Log-line for Enterprise Architecture

If you want investors to read your manuscript for your next blockbuster movie, you need to write a catching log-line, otherwise you letter ends up in the trash faster than a blink of an eye.

The format is very simple, yet very hard to write in one sentence.

It starts with the hero, her journey of change and the force that tries to stop her.

They don’t give a damn about which typewriter you use.

EA is not different, board and CxO level want to hear a good and simple story that will give them their investment back. They don’t care about EA methods.

Who need to change, what is the change and what are the risks for change not to happens. Then time and budget on a high-level.

Easy? Then you also have a nice job in the dream factory.

Same type of EA but different

Most of the time when I’m doing Enterprise Architecture, I have been working with large established companies, with lots of legacy, doing same things as usual.

Last year I described how we used EA in a small startup for film production.

This year, I have been working with Care by Volvo and it is quite different architecture assignment in several ways.

Before, you drove to a car dealer, bought a fossil fuel vehicle and paid with your money.  This is the normal business model for automotive industry and have been for ages. 

We are now establishing a new business model where you subscribe to a car on-line, directly from Volvo and you can have a fully electrical vehicle. Volvo owns the car and maintans it, you drive and recharge. If you l want, you can end the subscription period. 

Huge changes to the business model have an enormous impact on legacy IT-systems, and how to solve this long term is really Enterprise Architecture.

I see that there are three different types of EA that starts in the same place, i.e. with the business model. Legacy modernization, startup (Spotify, Tesla) or disruption of existing business model (Netflix, Volvo etc)

It has been very clear this year that those who don’t understand different business models can’t propose solutions for a disruptive business.

Health matters more than time plans

Health matters and this main background reason I haven’t published much on my blog or on youtube.

Our family’s been healthy so no issues so far…

But, my client closed the office more than two months ago and the staff is working limited time at home due to pan-epidemics and safety. However, I’m working full time with business development and architecture for the future after Covid-19 and we still have a lot to do with less resources than anticipated. This is why much time have been used to re-scope, prioritize and find out ways to work with architecture remote.

I’m also doing a documentary about the wild horse my wife rescued from Portugal. You can’t plan everything in a documentary as we found out when our horse Mimosa got a deadly disease in early April. Luckily, she survived and is recovering well.

Lessons learned from both these tales is that health matters more than you think and you need to change your plans when unexpected things happens.

EA case study - project portfolio update

We created a project portfolio six months ago and what happend since then?

The pan-epidemic was not in our project list, but as we setup our business to run without a main office was we in some ways prepared, but in others not.

Mobile app for time reporting on projects

1. Setting up a new business with employees and contractors with all associated administration takes it’s time. Delayed, but not critical.

2. Lack of needed contracts is paramount in majority of productions and we need to manage this area to be on the safe side. (Legal, HR, Sales, IT and Production). On track and updates on its way.

3. Utilization right now is to low, therefore we need to improve our sales process and implement an easy to use CRM-system to track sales and measure KPI’s (Sales and IT) New system configured and migration of data and data cleansing in progress.

4. We also need to be better at marketing and communication to reach new clients in prioritized customer segments & product categories (Marketing & communication) CRM system in place but no process defined, yet.

5. We need a better tracking of who have participated in which production and in with which role. We have a need for a common register that follows our Architecture Principles and our future infrastructure. New production system in place, but lots of manual data entry remains.

6. We need methods and IT-solutions for better estimation and planning of productions in deployment and pre-production (Production and IT) New production system in place, but workflow needs to be improved and integrated to CRM.

7. Better workflow in post production using new and/or other tools in both post production and earlier. This us very much sector specific IT-solutions like NLE’s etc. (Production and IT). Not started.

8. Implement KPI’s for GDPR. (Everywhere) Not started

9. Better risk management when running productions than the film business have today (Sales, Production and Management) Not started

Other goals was break even for 2019 and a small profit for 2020. So far according to plan.

EA case study - End of life

When your application reaches end-of-life and the vendor doesn’t support it any more, you still have the option to run it. But when a cloud application reaches end of life, you don’t have an option.

We have been using Microsoft Customer Manager as a lightweight CRM application. It’s included in one of the Office 365 subscriptions and is therefore a low-cost solution.

However, the application reaches end-of-life in June 2020 and we have to implement a new solution before then and migrate all data.

A parallel example that we also have is StudioBinder that is used for production planning. The cost per user is rather high and they have not added any functionality in a year. 

As I see development of new functionality in cloud service as a health-sign, and no development as the opposite, we are preparing to switch from this platform.

So currently, we are looking at Visma Project Management and Yamdu as new cloud services to replace Customer Manager and StudioBinder.

Lot of IT, yes and but we have defined processes for Film production and Sales as well as our high-level architecture principles.