August 1st, 2014.

For the final installment of this blog series on Competency Centres, we would like to finalize by talking about the different challenges that a governance body would address, and the long term benefits that it will bring to the organization. As a preface to this blog, please refer to the

For the final installment of this blog series on Competency Centres, we would like to finalize by talking about the different challenges that a governance body would address, and the long term benefits that it will bring to the organization. As a preface to this blog, please refer to the first blog, and to the second blog.

The Challenges of Governance

The following are some of the challenges that Governance, in the form of a Competency Centre; helps solve:

• The most challenging part of every organization: People. With people, politics materialize. Corporate politics is always the elephant in the room. Governance protects people from themselves. In heavily bureaucratic organizations, where resistance to change is substantial; proper Governance can help, since it will handle progressive change and implementation of new processes and systems.

•  It is human nature to first implement technologies, and then implement the rules (i.e.Governance). We first invented cars… and then the traffic laws, right? Establishing Governance early helps establish the necessary policies, principles and guidelines that the organization will follow.

• Proper communication between business units is crucial for the successful establishment of Governance; otherwise, noncompliance will propagate across the organization.

• Proper Governance will also address any challenges that today’s multi-cultural and multi-vision organizational environments bring, and avoid the classic: “I will put this code I just created in production by myself, that’s how we do it where I come from… and, there is no better test than production.”.

• Nowadays, many leaders and managers within large organizations try to evade confrontation for many different reasons; all of them creating bureaucracy and overkill: hopes of organizational advancement, corporate politics avoidance, etc. However, this lack of decision making can be handled by a Governance Body with established mechanisms and processes within the organization, and not having to rely on a single individual.  Additionally, proper Governance will not let certain groups get their own way; bringing consistency across the organization and reducing enterprise debt.

Benefits of a Competency Center

The establishment of a Competency Center does:

• Enable and maintain communications across different teams and stakeholders.

* Provide Governance for new and existing integration projects.

* Keep a consistent record of the existing integrations across the organization.

• Provide expertise around system integration, assisting in the elaboration of technical recommendations, and issuing decision records when compliance does not take place.

• Provide guidance with Development Guidelines, standards and best practices, along with enforcing adherence to an established Reference Architecture and its derived Design Patterns.

• Provide guidance around integration-specific Methodologies, and contains all necessary templates for proper execution of integration projects.

• Deliver an escalation mechanism through the Governance Committee.

Our Approach

Groundswell’s Competency Center methodology allows our clients to establish the proper Governance mechanisms, in order to properly implement and sustain modern integration technologies; while allowing people to leverage technology in order to perform their processes, bringing revenue to the organization. Groundswell works with clients in order to properly customize a Competency Center, aimed at Integration, Business Intelligence, Business Process Management or Enterprise Content Management; that will allow them build an effective and progressive organization.

July 29th, 2014.

For the second installment of this month’s blog series on Competency Centres, Enabling Governance as the First Stage of an Integration Strategy, we’d like to touch on further key components of Competency Centres and what makes them successful in implementation. As a preface for this post, it may

For the second installment of this month’s blog series on Competency Centres, Enabling Governance as the First Stage of an Integration Strategy, we’d like to touch on further key components of Competency Centres and what makes them successful in implementation.

As a preface for this post, it may help to backtrack and re-read our first blog posted last week which serves as a ‘Competency Centre 101’ of sorts.

As you will recall, we capped off that post by sharing the foundational components of a Competency Centre: Governance Committee, Integration Inventory, Governance Process, Reference Architecture, Design Patterns, Development Guidelines & Methodology. However, it is important to note that additional components can be added to the Competency Centre in subsequent phases, as required.

Governance Committee

A Governance Committee needs to be established early, and it will:

• Be constituted by stakeholders representing different Information Technology (IT) business-facing groups.
• Meet regularly to review integration progress, challenges and exceptions to any of the foundational components of the Competency Centre.

Integration Inventory

The Integration Inventory is a very important component of the Competency Centre, since it will allow:

• Identification of existing integration patterns, technologies utilized, documentation availability.
• Clarity around technical and functional ownership and the business data objects being integrated.
• Consistency of information, since as integration projects are implemented or retired, the inventory requires to be updated.

Governance Process
A Governance Process is crucial for the proper execution of the Competency Centre, and must be created to adapt to the current processes of the organization. The process will ensure that all the components of the Competency Center depicted here work in unison, and that benefits are measured when the process is completed. This process is usually depicted in a Cross Functional Flowchart, or utilizing Business Process Management Notation.

Reference Architecture

The Reference Architecture is intended to become an abstract representation of the permissible patterns within specific domains (i.e. EI, ETL, SOA, BPM). This deliverable must be technology independent, and must be updated on a regular basis in order to identify new or deprecated domains. Additionally, any pattern identified within the organization that does not belong to a domain; must be considered an anti-pattern.

The Reference Architecture will also include a set of Principles to be followed for all integration work across the organization. Alongside these Principles, a set of Policies will also be outlined in the Reference Architecture for proper Governance to take place.

Design Patterns

The Design Patterns derive from the domains outlined in the Reference Architecture, and are also technology independent. Each domain defined in the Reference Architecture, will have a permissible set of Design Patterns; that are intended to provide consistency across the organization. These Design Patterns will serve as the foundation for all integration work performed within the organization.

Development Guidelines

The Development Guidelines are technology specific, and must be derived from the Design Patterns. Each one of the technologies aligned to each domain depicted in the Reference Architecture, must have a set of Development Guidelines. These Development Guidelines will serve as the baseline for all code/configuration reviews that will take place through the integration development lifecycle, as defined in the Governance Process.

Methodology

The implementation of a Methodology is also essential, and it will dictate the type of deliverables expected throughout the entire integration development lifecycle. The Methodology will provide each team with guidance, and the proper templates to be utilized to complete a project. The Methodology can be utilized or merged with any other existing methodologies in the organization.

Some of the templates provided by the Methodology are:

• Project Assessment
• Requirements Document
• Architecture Impact Assessment
• Risk Assessment
• Architecture Document
• Detailed Design
• Architecture Fit Assessment
• Test Plan and Strategy
• Test Cases
• Code Reviews
• Deployment
• Cut-Over
• Decision Records
• Technical Recommendations

Governance Process

A Governance Process is crucial for the proper execution of the Competency Centre, since it will:

• Confirm that the proper Methodology is followed for all integration projects.
• Make sure that compliance with the Reference Architecture takes place.
• Ensure that the proper Design Patterns are followed in all integration projects.
• Ensure that the code or configuration created for integration projects meets the proper Development Guidelines and standards, in order to ensure its quality.
• Make certain the Governance Committee is engaged when necessary.
• Confirm that the process to ensure Governance is followed and takes place for every project.
• Ensure the Integration Inventory is kept up to date with new, changed and retired integrations.

The Governance Process, as mentioned before; must be created with the specific needs of the organization in mind. An overly complex process may be too overwhelming and not be followed, and a process that is too simple may not be respected.

May 23rd, 2014.

As today’s organizations continue to adopt technology to accomplish their daily processes, many of their business challenges materialize when the needs for Integration are realized; and the need to implement efficiencies across the different areas of the organization becomes evident. At this stage, the organization has most likely evolved

As today’s organizations continue to adopt technology to accomplish their daily processes, many of their business challenges materialize when the needs for Integration are realized; and the need to implement efficiencies across the different areas of the organization becomes evident. At this stage, the organization has most likely evolved from a few individuals (one or two systems that do not exchange information with one another); a heavy load of paperwork that is shared across different groups, and no processes have been defined. Once these organizations begin to grow, communication challenges become a daily problem, and the exchange of information utilizing paper (even though necessary) starts to be considered primitive. Executives begin to worry that certain competitive advantages can be gained if Integration technologies are implemented in order to:

• Document, streamline and automate business processes.
• Seamlessly integrate information systems.
• Reutilize technology components and provide a platform that allows for future growth.
• Establish governance mechanisms that will ensure business continuity.
• Properly classify and understand their data.
• Suitably collect crucial business information, and present it to executives in a meaningful manner; in order to facilitate business decisions.

People. Process. Technology.

Here’s a perfect example illustrating the issues organizations face as they grow. For our purposes, let’s divide our example organization in to People, Process and Technology. This organization started small, and when technology got in the mix; and the organization began to grow, more processes started to materialize, and the need for better technology infrastructure was identified. The normal reaction to this is to buy more infrastructures: computers, servers, systems, etc.

The problem does not stop there, as the organization continues to grow, more people get hired. As more people join, more processes are identified, and suddenly, some of them become crucial to the business. Later on, the need for multiple individuals to access the same technology platform starts to become more evident. Things start to get complicated for these infrastructure components in the middle. Therefore, what does the organization do? Buy more infrastructure and implement more systems to distribute the workload. Even though its processes are enabled through the technology, people must be able to reach these processes through other supporting technologies; and organic growth starts to take place. By then, the leaders of the organization start to realize that Integration is needed; some systems need to communicate with one another and exchange data. So, the integration paradigm begins. However, by then, the organization’s legacy systems reach their end of life and the usual reaction is to buy a few brand new servers and additional infrastructure that will take over for those old computers. The data from the legacy systems is extracted and decommission of the old servers takes place. Even though a new set of infrastructure has been established, the organization has serious integration problems now.

This is where modern Integration technologies come into play. Integration technologies are not a silver bullet, and they do require some development effort, contrary to what most vendors advertise. However, once Integration technologies are implemented, we go from the previous picture to this picture:

n this new scenario, modern Integration technologies allow the seamless addition of new applications, and enable the proper and timely decommission of applications or technology that have reached end of life. However, acquiring an Integration technology is not just about the purchase. A proper Integration Strategy must be in place ahead of time in order to avoid common pitfalls in the future such as: competing technologies, disjointed processes, unknown data quality, unsustainable point to point interfaces and a complex systems architecture.

Our Approach

Groundswell’s Integration Strategy methodology allows our clients to simplify the governance, acquisition, implementation and sustainment of modern Integration technologies, while allowing our customers’ People, Process and Technology gradually develop. Every business is different, which is why Groundswell believes there’s never a “one size fits all” answer. We pride ourselves on working with clients to customize an Integration Strategy that will help them build an effective and progressive organization.