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.