Common opinion about the purpose of architecture says that the major contribution that an architecture could make into an enterprise life is making its business simpler and more unified. I, personally, disagree with such an explanation of the mission of architecture, but this is a different story. Let's see what a simplification can do for the business.
Once upon a time, a Big Bank had two Important Divisions, one of which provided Equities (financial instrument) while another one provided Fixed Income. Both Important Divisions were fully stuffed with managers of all types, though they might accommodate a bit more analysts and operational people. The life was good until one of the Divisions, we do not remember now which one it was, wanted to save more for the bonuses and requested IT to simplify their systems and maintenance.
Architects, who collected huge sack of solutions and were in hunting for the business case to apply them, identified the opportunity right away. A picture below illustrates what a harmless request for simplification did to the requester.
While a U-turn in the picture is self-explanatory, we still have to say that IT Architects did not mean to hurt business. They just noticed that many business processes in each Division differ from each other by the words used and by the data moved through, i.e. people did the same with different data. Therefore, they (business) can do its processes with the same system while we, i.e. IT, will take care of data. It was said, and it was done (believe it or not). IT merged two systems used by Divisions.
The IT was good, and the end-users did not find the difference until the IT Manager reported later on about perfectly done job. Yes, simplification was obvious but business divisions became unhappy all of a sudden. They started to argue who is the owner of this new (merged) system, who controls its resources and, finally, who has more rights to command in this situation.
We have to say that it was the really big bank; it had everything, even Business Architects. These chaps were also in hunting for the business case and asked an innocent question: "If two divisions can work with the same system, then they do the same things. So, why do we have two Divisions?" Accidentally, an enterprise management heart this question (recall, it was once upon a time) and could not find an answer. You, probably, know what happens when high management cannot find an answer...
In a short while, the enterprise created a new administrative chart where you were not able to find Equities and Fixed Income Divisions but instead there was a new Very Important Division named Securities Operations. In brackets, we have to say that the enterprise reduced number of managerial positions twice while the layoff affected not more than one-fourth among operations personnel.
In 2012, when you want simplification, recall this story and do not repeat the experience of Alice, who "had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down" a rabbit-hole ...
Leave a comment