Coherency Management

Dr. Saha is currently a member of the faculty with the National University of Singapore (NUS). His current research and consulting interests include Enterprise Architecture, IT Governance, and Business Process Management. He has published several research papers in these areas. Pallab is an active researcher in the area of Enterprise Architecture and has published his first book titled “Handbook of Enterprise Systems Architecture in Practice” in March 2007. He has completed his second book titled “Advances in Government Enterprise Architecture”, published in October 2008. Dr. Saha leads the Information Systems Management research group within NUS–Institute of Systems Science. Dr. Saha teaches courses in Enterprise Architecture, IT Governance and Business Process Management at the post-graduate and senior executive levels (including CIOs). Dr. Saha is the primary author of the Enterprise Architecture Methodology and Toolkit for the Government of Singapore. His current consulting engagements are in Enterprise Architecture for Singapore Government agencies. He has provided consulting and advisory services to Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, CPF Board, Singapore Healthcare Services and Great Eastern Life Assurance among others. He has been invited as a speaker to the World Bank, SAP Labs Lecture Series and Korea Institute for Information Technology Architecture. His books, papers and presentations have been posted by the United Nations, cited by the World Health Organization, United States Department of Defense and The Open Group. Prior to academia, he was instrumental in managing Baxter’s environmental health and safety offshore development centre in Bangalore as Head of Projects and Development. He has worked on engagements in several Fortune 100 organizations in various capacities. Pallab received his Ph.D in 1999 from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His Ph.D dissertation was awarded the best thesis. He can be contacted at pallab@nus.edu.sg.

JEA: Describe how you became involved with Enterprise Architecture.
Saha: I have been interested in various aspects of EA since my days as a Doctoral candidate. My formal involvement with architecture came in after my Ph.D. when as part of my first engagement we had to review and provide feedback regarding an IT system that a well-known vendor had implemented for our client. At that point in my career, I was new and a junior member of the team. That work, of course, focused mostly on what we now call “Data” and “Application” Architecture. Nonetheless, it provided me useful insights and more importantly convinced me that the foundation of anything enduring is its architecture and design, enterprises included. It is clear that it wasn’t a ‘one fine day’ realization, rather a result of numerous conversations with CIOs and CFOs, as well as IT Managers and Process Managers that included multiple research studies which convinced me that EA is perhaps the most important and the most misunderstood idea and a critical emerging discipline.

JEA: How do you address the integration of EA and capital planning when you are teaching courses on these subjects?
Saha: I have always believed that, though, EA is important and critical in its own right, it should never exist in isolation in an organization. Most EA efforts still are special projects / programs undertaken and led primarily by the IT Department / CIO. Given the IT Department’s reputation (or the lack of it), it becomes an issue to sustain the interest (and management attention) to EA. Integrating EA with other management practices (like strategic management, capital planning, IT investment management, IT service management) gives it the necessary impetus to sustain and make its deliverables more used and usable in the enterprise. For instance, the sequence with which architectural initiatives are implemented makes a difference to the program ROI. A lot of organizations that I consult with usually have this misperception that as long as the EA initiatives (as listed in the transition plan) towards the target architecture are implemented, there should be no problems. But it takes me some convincing (with data) that the sequence makes a difference. From a capital planning and investment management point view it is possible to identify and plan for an optimal sequence (a sequence of EA initiatives) that maximizes the overall EA program ROI. This is the aspect I concentrate on when teaching EA to executives and my graduate students. These kinds of linkages make them see how EA is positioned within the context of other management practices in a more holistic manner. There are extensive literatures available on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of EA, e.g. the various frameworks, methodologies, reference models, toolkits, notations etc. However, I have seen lack of proper attention to the ‘why’ and ‘when’ aspects of EA. That’s exactly what I focus on in my EA courses.

JEA: What is the greatest challenge facing Enterprise Architecture today?
Saha: The five key challenges facing EA today, in my view are:
•    EA is driven by and very closely linked to the IT department. This I think is recipe for disaster as then it gets labeled as ‘yet another IT initiative’ thereby losing its position as an organization design driven business transformation program.
•    Typical EA programs get overly focused on the ‘engineering’ aspects and tend to ignore the ‘governance’ aspects. This leads to situations where the architects churn out beautiful documents that are seldom used as intended.
•    The footprint of the EA programs seem to be variable and organizations decide on the scope of their EA programs at will. This leads to EA programs that are applicable to specific segments or lines of business but not the whole enterprise. In context, LOBs are organizations too, but I always suspect EA programs that are not truly enterprise-wide.
•    From an educational point of view, EA should be a business discipline, ideally taught in business schools. I know of very few business schools that actually teach EA. One of the greatest challenges to us as EA researchers and practitioners is to enable this transition and strive for its inclusion as a business discipline.
•    And finally, organizations do not usually take into consideration the ‘emphasis’ and ‘value proposition’ while designing their EA. This leads to sub-optimal EA and of course less than expected results. This comes back to my earlier comment, organizations routinely ignore the ‘why’ and the ‘when’ aspects of their EA.

JEA: What was your favorite EA experience?
Saha: In 2006, I was invited by the Singapore Government to develop an Enterprise Architecture Methodology to be used as a best practice by about 70+ agencies. Now it is not very often that one gets to do something that has the potential to impact at this scale. With the cooperation of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the project went well and we were able to deliver a pragmatic methodology. I had the privilege of leading this project and the methodology, currently in use, is called “Methodology for AGency ENTerprise Architecture (MAGENTA)”. MAGENTA is part of a larger program called the Singapore Government Enterprise Architecture (SGEA). I had the opportunity of presenting a summary of SGEA and MAGENTA at the World Bank conference in Washington DC in April 2008. The web cast and my presentation slides are downloadable from the World Bank and the United Nations website. This work, I did for the Singapore Government actually spurred me write my second book ADVANCES IN GOVERNMENT ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE. The presentation referred above and my book has been cited by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a mechanism for the next generation Health Metrics Network Architecture to enhance National Health Information Systems. Furthermore, I am glad that the US Government has followed Singapore’s footsteps and established an architecture methodology called the Federal Segment Architecture Methodology (FSAM). This simply reinforces the need for formal, disciplined and standard architecture approach for the whole of government that we addressed through MAGENTA three years back.

JEA: What was a least favorite EA experience?
Saha: There is nothing specific that I would term as least favorite. I often face instances when my students, clients and audience ’see’ EA as no different from IT planning. In such situations I take effort to explain the differences and highlight the fact that EA nicely feeds into IT planning. This is more elaborately explained my upcoming book. Such situations and skepticism are not my least favorite moments, as they actually stimulate me to think deeper and respond in a suitable manner.

JEA: What would you say to someone considering making EA their career area?
Saha: Three things:
•    Synthesis: Architecture is different from Engineering in the way that while Engineering focuses on analysis, and Architect must learn to synthesize i.e. have the ability to put together seemingly disparate things in way that makes sense and is coherent in a holistic manner.
•    Discovery: Architecture exists, either by accident or by design. It is architect’s responsibility to uncover the architecture in an enterprise and make judgments on how it can be made relevant and used in a more formalized setting. If need be, the architect must be prepared to avoid using the term ‘Enterprise Architecture’ if the organization’s receptivity is low and they find EA intimidating.
•    Optimization: Architectures are never right or wrong. They are simply appropriate or inappropriate, which means an architect must take the business context and the organizational conditions into consideration while designing the architecture. It also means that the architect must keep her ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ open all the time because when the business context changes, the EA must change too (to keep itself appropriate). This is where the Enterprise Architect’s role is different from a civil / construction architect. Once built a building does not change, hence its architecture is static at a point in time. While enterprises are in a constant state of flux, hence the EA follows.