Blog 2 of 4: How to steer with architecture

My previous blog, on how enterprise architecture optimises business design, revealed why architecture is such an important tool in achieving controlled change. Used the right way, it can help an organisation steer towards its ideal design.

Now I’ll reveal how we achieve this change in practice. It’s a proven method that combines recognised standards and craftmanship to transform processes and steer towards the desired outcome.

Introducing our enterprise architecture process

In the first blog of this series, I illustrated the work of an enterprise architect using the metaphor of a city’s zoning plan. It maps the space with associated policies or regulations, and defines what construction is allowed where, and under which conditions. But it allows flexibility over the detail.

In the same way, the architecture of a company sets out key agreements, starting points, and policy frameworks. It’s a concrete plan, giving a broad, overall picture of the final business design the architect is aiming for.

It’s helpful to create a plan of the current situation, at a similar level of abstraction, so the current and final pictures can be compared. This way, it’s easy to understand what needs to change.

While this metaphor is useful, it has limits. For example, city zoning plans can remain the same for years, where business architecture is much more dynamic. The architect needs to take account of constant change.

An iterative approach allows the architect to ensure the business design is always improving overall, while meeting the strategic objectives. They might introduce innovative new concepts for services, business operations, or technology – or apply best practices from reference architectures like GEMMA for municipalities, or Enterprise Integrations Patterns for integration issues.

At Royal HaskoningDHV Digital, we use the Novius Architecture Method. This is a well-established method, built on proven frameworks and techniques including TOGAF, Archimate, SAFe, and DYA. However, our method goes beyond the theoretical, by making the connection to what does and does not work in practice.

For example, we have developed a style guide of frequently used models and architectures, which helps us to describe architectures we encounter in the real world. And we provide similarly clear guidelines setting up an architectural function for your own organization.

While the method gives a consistent approach, there is no fixed recipe for enterprise architecture. Ultimately, the success of the design depends on the architect’s craftsmanship, creativity, and experience.

The Novius Architecture Method

Although there’s no single way to do enterprise architecture, we think of the Novius Architecture Method like a briefcase our architect carries, containing all the tools they might need. In future blogs, I’ll unpack the contents of this metaphorical briefcase in detail.

For now, let’s consider the architectural processes and products we generally use to steer an organisation towards its ideal business design. We start with three processes which help to make the design coherent from the outset:

1. Develop enterprise architecture, This uses models to describe the current business design, and uses architectural principles to trace the shape of the target design. If you think of the zoning plan metaphor, this reflects the layout of the city as a whole.
2. Apply enterprise architecture, This process uses the organisation’s architecture to steer it towards the desired change. This might mean developing a change portfolio from a business transformation plan and roadmap, or using start architecture to drive a specific change initiative. In our metaphor, it’s like planning a new residential area, locating shops, schools, and transport.
3. Carry out change activities, Here, the architect helps to find promising innovations which can be analysed or experimented with, before being developed into project proposals or epics. New solutions are designed and developed. In our city metaphor, this is like choosing a builder and confirming construction meets the agreed criteria.

A pragmatic approach to change

This representation shows how the three architectural processes interact with the change function to steer towards a chosen business design. In the business control processes, the organisation directs the changes and establishes the desired goals and frameworks. This reorganisation is then implemented through change activities.

This might create the impression that the change needs to be grand and ambitious, but in practice there’s a strong practical element to all these processes. We only model change that’s relevant to the issue at hand – and we use stakeholders’ knowledge to build models and confirm feasibility and acceptance.

Applying architecture in a real, situation-specific way is where an architect’s own personal skills and experience come to the fore. And I’ll discuss that in more detail in a future blog.

Next: Building competitiveness through architecture

Next time, we’ll reveal more of what an architect carries in their briefcase of approaches and tools. And we’ll share why individual craftsmanship makes a big difference to an organisation’s ability to become competitive through change.

Would you like to speak to one of our experts or find out what you could do as a business consultant at Novius and Royal HaskoningDHV? We'd love to hear from you!