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.