Building the Agile Enterprise (eBook)

Preface

Enterprise management is at the dawn of a new era. Information technology has created global markets; changed enterprise relationships with employees, customers, and business partners; and accelerated the pace of change. These forces, along with service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM), and model-based management (MBM), change the way enterprises will be organized and managed in the future.

We in the IT industry are focused on applying the technology. We can reduce the costs of development and maintenance, we can improve the performance and quality of systems, and we can provide better information about the operation of the enterprise. We can make it easier to change the information systems to meet new business requirements. However, these improvements have only a fraction of the potential value that can be realized by changing the design of the enterprise to exploit the full potential of information technology.

The need for change is driving widespread interest in SOA, BPM, and MBM. SOA provides a flexible business structure; BPM streamlines and adapts how work is done, and MBM provides models to support the management of complexity and optimize enterprise operations and agility. The business benefits of these disciplines can far exceed IT benefits from the associated technologies. Realization of these benefits requires transformation of the enterprise. Enterprises that fully exploit this paradigm shift are identified as agile. They continually improve the speed, cost, and quality of operations, and they rapidly respond to new business opportunities.

Target Audience

Within the enterprise, the chief information officer (CIO) is positioned to lead the transformation. The CIO has a broad view of enterprise operations, responsibility for the enabling technology, a supporting role in the implementation of business improvements, and a staff with skills in systems analysis and design as well as knowledge of current information systems.

This book provides a vision of the future for IT leaders—CIOs, chief technology officers (CTOs), enterprise architects, and management consultants. They must bring to top management the insights, skills, and resources to accomplish enterprise transformation. The next wave of changes cannot simply be driven by incremental automation and integration of computer applications; it requires redesign and reorganization of business functions, driven from the top down. Supporting technology exists and can be improved with an understanding of the requirements. The challenge is to gain top management commitment and support, to establish the necessary governance and infrastructure, and to define a roadmap for achieving a strategic transformation.

Book Organization

These concepts and more are developed throughout the rest of this book. Each chapter describes a major aspect of the agile enterprise from a business perspective. The goal is to equip IT leaders to understand and communicate the business impact of the agile enterprise as well as the business requirements that must be supported with information technology. The chapters are summarized in the following subsections.

The Agile Enterprise (Chapter 1)

Chapter 1 outlines basic concepts along with the challenges and objectives addressed by the agile enterprise. The SOA Maturity Model provides the foundation for development of an enterprise transformation roadmap.

Service-Oriented Architecture (Chapter 2)

SOA defines discrete capabilities as sharable service units and establishes an enterprise as a composition of sharable business capabilities that can be rapidly rearranged and adapted to meet changing business needs. This architecture supports optimization of resource utilization, economies of scale, and improved accountability, control, and agility.

Business Process Management (Chapter 3)

BPM is a management discipline for the design, management, automation, and continuous improvement of business processes. In an agile enterprise, business processes define how services are performed—including the organization of activities to meet a service objective, the integration of supporting services, and the choreography of relationships and operations among organizations.

Business Rules (Chapter 4)

Business rules support concise expression of management intent, independent of the implementation technology. Mechanisms for integration of business rules enable the enterprise to rapidly adapt to changes in regulations, enterprise improvements, and technological capabilities. A number of types of business rules affect the operation of the enterprise in different ways.

Enterprise Information Management (Chapter 5)

The enterprise must operate on the basis of a common Enterprise Logical Data Model (ELDM) to support meaningful communication and interaction of people and systems. This model must be complemented by appropriate data access and analytical tools so that business decision making and planning can be optimized from an enterprise perspective.

SOA Security (Chapter 6)

The electronic integration of disparate organizations and the sharing of data across the enterprise and with business partners and customers greatly increase the potential for harmful exposure of operations and information. Access must be controlled to ensure that it is appropriately authorized, that enterprise facilities are not vulnerable to attack, and that data communications are appropriately protected. In addition, exchange of electronic business documents affecting enterprise assets and government regulations requires electronic signatures to ensure that participants are authenticated, authorized, and accountable.

The Agile Organization Structure (Chapter 7)

The enterprise will evolve to a network of interacting service units that manage enterprise capabilities to deliver business value. The organization structure must define how people participate in the operation and management of service units. Service units must be aligned to an organization hierarchy that manages the service unit capabilities for optimal performance. Additional relationships must support collaboration, coordination, innovation, and control, all of which allow the enterprise to optimize and adapt to deliver customer value.

Event-Driven Agility (Chapter 8)

Though services are most often performed in response to a request, some services are initiated by disruptive events that indicate a need to respond outside the bounds of normal operating processes. Processing of disruptive events is the starting point for automation of processes for adapting the enterprise to changing requirements. Various techniques must be used to identify and capture relevant events. Some individual events may be of little interest, but in combination with other events, the “complex events” may be significant.

Agile Governance (Chapter 9)

Initial efforts to implement SOA may be bottom-up transformations based on business opportunities. However, in the long term, the agile enterprise requires a top-down design that defines the enterprise structure and the context in which local improvements can be developed. This requires a management commitment and governance structure to design, transform, and continuously improve and adapt the enterprise from an overall perspective, with IT support. The recommended governance structure provides support for continuous strategic planning, top-down leadership of enterprise design and transformation, and improved visibility and accountability to executive management and the board of directors to ensure appropriate leadership and control.

Model-Based Management (MBM) (Chapter 10)

Today's enterprises and the ecosystems in which they operate are very complex. Managers need models connected to the business operations and the business environment in order to gain a better awareness of problems and a greater understanding of the factors involved in solutions. Such models enable more timely and appropriate responses to threats and opportunities. Management of the agile enterprise is supported by an Enterprise Business Model (EBM) that is the integration of a number of different viewpoint models.

The Vision

This book presents a vision of the agile enterprise based on current industry trends and standards. There are no current examples of such an agile enterprise as described here. The fundamental business concepts have existed for many years, and supporting technology exists but must be appropriately applied....