Orchestrating the Bus Tour for Service-Enabling the Enterprise
by
Larry Schmidt
Author Jim Collins has devoted much of his professional career to determining the common characteristics, principles and attributes found in great and enduring organizations. In his most recent book, Jim outlines a framework which contains five key principles employed by corporations that he recognizes as moving from “Good to Great”. His writings and “fact-based” conclusions are now largely studied and put into action to help corporations move forward in their transformation strategies.
Jim titles one of his key principles “First Who, then What”. Jim offers that a corporation making the journey from “Good to Great” must first establish a leadership team that can synergize around a common goal. To illustrate his idea, Jim paints a visual of the journey comparing it to a bus ride. He states that you must first ”get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus,” then the passengers will determine the tour to take the bus on. For a corporation, organizing this bus tour is a high risk proposition as the final destination is still unknown. However, if the seats are filled with the right passengers, the final destination will lead to greatness, which in turn, can lead to high reward.
The journey toward service-enabling an enterprise can leverage Jim’s bus ride analogy from two perspectives. First, from a leadership perspective, having the right passengers sitting in the correct seats is critical to ensuring that the journey leads to a destination of true business value. Second, from a technology perspective, having the right bus, that is, the right Enterprise Service Bus to manage and execute the digital services, is vital to controlling the digital enterprise’s success.
Drilling down on this analogy from a leadership perspective, each occupant sitting in the correct seat implies that the passenger plays a specific role in making the tour successful. This analogy easily correlates to the building of the governance board for a Service - Oriented Architecture. The roles include business domain experts, technology subject matter enablers (SMEs), and the Enterprise Architect (EA and tour guide). Once a passenger is assigned their correct seat, the passenger must be empowered to perform the governance role that seat represents.
Business domain expert seats must be filled with team members who have a detailed understanding of the current and future business policies and practices for their functional area of the enterprise. They must embrace the concept of the extended enterprise; understand how to breakdown processes into useful policy “building blocks” and have a sense of vision on how constituents could use the services they invent.
Technology SMEs seats must be filled with team members who understand the technology direction for the corporation. These SMEs are charged with protecting the passengers from becoming road-weary as they read the billboards of too many enabling technologies. Technology SMEs also address the human factors, information management, security and privacy concerns for developing and deploying services.
The Enterprise Architect (EA) serves as the tour guide for this trip. The EA’s formal role is to serve as facilitator of the SOA governance board. The EA is charged with bringing business value to the enterprise through the deployment of the right business and technical strategies and technologies. The successful EA is the tour guide for the journey, giving direction when passengers loose their bearings and ensuring that all passengers follow’s the journey’s “big rules” (governance guidelines and principles). The EA must have the willingness to lead, the mindset to “trust but verify” and the courage to turn-around when the tour takes a wrong turn. Who’s driving the bus? The executive sponsor, whose desire is to see the vision of service-enabling the enterprise become a reality. In this ride the sponsor ensures that progress is being made and that the bus has fuel and continues to be road worthy. The sponsor must realize that this tour takes time to complete, and will, in turn, appreciate the measurable business value that accumulates throughout the successful journey.
Will others join the tour along the way? Absolutely. Service-enabling the enterprise is an “evolution not a revolution”. Progress will likely occur by focusing on a few business functional areas per “excursion” (incremental change). Business domain experts will be added to the team as their area of the enterprise is ready for transformation. Additionally, the tour guide may bring constituents (users) of the services onto the bus so that the team obtains an external perspective of the services to be enabled.
From a technology perspective, the analogy implies that there is a “safe” bus to ride. In Service-Oriented Architecture, services are often invoked by making calls to the Enterprise Service Bus. The passengers of this bus are digital services, and as such, this bus must be ready to deal with the perils of the digital roadway. It must have an engine that can accelerate on command (exceed Service Level Agreements), tires that can handle any terrain (portable), doors that can lock and open at the appropriate times only allowing the trusted passenger to enter (secure). This bus requires signs that are easy to understand (service interfaces), seats that automatically contour to any passenger (service adaptors), and a framework that will not bend under the load of success (scalable). After all, if you choose to start this digital journey you must be ready for any road hazard.Your Enterprise Service Bus will not have the option to pull over to the side of the digital highway and wait for a virtual tow truck!
The successful journey towards service-enabling the enterprise begins with making tough choices and preparing for a longer than usual trip. Enterprises that have properly prepared will enjoy the excursions along the way; enterprises that have not followed the guidance of this tour bus analogy will encounter many road hazards. Be it figuratively or digitally, orchestrating the successful bus tour for service-enabling the enterprise requires that you have the right people leveraging the right bus.
