Reflecting on the materials this week, we broach the topic of standing up an EA practice. I would agree that this could be a daunting task, especially is the organization is not reached a level of maturity making it ripe for change. Often the social sciences are key to understanding and implementing change. Without understanding what motivates people and provides some of the keys to change like customer buy-in and a clear charter explaining the reasons for change. Much of business architecture and even enterprise architecture follows the same change premise as the process disciplines. These social sciences, psychology and sociology if performed right can help accelerate the formation of an Entereprise Architecture practice and facilitate change.
One of the readings this week was “Psychology May Hold Key to Successful Enterprise Architecture” and in it, the article goes into the need for psychology to affect change. Providing an analysis around the Meyers-Briggs (personality types) and work by Rowe and Mason (decisining styles) they seek to pull together a base framework for change. Interesting enough, mapping the types to align with enterprise architecture roles helps to define those roles and would make a case for them in the practice. Additionally, the Gartner article seeks to align leadership styles and other factors to the type of stakeholder. The article doesn’t go deep into the specific alignment but taking it a step further I would suppose that each type has a complimentary type whereas alignment of these would produce a scenario conducive to removing barriers.
Adding complimentary disciplines in enterprise architecture is certainly an advantage. The social sciences are key to change not only standing up a practice but for day to day operations. Often in my experience I find that I may pull together a wiz-bang architecture but without a team to execute it, the ideas become nice vaporware (shelfware). Therefore I have had to use negotiation, persuasion and social engineering techniques in order to navigate the political landscape and leverage team out of my direct locus of control to execute. Influence is one of the most powerful tools an architect has in his arsenal of tools. Without it, EA becomes a wholy academic exercise.
Robert A. Handler, (September 2005), Gartner: Psychology May Hold Key to Successful Enterprise Architecture, Periodical no. G00129701
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It is interesting how psychology comes into play regarding stakeholders. There’s a little bit of marketing in the EA role, isn’t there? The architect must know who the target audience is to increase the likelihood of the sell. I am happy the Gartner article states the Meyers-Briggs test is “scientifically unproven” (p. 4) before launching in on how to apply it. However, if anyone decides to use such tools, my advice is to keep it very private because few will like being boxed into a classification. I can imagine how offensive many would feel knowing they were personally analyzed. Frankly, I am surprised the author did not warn about the potential politics involved, but he did warn about how it may be unrealistic to apply it to every stakeholder (p. 10). One factor that can contribute to that is the increasing telework policies of companies. A remote stakeholder, for example, may never see or talk to the architect; all communication might be done over email. That will make determining personality type very difficult. The most the architect can rely on, in such a situation, is a lucky correlation between a stakeholder job role and the expected basic decision style.