Michael Blechar

First, let me wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010! The economy seems to finally be turning around and, as a result, there should be exciting business opportunities and challenges as organizations seek to rebound and gain new competitive advantages….

Being a “part-time theologian”, I cannot help but comment on the flow of the season for many of us; the craziness and joy of the Christmas season is past and we now have time – both individually and corporately -to “take stock” of 2009 and plan for 2010. Those familiar with the Christmas story will note that 10 days after Christmas the wise men show up at the manger, have a life-changing experience and then “return home by a different route” than the one by which they came. So too, hopefully, 2010 brings a chance for life-changing opportunities which will require adopting new disciplines. But prior to any major change it is always wise to “assess and confess” what’s working and what needs to change and only then realistically evolve in the new direction.

All too often we make New Year’s resolutions and then try to do too much too fast or select ones which are not reasonable to expect to accomplish. While all of us individually may want to finally lose weight, stop smoking or implement that killer new exercise program, statistics tell us that the vast majority of us will give up on our resolutions within the first month or so. And most organizations will experience the same types of problems with trying to initiate the next new “program” or “initiative” and failing – frequently making things worse than they were before.

So what should organizations do in terms of their vision for change in 2010?

Obviously, having a consistent, ongoing transition strategy for moving the current solution architecture towards the future solution architecture helps a lot. Except in extreme circumstances, minor adjustments rather than chasing completely new future targets is to be preferred. Enterprise architects working collaboratively with technology, application, information and business architects on the transition strategy is highly recommended.

But even more tactically-focused initiatives to improve productivity and time to delivery or which lower cost or generate more revenue need to be factored in. The trick is to not become defocused with too many of these initiatives, or select ones which politically, culturally or for other reasons are likely to fail. Better to make less aggressive, more pragmatic successful changes than over-reach and fail with something overly ambitious (at least in my opinion!).

Some areas of improvement I’d like to suggest for your consideration to be addressed in 2010 include:

-Ensure that a clear vision and transition strategy exists for the future solution architecture (ideally supported by collaborative modeling by architects)
-Improve the requirements definition process and communication between IT and the business units
-Implement requirements tracking tools
-Implement automated testing tools (which reuse requirements and models)
-Implement/increase the use of agile business process and application development methodologies
-Create, promote and measure the success of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and development of applications (SODA)
-Implement/support business process management (BPM) and master data management (MDM) initiatives
-Implement improved metadata management practices

No pressure, of course!

Have a great 2010!

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