Week 10 TOGAF Advantages and Cost

Week 10

TOGAF Advantages and Cost

What is TOGAF?

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), established in 1995, is one the most popular EA tools of today. TOGAF, which is based on iterative process model, provides approaches to design, evaluate, and build an effective architecture. The key to TOGAF is Architecture Development Method: a reliable, effective method to develop architecture, which could meet the business demand of companies. Even though there are a lot of EA frameworks to choose, TOGAF is widely used mostly. Over 80 percent of top 50 companies are using the TOGAF and it support SOA, which provides the possibility of improving current situation at a lower cost.  

Generally speaking, TOGAF contains the elements as followed:

1.       ADM, as described below, is used to develop enterprise architecture

Figure1 Architecture Development Method[i]

2.       Architecture contents framework provides a detail architecture model, including deliverables, elements of architecture:

Figure2 Architecture content framework

3.       TOGAF Reference Model: Technical Reference Model (TRM) and Integrated information infrastructure model (III-RM).

Figure 3 TOGAF reference model

4.       ADM guidelines and techniques provides a set of guides and principles to apply ADM:

Figure 4 ADM guidelines and techniques

5.       Enterprise continuum provides approaches for classifying architecture and solution artifacts, both internal and external to the Architecture Repository, as they evolve from generic Foundation Architectures to organization-specific architectures.

Figure 5 Enterprise Continuum

6.       Architecture capability framework provides resources, guidelines, templates and background information to help enterprise practice improving the architecture.

Figure 6 Mature Architecture Capability

The key advantage of TOGAF is that it not only provides enterprise a clear map about its future architecture, but also provides rich resource for an enterprise to refer. Through TOGAF, enterprises will have a well understanding of its current situation and its capability to practice the architecture. The cost of TOGAF could be concluded into the following aspects:

1.       Workforce:

Employees in different departments may have to spend some time adapting to newly developed processes. Some employees have to be allocated with more responsibilities in the company’s operation.

2.       Time:

The transformation from current architecture to future architecture may take a lot of time, which means that any enterprises may have to consider the time cost before introducing TOGAF.

3.       Finance:

The finance cost would be reflected on the hiring of consultant and purchasing some TOGAF custom products. With the change of one company’s operation model, the cost may also reflect on the business process.

4.       Risk:

TOGAF does not necessarily guarantee that enterprise would have a more healthy and practical architecture. Meanwhile, there will be a huge difference among the consultant and TOGAF products you choose while practicing TOGAF methodologies, which means that executives of company have to take a full consideration of every aspects of the company before making any decision in introducing this EA tools.

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[i] Figure 4.1 – 4.6 cited from Open Group, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Version 9, 2009,

Week 9 Cisco’s Collaboration Architecture & EA Methodology

Week 9

Cisco’s Collaboration Architecture & EA Methodology

When it comes to business-IT alignment, I recalled the experience when I read an article about collaboration architecture. Collaboration architecture allows an organization to develop plans to ensure interoperability within and across organizations. It also helps in ways like accessing from any geographical location, delivering any content’s type and keeping the content in different locations consistent. Collaboration architecture is used to introduce IT into the business, which would bring an enterprise more possibility in making business decision. It also provides methodology for its users. Take Cisco’s collaboration architecture as an example. First, it provides four different collaboration products such as applications, infrastructures, telepresence and clients’ corporation to meet enterprises’ need, each of which provides a solution to some of client’s demand. Second, Cisco uses collaboration architecture to identify client’s business need and divides them into three phases. After identifying these phases clearly, Cisco would choose products in its architecture accordingly. Compared with traditional methodology, Cisco enables enterprise to take the advancement of IT into consideration while building its business strategy, which increase enterprise’s competitiveness greatly.

The figure above shows us the collaboration architecture of Cisco. This open and integrated system functions with a combination of technologies both old and new and prepares a company to discover business prospects. By combining collaboration architecture with objective oriented strategies, the technology used in this concept lets a company to:

1.       Change business processes

2.       Increase organizational efficiency

3.       Boost your time to market

After completing this architecture, Cisco earned a great amount of revenue and consequently occupied nearly 40 percent of whole collaboration service market.

The practice of Cisco’s collaboration architecture inspires my thoughts in making EA economical. As a tool or a set of deliverables specifically speaking, EA could be realized into some software products, which could let more enterprise find the advantages of EA. Sometimes it may be hard for some enterprises to find the usage of EA because of its abstract and complex. Therefore, it is essential to provide a channel or a platform to widespread its usability and advancement just like Cisco’s collaboration architecture.

This reminds me of my experience in KPMG Management Consultant team. There was one project which we need to provide complete enterprise architecture to a growing real estate company. We focus on the following two things in the project:

1.       The current existing system.

We refer to different ERP and accounting systems to regulate rules for this enterprise. For the possibilities of it growing business, we set different responsibility for the coming business.

2.       KPMG’s methodology

We refer to KPMG’s internal methodology to measure the risk of the architecture provided. After the confirmation, we implemented the architecture into this company.

In this process, I find the majority of workforce could be saved while relating architecture to some mature model. It is true that we should always consider the current situation and goals of future for our client. Sometimes existing methods shows their advantages in providing such methods, which make EA economical and widely in use.

Week 8

Focus on e government worldwide to find the weakness in SA’s SEPO

In 2012, United Nations published a survey containing comparison among different countries’ e government. For the first time, I realize how information technology could bring value to not only enterprise but government as well. Among most of e government all around the world, e government in Republic of Korea is in the leading position. Korea’s government noticed the importance of the development of technology and introduced the advancement of technology in increasing government effectiveness and efficiency. The figure below shows the rank list of e government all around the world.

Republic of Korea

The Government’s main website has developed into an integrated portal where citizens can find almost every service they want, on both national and local level. The main government portal is a gateway to services through multiple channels, by theme and subjects. Citizens can also have a customized channel by inputting their own age, gender and services of interest. Back-office integration across many departments brings together a powerful search engine offering advanced categorizing function, which can list results by websites, services, and news, including at the local level.

A key reason for continued leadership in world e-government progress is significant development and provision of downloadable mobile applications that are available from its national portal.

Netherlands

In the Netherlands, efficiency and citizen inclusion are the objectives of the e-government strategy. Integration of a back-office management system has been undertaken with a belief that citizens should provide information once. E government is building an e-government infrastructure encompassing citizen access to government processes including electronic authentication, uniform identification numbers for both citizens and businesses and electronic personal identification. As part of its broader ICT strategy the focus of e-government in the Netherlands was on improving efficiency of services concomitant with reduction of administrative cost and burden.

United Kingdom

The national portal of the United Kingdom (http://www.direct.gov.uk) provides a fine example through its e-petition page, where citizens have the ability to lodge online petitions on issues for governments to propose to parliament if enough signatures are acquired. The government also provides great transparency by providing the outcomes of previous petitions, showing how many signatures were obtained.

The weakness of SEPO in South Australia

Compared with e governments above, the weakness of SEPO in South Australia could be concluded into the following aspects:

1.       As a portal website, it failed to provide a user-friendly interface. Too much information is showed on every page, which increases the difficulties of finding necessary information.

2.       The definition of “franchise” is unclear. On the website, we could hardly find which franchise I should ask help. To make things worse, users would rather use Google to find that franchise than using this portal website to find that because of complicate instruction every step.

3.       Citizens could not have their own account on the website. We do not need to even mention the possibility of supporting mobile devices. The inconvenience of using this may decrease the number of users to this website.

4.       Limited feedback. Citizens could just provide very simple feedback on the website. The designer of this website could not find detailed suggestion coming from citizens, which will not be helpful to improve the usage of website.

There are still several points of its weakness unlisted. However, one of the most important things for SA government to do, in my opinion, is to simplify its on-line process. They could take Singapore government’s website as a reference. Singapore e government’s website provides a good example of website design based on solution to problems. As for SA government, SEPO appeared to be a collection of information rather than website based on solution, the key weakness of its SEPO. 

Week 7 How do we evaluate the internal benefits of SA Government?

Week 7

How do we evaluate the internal benefits of SA Government?

In our EA project, Susi, our client, asked us to provide a recommendation to measure the internal benefits of SA government. However, Susi is not clear about the definition of internal benefits, which brought some difficulties to our project. We spent a few weeks studying cases of e government in other countries in order to find benefits they care about most, which leads to another problem: most of governments do not focus on the so called “internal benefit”. With Murli’s help, we decided to specify our SEPO program into three phases and further our research into the government related processes in each phase. The three phases are: input change, output change and process change. For every phase, we analyzed government related processes using five different dimensions which are effectiveness, efficiency, quality, timeliness and productivity.

Input Change

Before and after the SEPO, what are the input changes for the department?

For example, inquiry phones and emails are less than before because the website have detailed information.

Effectiveness: Effectiveness is raised because that the department staff have more time to do their job.

- What was/is the average time that the staff spent on their job.

- How many labor cost are saved?

Efficiency: People submit form with less mistakes, so the department staff make less mistakes.

-What was/is the average mistakes that the staff made/make?

Quality: Quality is raised because the department staff have their job done correctly on time.

- What was/is the number of delayed affair?

- What was/is the number of accepted/rejected report?

Timeliness:

- What was/is the average time of the process of a affair?

Output change

Before and after the SEPO, what are the output changes for the department?

For example, each department released their announcements and annual reports on their own website or by paper. But now they post the reports on the SEPO.

Effectiveness: Before SEPO, departments had to post their information on the different government websites which were related.

- How many times the department had to repeat posting the announcement? And how many times they have to post now?

Efficiency: If the department want some thing to be known by the public as soon as possible, the information spread speed could be important. For example, the National Tax Administration want everyone to report tax before June.

- How many people see the announcement before/after the SEPO?

- How many people report tax in time before/after SEPO?

Quality: All the information are collected on the website, so every department can refer to them, and lower the error in their own report.

- The average errors in the department’s reports.

Timeliness: Did the spread speed fit the department’s requirement? The National Tax Administration probably want 90% citizens see the announcement in one month.

- How many people see the announcement in one month on the SEPO?

Before SEPO, how many people in one month saw it?

Productivity:

There might be less report to write.

- How many report the department had/have to write before/after the SEPO?

Process Change

Before and after the SEPO, what are the process changes for the department?

For example, government departments can access the integrated information on the SEPO. The cross-department affair, which took days to process, now may take hours.

Effectiveness:

- How many departments are using this website?

- How many information they can get on each affair?

Efficiency: The department which uses SEPO might perform better than before.

- How long did it take to deal with a cross-department affair before there was SEPO? How long does it take now?

Quality:

- How much useful information can they get? (Useful information rate)

Timeliness:

- How many cross-department affairs were/are done right and on time before/after SEPO?

- How many cross-department affairs were/are done wrong and delyed before/after SEPO?

Productivity: The cross-department affairs might be done better.

- Measure the completeness of the affairs done.

Week 6:

Case Study on South Korea’s E Government

In the final report to clients, I did a research on the South Korea’s e-government and concluded its history, sitemap, current situation. Compared with e-government in many other countries, the unique of South Korea’s government is that they make a long-term plan for their e-government and they keep finding best way to introduce the advanced technologies into government’s daily operation. In the blog of this week, I will analyze the case of South Korea’s e-government and did a SWOT analysis, which I did not include in my final report.

Part 1: South Korea’s e government

History[i]

The Beginning (1960s–1970s)

Korea’s e government introduced computers for statistical analysis work in the Economy Planning Board in 1967. It was one of the earliest countries that deploy IT technology in operating government.

Building the Infrastructure for E-Government (1980s–1990s)

In 1986, “National Backbone Computer Network” was launched. Projects related to that plan would become the communications and information network for the public sector. In 1993, the concept of “e government” was introduced in official documents. Meanwhile, a basic plan for building the foundation for the information super-highway was announced.

Full-scale Implementation of E-Government (2000–Present)

In 1999, a comprehensive e government implementation plan was created when integrated civil application information system and comprehensive statistical information system were introduced. For e government, the most important thing is that “the participatory government’s vision and direction of e government” was announced in May 2003 and the “E-Government Roadmap” based on the vision of realizing the “World’s Best Open E-Government” was released in August of the same year. [Ref3.1.1-1]

                                           Figure 1 Website of South Korea government

Ø  “SEPO” for South Korea

E government of South Korea establish an integrated portal where citizens could find nearly every service they want national wide local wide. The website is used as a gateway to service by multiple channels. Citizens could also have a customized channel by providing their personal preference and information. Back-office integration across many departments brings a powerful search engine offering advanced categorizing function, which can list results by websites, service, and news. [Ref3.1.1-2]

Ø  Sitemap of “SEPO”

According to the sitemap of “SEPO”, its services could be included into the following aspects:

1.    Information retrieval: hot service and search could be found through this website.

2.    Public service: channels are provided for citizen’s convenience to get government’s help online.

3.    User-specific service: students, workers, businessman and so on could find resources they may need on line.

4.    News: news about economic, society, culture, diplomatic, security and on are updated.

5.    Navigation: navigate to other themed service website.

6.    Others: business corporations, value-added service, introduction of Korea and so on.   

                                 

Figure 2 Sitemap of “SEPO”

Ø  Unique of “SEPO”

As the global leader in e government, South Korea designed and set up their website based on careful considerate to citizens’ demand and ambition to create a top e government all around the world. Take its similar programs like “SEPO” as an example, the unique of them could be reflected in following aspects:

1.    The website clearly divided all the contents into six sub-functions, which guides citizens to related pages to complete their process.

2.    User-oriented services are provided on the Internet. Students, workers, business men, and couples at different ages could all find the resource they may be interested on the website.

3.    The website listed both contacts of different government’s departments and their public service. Citizens would be very clear about how they can get help.

4.    The website classified and listed public service related agencies and provided links to these pages. Search bar is provided to guarantee that citizens could find these items effectively.

5.    Public activities are always updated on the website so that citizens are easy to find those which may relate to their benefits.

3.1.2 Benefits

Ø  Time Saving

Agency benefits:

-Lower cost channels of communication with citizens and businesses

-Increased resource efficiency

Social benefits:

-Faster turn-around of information requests

-Faster access to documents and forms

Consumer financial benefits

-Faster turnaround of service delivery

Ø  Cost Saving

Agency benefits:

-Lower cost channels of communication with citizens and businesses

-Increased resource efficiency

Ø  Effectiveness

Agency benefits:

-Lower cost channels of communication with citizens and businesses

-Increased resource efficiency

Consumer financial benefits

-24-hour service delivery

-More self-service

-Improved ability to find information

-Wider reach of information to the community

-Better communication with rural and remote communities

Part2: SWOT Analysis

Strengths

As mentioned above, the greatest strength of South Korea is that they launched their e-government long-term developing plan very early. In their development plan, careful consideration has been given to Korea’s current situation and the technology level.

Weaknesses

The weakness of SK government could be concluded into the following aspects:

1.    South Korea’s culture may have a negative effect on the more advanced and diverse transformation of e government.

2.    The export of their ideas may be harder to be admitted by other countries.

Opportunities

In Asia, Korea may increase its share of total IT market and consequently improve e government’s service quality, municipal management, e-democracy and so on. The development of IT technology may bring South Korea government benefits as well.

Threats

The threats come from South Korea’s outside environment, such as the globalization, powerful business innovations. Internet security may also threaten the well-beings of e government service.

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[i] "E-Government in South Korea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government_in_South_Korea>.

Week 5 The Measurement of Internal Benefit within SA government

In the group project, we are about to give a recommendation of method which is used to measuring the internal benefit of the government. The internal benefit is generated from the SEPO program, which is a navigation website of the SA government.

(http://www.sa.gov.au/)

After taking this task, I am wondering the purpose of this recommendation. After contacting the employees in SA government, I know that the recommendation will be used as a reference when other similar websites is planned to be setup. However, when we focus on the navigation website, which is mentioned as “Single Entry Point” (SEPO) by SA government, we are really confused by the definition of “internal benefit”, which could have many proper definitions. Therefore, we have to choose at first. Since the project is from the EA, we want to apply EA methods in analyzing the internal benefits. In the following paragraphs, I want to discuss these one by one:

Figure.1 Website of SA government

The purpose of recommendation/Client’s demand

1.       Measuring the internal benefits of SEPO

2.       Measuring the current situation of SEPO

3.       Provide a methodology of measuring the internal benefits.

The definition of “internal benefit”

“Internal benefit” is actually a very general concept, which could be view in many ways. After searching “internal benefit” on wiki, I found it does not exist. However, “internal improvements” is a similar one, which describe the infrastructure improvement in America in 1800s. When it comes to “benefit”, it is easy for us to think about something like money or revenue. As a public service website, it would be improper if we define “benefits” that way. Therefore, “benefits” could carry more meanings:

1.       The saved cost (time, workforce, money and so on)

2.       The increased efficiency (public service online)

3.       The increased satisfaction in public service

Granted that we could specify the “internal benefit” into the concepts above, it is still hard to measure it since these three concepts are still general for us to quantify them. Therefore, it necessary for us to introduce some methods to make a standard based on the reality.

The method of measurement

With the development of IT consulting industry, hundreds of consulting tools have already been developed to discuss different situations. After comparing tools, like BCG Matrix, Stakeholder Analysis, Internal-external matrix and internal factor evaluation matrix, I though it may be a good idea to introduce internal factor evaluation matrix to have through understanding of the current situation of SEPO program in SA Government.

What is internal factor evaluation matrix (IFE)? And how can we establish IFE in SA gov?

Internal factor evaluation matrix is a tool which is initially used to evaluate internal elements within a company. It describes the positive and negative effects of an enterprise, which is essential to the enterprise’s development in the future. When it comes to our group project, I want to use the IFE matrix to list all the result if SA government does not have SEPO program.

To establish an IFE matrix, five steps below needs to be followed:

(Assumption: SA government does not introduce SEPO program)

1.       List all the essential factors in the internal analysis. 10~20 internal factors should be found, including the pros and cons.

2.       A weigh is added for every factor. The weigh should range from 0.0 (insignificant) to 1.0 (significant). The weight reflects the extents that some factor affects the government.

3.       Rate for each factor. 1 indicates major weakness. 2 points means minor weakness. 3 points means minor advantages. 4 points means important advantage.

4.       Multiply the weight of each factor by its rating.

5.       Sum all the weighted scores. We can get the total weighted score.

IFE could help us in two ways: First, we could have a through thinking about the whole SEPO. Second, the value of each factor will be evaluated. In IFE matrix, more details will be given to the aspects such as the saved cost, the increased efficiency and the increased satisfaction in public service. After completing IFE matrix, we would further our research in the added value brought by SEPO.

                      Figure 2 IFE matrix sample

[Reference 1]

http://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/%E5%86%85%E9%83%A8%E5%9B%A0%E7%B4%A0%E8%AF%84%E4%BB%B7%E7%9F%A9%E9%98%B5]

Week 4: EA Frameworks

There are many different EA frameworks in use today. How popular are they? Are companies interested in using frameworks?

How do you impress management about the ROI of an EA initiative?

Write about any other EA activities you engaged in the week.

Among many different EA frameworks of nowadays, there are four of them which have the most popularity: Zachman Framework, TOGAF, FEA, and Gartner.

The Zachman Framework, which consists of two dimensional classification matrix based on six basic questions (Why, How, What, Who, Where and When), provides a formal and highly structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise. It is much more like a methodology that leads architect designer to think about enterprise architecture.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a framework, which provides a comprehensive approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information architecture. Nowadays, The Open Group has grown to be a global consortium that enables the achievement of business goals by designing IT standards.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture could provide a common methodology for information technology acquisition, use and disposal in the Federal government. It provides several models for reference, such as PRM, BRM, SRM, DRM and TRM. Since the U.S Government may be the most complex organization in the world, the FEA could also be applied into many other cases for its advantages in many areas.

Gartner

Gartner is one of the most famous IT research and consulting organizations in the world. It believes that if the architect designer brings together three constituents together, which are business owners, information specialists, and the technology implementers and unify them behind a common vision that drives business value, the EA would success.  

Considering the demand of companies and advantages of EA frameworks, we could find that those frameworks have been widely applied in designing enterprise architecture and grow with the development of complexity in enterprises’ business. Take MedAMore as an example, with MAM’s business expansion, it purchased three regional chains and came across IT problems. These IT problems could be classified into two categories:

1.       The requirement of changing some modules in the system due to the development of business.

2.       The delay of file transfer because of the regional difference.

The company realized the difficulties in dealing with those problems and sought for solution by applying EA framework. Supposed that these problems are solved by using EA framework, the return of investment would reflect in following areas:

1.       With more regional chains, IT would keep supporting business development.

2.       The reduction of payments in operating the company.

3.       The increase efficiency in running IT system and business process.