by using the VRIO-framework. Consequently, the enterprise architect has started the journey correctly by applying the top-down approach.

    The enterprise architect has also applied MECE-approach, meaning mutually exclusive combined exhaustive, where each of the capabilities are unique.

    The above illustration shows the capabilities individually but these are not connected; which means the enterprise architect still will have to apply the systems thinking paradigm, but a visual inspection identifies that the enterprise architect has been able to group the capabilities. This is what have been done in the below illustration:

    You will be able to see the capabilities have been structured so there is a hierarchy of capabilities of the AEC-company.

    In the AEC-company case a capability consists of four “values” so to say and these are to be used to evaluate each of the capabilities:

    • People with their skillssets.
    • Information technologies such as business applications and infrastructure.
    • Data as in datasets and data products available.
    • Business processes and their states.
  • The Narrative

    The Narrative

    Enterprise Architecture is a methodology that you can use to empower organizations in achieving:

    • Alignment.
    • Innovation.
    • Competitive advantages.

    To keep things simple

    This blog approaches enterprise architecture as a top-down discipline. This means that the concept of an enterprise architecture programme is to support the implementation of a business strategy.

    This also means that if your organisation’s business strategy is not based upon reality or developed with sound principles, then this will cascade and impact the IT-strategy and the enterprise architecture of the organisation. In other words, it starts from the top.

    “It starts from the top.”

    Business strategy

    Enterprise Architecture will utilize the same methodologies as you will find in business strategies e.g.:

    • PESTEL.
    • SWOT/TOWS.
    • Scenario Planning.
    • Roadmap.

    In addition to the above methodologies you will also have to make use of the vision statement and mission statement of the organisation. Thereto operating models and organisation hierarchies will prove useful for you, since you will have to identify the organisation structures of the organisation to identify what stakeholders to include to capture the information you need to begin architecting.

    When you work your way through the strategy from the business side of the organisation you will find the content, structure and dependencies needed for you to begin moving towards IT.

    “Start with the business strategy and work your way towards IT.”

    Making use of a framework

    There are currently many good frameworks that can used to capture the data needed to produce the information on how the organisation works and how IT can empower it.

    This blog will be making use of ArchiMate language since it is the physical implementation of The Open Group Architecture Framework and it is highly graphical, which makes it easier to communicate.

    Combining the framework, TOGAF and ArchiMate, with the chosen route means that the examples in the following blog posts will start from the strategy perspective from “the business”.

    Applying a paradigm

    This blog will through out the upcoming blog posts apply the systems thinking paradigm. You as an enterprise architect soon realise you will also be making use of system thinking or cybernetics depending on your organisation.