Mis Answers to Cases Essay

MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology College of Business Administration and Accountancy School of Graduate Studies MASTER IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM Iligan City REAL WORLD CASE 1: Toyota Europe, Campbell Soup Company, Sony Pictures, and W.W. Grainger. Making the Case for Enterprise Architects Toyota Europe, Campbell Soup Company, Sony Pictures, and W.W. Grainger. Making the Case for Enterprise Architects Submitted to: Professor Adrian Galido, PhD Submitted by: Sandee Angeli M. Villarta September 4, 2013 Toyota Europe, Campbell Soup Company, Sony Pictures, and W.W. Grainger. Making the Case for Enterprise Architects Toyota Europe, Campbell Soup Company, Sony Pictures, and W.W. Grainger. Making the Case for Enterprise Architects REAL WORLD CASE 1: ————————————————- 1. What does the position of enterprise architect entail? What qualifications or experiences would you think a good enterprise architect should have? Support your answer with examples from the case. An enterprise architect position involves knowing the current technology in the enterprise in respect of its usage: efficiency both in material cost and output resulting in good productivity and finally huge gains, or whether the technology in use is still competitive or on its stage of fall such that when the technology is about to become obsolete or has outlived its usefulness to the enterprise, the enterprise architect has to tell it all to the top management and of course the new technology to be adopted in lieu of the old one. This is because among the job of the enterprise architect is to map, define/redefine, gather data, standardize technology and business processes and to translate these into an architectural approach (macro view) to make the business work as a whole, but able to work in individual projects within the macro, not only at present but also in the future. Experience gained from IT, Service, Distributors of Heavy Equipment, Marketing and Service companies are preferred. Courses such Engineering, IT, Business and Marketing and from Masteral Courses in Business Management are favored though other courses may also produce better enterprise architects. The case of Toyota Europe shows a good example that its enterprise architect was able to make its enterprise strategy worked in the present environment and successfully carried it into the contemplated future. That is why its Chief Architect Mr. Heinchkein was able to give a good account of what the job of the enterprise architect should be for that is exactly what he had done to Toyota Europe. The experience of Campbell Soup Corp. when it implemented the concept of enterprise architect found it very useful from its description that the enterprise architect’s work sees to it the best is served for the enterprise as a whole against the individual department and individual projects for things are being centralized and therefore harmonized with optimum efficiency as part of its architectural approach. Enterprise architecture (EA) is a contested term that refers to the architecture of an enterprise—an organized complex of people and technologies—and the activity of describing or designing enterprises. Enterprise IT Architecting. According to this category, the purpose of EA is the greater alignment between IT and Business concerns. The main purpose of EA is to guide the process of planning and design the IT/IS capabilities of an enterprise in order to meet desired organizational objectives. Typically, architecture proposals and decisions are limited to the IT/IS aspects of the enterprise; other aspects only serve as inputs. Goal: Create unity Qualifications: * Focus on four crucial C’s: connection, collaboration, communication, and customers. * UNITY – Establish IT that enables business strategy today and tomorrow * Must map, define, and standardize technology, data, and business processes to make that possible * Must have both Macro and Micro view. Macro: Understand the business strategy and translate this into an architectural approach Micro: Ability to work with individual projects and deliver very concrete guidance to these projects that focus on the successful delivery of the individual project within that macro view * Must know how to bridge silos * Transforms tech-speak into the language of business solutions * Knows what technology is needed to enable business strategy * Acts like a city planner Provide: Road maps, zoning, common requirements, regulations, and strategy, only that he does this in a company. * Desires to serve what is best for the enterprise vs. the individual department or project – Andy Croft, Campbell Soup Company’s VP of IT – shared services. * Holistic Approach: Looking at the bigger perspective – take a step back and try to understand what problem the proposed project will solve. Is there already a solution that covers the proposed area being researched? Does the proposed project fit into the wider picture? * Ensures that the pieces of the wider-picture puzzle fit together – Heinckiens * Should create compliance standards * Should provide the necessary data that are useful and relevant to everyone in the company. (blueprint) Who owns the data? Who should receive permission to access the data? * Must be a voice that many kinds of people can understand – Tim Ferrarell, CIO and senior VP of enterprise systems at W.W. Grainger. * Should think at a strategic level and all the way down to the operating level * Should understand how to move and down that chain of abstraction * Know how to deal with conflicts and trade-offs; * Has to gain the confidence of the senior leadership team. * Vision – Must understand how the company works, where it wants to go, and how technology helps or hinders. So that effective working relationships can bloom. Should have business and technical knowledge. * Enterprise architects continuously reinforce to business-side counterparts the expected returns on IT projects as the temptation to cut spending grows. * Architecture plan to ensure that IT provides a competitive advantage 2. Consider the different companies mentioned in the case and their experiences with enterprise architecture. Does this approach seem to work better in certain types of companies or industries than in others? Why or why not? Experiences of the four respective companies mentioned have worked successfully in their enterprises. It is submitted, however, that the difference of business nature and other factors attendant to specific line of business, while admitting that every enterprise indisputably needs to adopt current technology and may need enterprise architect, the degree of success attained thereof varies. The peculiarity of a certain business enterprise may require less the participation of enterprise architect. The old adage that â€Å"the only permanent thing in this world is change† truly applies to every enterprise. This being so, one business strategy may be copied wholly or partly with varying degree of success and sometimes even dismal failure. This also means that for a period of time this enterprise architectural approach may work but not for a lifetime as is approach or strategy may be outmoded or rendered obsolete with the advent of new environment and technology, among others. 3. What is the value derived from companies with mature enterprise architectures? Can you see any disadvantages? When the state of matured enterprise architectures is reached, it is also expected that the maximum benefits in terms of business profit margins, stability of the enterprise, expansion of business and formation of new enterprises, and even the production of new products and services are also attained with maximum efficiency and productivity. However, note must be taken of the fact that once maturity is attained there are accompanying disadvantages such as the deceleration of upward movement and may have even reached its peak. Once one is at its peak, the likely thing to happen is for to slide down. Maturity in any undertaking has also its corresponding negative aspect. Such as the lukewarm attitude towards going into new discoveries and therefore allow itself to be drowned into the depth of obsolescence. Or the belief that since these enterprises with matured architectures that they are at the top, they tend to rest on their laurels and think that nobody could outsmart them in terms of finding new and innovative ways to improve the lot of enterprises. When they are in on this stage, they are likely to suffer an imminent loss. REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES 1. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent approach to systems development and implementation that has much in common (and some differences, as well) with enterprise architecture. Go online and research the similarities and differences. Prepare a report to summarize your work. â€Å"Service-oriented architecture is a client/server software design approach in which an application consists of software services and software service consumers (also known as clients or service requesters). SOA differs from the more general client/server model in its definitive emphasis on loose coupling between software components, and in its use of separately standing interfaces.† both aim to address issues on the enterprise level (strategy and planning, reference architecture, and so on), and at the same time their governance models are similar. An enterprise that’s adopting SOA while developing EA and its governances may encounter problems if the similarities and overlaps between EA and SOA are not recognized and accounted for. Architecture domains: similarities and differences The following summarizes the similarities and differences when considering the concepts of architecture in both SOA and EA: Similarities SOA and EA domains share many similarities. For example: * Both address similar architectural domains. * Both are intended to closely align IT with business. * Both use input based on business objectives. * Both require similar strategies and planning activities. Differences While the focus of the EA architecture domains is on the macro level, the SOA architecture domains work on a micro level. More specifically: * EA focuses on defining business components, while SOA focuses on business services. * EA deals with application frameworks and enterprise applications, while SOA’s scope is on service modeling only. * EA deals with enterprise-level infrastructure including servers, databases, and so on, while SOA focuses on the infrastructure that supports services, namely the Enterprise Service Bus. * EA addresses enterprise integration patterns and when they should be used, including point-to-point integration;  file transfer, and other traditional application integration approaches Potential Problems Because of the overlap in the architecture domains of both EA and SOA, the following potential problems may arise when the two are developed in isolation: * If the enterprise focuses only on SOA, it’s possible that other EA aspects are ignored. For example, legitimate needs for integration approaches and standards other than those supported by SOA (for example, point-to-point interface) may be ignored and not addressed on the enterprise level. Also, without EA organizations may fall into applying the Golden Hammer antipattern (if a hammer is your only tool, then every problem looks like a nail) and attempt to use SOA for every solution, even the ones that don’t benefit from such architecture. * With parallel efforts to develop an SOA and EA concurrently, you might encounter inefficiencies as a result of duplicate efforts and missed opportunities to leverage existing architecture artifacts. It’s conceivable that two teams working on developing SOA and EA can spend unnecessary time and resources producing duplicate, and sometimes contradicting. Information models, infrastructure, system-management policies, strategies, and tools. 2. Have you considered a career as an enterprise architect? What bundle of courses would you put together to design a major or a track in enterprise architecture? Break into small groups with your classmates to outline the major areas that should be covered. (No need to break into small groups; just outline the major areas that should be covered) To become an enterprise architect, it requires more than having a degree in engineering, architecture, IT, and business. It demands years of hands-on experience. As a graduate of Entrepreneurial Marketing I can say that I have the knowledge on how to manage a business; in what ways will the business be more profitable; and by what means it can sustain in this competitive economy. Nonetheless, theories are not enough for the industry to survive. To qualify as an enterprise architect I must work for at least 8 – 10 years in an industry to be equipped with the right knowledge, skills, and experience on how the whole system works. The courses which may be bundled are: * Engineering Courses * Mechanical * Electrical * Civil * Industrial & Systems Engr (ISyE) * Business and Management Courses * Marketing * Economics * Accounting * Business Management * Investment & Financial Risk Management * Architectural Studies (Undergrad and Graduate Studies) * MArch/Master of Business Administration * MArch/Master of Computer Science * MArch/Master of Science in Civil and Engineering * Environmental Engineering (Construction Engineering and Management or Structures) * IT Courses * Master Degree Courses * Preferably MBA * Architectural Studies (cited above) * Trainings and Seminars on: * Six Sigma * Business Process * Process Improvement (Innovation and Continuous Improvement) * Cross-functional Team * IT – Management and Strategy * Marketing and Product Management * Quality and Business Planning * Enterprise Software * Enterprise Architecture * Security * Cloud Computing * Vendor Management * Consulting * Business Intelligence * Governance * Software Project * Outsourcing The courses which may be bundled are: Business Courses – Marketing, Accounting, IT with Industrial Psychology; Engineering (Mech., Automotive, Electl., Civil, Electronics, Computer) and technology courses may also be bundled with IT and Industrial Psychology. Then Sociology, Community Development, Political Science, AB English, Psychology with IT.