Todd Biske: Outside the Box

Archive for July, 2009

This seems to be the topic of the week with excellent posts on the subject from both Leo de Sousa and Serge Thorn.  This has been on my to-do list since a meeting with Bruce Robertson where we discussed both my thinking on EA Services and Gartner’s, which also resulted in a blog post from Bruce. In that conversation, Bruce convinced me that communication should be a top level EA service, rather than an implied activity within all other EA services, as was my previous stance.  This was also challenged by Aleks Buterman in our discussions on Twitter.

Bruce’s stance was that communications was essential to everything that EA does.  If your EA team can’t communicate effectively, then their chances of success are greatly diminished.  By defining it as a top level EA service, it emphasizes its importance for not just the EA team, but everyone who utilizes the EA services. 

Given that assumption, what does the communication service look like?  I think Leo gave a great start at a communication plan.  In reality, the EA communication service shouldn’t be very different than any other communication service, the only difference is the subject being communicated.  Therefore, let’s learn from practices of the communications experts.  Leo relied on a communication plan created by a colleague that is used for many things, not just enterprise architecture.  I’m trying a simliar approach, initially based on a template from ganthead.com, but has now been customized quite a bit. In the plan we capture a number of items.  You’ll see there are many similarities to what Leo had to say, plus some additional items I think are important.  The plan is a simple Excel spreadsheet, with each row representing a unique “audience.”  These audiences do not have to be a mutually exclusive, in fact, it’s quite common to have one row targeted at a broad audience, and then other rows targeted at more narrow subgroups.  For each audience, the following things are captured:

• Questions to answer / Information to present: In a nutshell, what are we trying to communicate to the audience?  What are the two or three key items to present?
• Sensitivies: This one isn’t on Leo’s, but I think it’s very important.  What are the biases and background that the audience has that may positively or negatively impact the effectiveness of the communication?  For example, if your organization has tried the same initiative 5 different times, and you’re proposing the sixth, you should know that you’re walking into a room full of doubters.
• Mechanism: How will the communication be delived?  This can involve multiple mechanisms including presentations, podcasts, webinars, blogs, whitepapers, etc.
• Objective: What is the objective of the communication for the audience?  This is different than the information to present, this instead is the expected behavior you expect to see if the communication is successful.  Obviously, the communication alone may not achieve the objective, but it should represent a big step in that direction.
• Author(s): Who will create the communications collateral?
• Presenter(s): Who will present the information?
• Delivery date(s): When will the communication be delivered, and if it’s an on-going process, at what frequency?  If there are mutliple delivery dates, when will the last delivery occur?
• Evaluation Method: How will we evaluate the effectiveness of the communication?  There may be multiple evaluations.
• Follow-up date: When will follow-up occur with the audience to gauge effectiveness and retention?

This may seem like a lot of formality, but I’ve seen the benefits of it first hand, and the risks associated with ad hoc communication efforts.  My experiences with ad hoc have been hit or miss, but when the time was taken to develop a formal plan, the efforts have always been successful.  I hope this helps you in your efforts.

James McGovern, in one of his parting blogs (only time will tell if that’s really the case or not), asked some questions of me. Here’s his comment:

Todd Biske: I can count the number of peer enterprise architects from Fortune enterprises who are credible bloggers on one hand and I must say that your blog is the gold standard in this regard. Could you make your next blog entry on the topic of why you blog but more importantly provide a sense of why in a way that will encourage some of our other industry peers to come out of hiding? Please also share what other topics are of interest to you besides SOA? Curious to know if you have drunk the Kool-aid on $$$$ ECM technologies that really should cost $ or whether you have ever attended an OWASP meeting, etc?

First, thanks for the compliment. While we definitely have different styles, the fact that your blog exists is a continual incentive for me to continue to do so, as it is a sign that there are practicing EA’s who are also willing to share publicly. Furthermore, your efforts in calling attention to other bloggers through your blogs popularity helped a number of other corporate IT bloggers to build an audience which is critical for keeping the information flowing.

The reason I blog has always been very simple- sharing information. I have a hard time believing that there aren’t other people who are thinking about the exact same problems that I am. There are plenty of paid services that can provide access to “the network,” whether its buying a vendor’s product, paid analysis, consultants, etc. I have no problems with them trying to make a business out of it, but I also think there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be sharing information with our fellow peers for free. While there will always be work that must remain private for competitive reasons, how much of what we do every day really falls into that category? Does my recent post on EA services reveal anything private about my employer? No. Can the comments and discussion in public Internet forums help make those definitions better? Absolutely, and many organizations are already doing this, only through closed, paid networks. These networks provide great information, but you have to pay to join the club. So, that’s a long way of saying that I prefer to be an example of public sharing, and allow people to learn from my experiences in the hope that they’ll share some of their own. It’s been far more giving than receiving, but I’m 100% okay with that.

To your other questions… other topics of interest to me: anything of strategic nature with regards to the use of IT. I’m a big picture thinker, and always have been interested in the application of technology rather than the technology per se. I did a lot of work in usability in my early days for just this reason. I’m also very interested in the human aspects of things, taking a social psychology angle (just heard that term on a podcast and really liked it). Outside of that, the rest of my time revolves around faith and family in one way or another. On ECM technologies, I haven’t had to do a ton of work in this space, but I do know I haven’t drunk any Kool-aid. I’m fortunate to do some work for my kids’ school which has to leverage IT on a shoestring, so I’m able to keep an eye on some less expensive tools, including ECM recently. On OWASP, I have not attended a meeting, but have spoken with a colleague at work who wants to get a St. Louis group established. I will put him in touch with you to get some advice on getting the group going.

James, I hope you continue share your wisdom, and I’m sure you will, even if it’s not through the blogosphere anymore. Thanks for your part in making my blog better and building my audience.