Technology Strategy & Architecture Case Study

Contents:

Organization Overview:............................................................................................. 2

Strategic Objective:..................................................................................................... 2

Enterprise Architecture Capability:........................................................................... 3

Roles & Responsibilities:.............................................................................................. 5

Business Value & Benefits: .......................................................................................... 6

Enterprise Architecture Practise KPIs: ....................................................................... 6

Approach:......................................................................................................................

Organization overview:

Business Overview:

This telecom giant is in 14 countries across Africa with over 120 million customers and over $4.7 billion in revenues. They are into Telecom and Mobile Money services. This organization is the second largest telecom operator in Africa.

IT overview

Each country has its own stack of IT Systems. The company's IT landscape was highly complex and fragmented, with disparate systems and processes that resulted in duplication of effort and lack of standardization. The footprint is over 1400 be-spoke business systems across 14 countries along with over 350 COTS products. All the bespoke applications are built on top of IBM WebSphere.

The IT department has already procured JBOSS licenses and not using them. Also, there are

regulatory challenges, around 20% provisioning failure and operational challenges. The

organization also struggled to keep up with the pace of technological change, and it was difficult to align IT investments with business goals and objectives.

Strategic Objective:

The CIO of this organization has hired me as a Chief Enterprise Architecture consultant for

setting up the EA team, drafting the EA strategic objectives and setting up the governance.

The strategic objectives for an EA (Enterprise Architecture) team are:

• Alignment with business goals: One of the primary objectives of an EA team is to ensure

that the organization's technology infrastructure and solutions are aligned with its business goals and objectives. This involves understanding the organization's current and future needs, as well a identifying technology trends and innovations that can help the organization achieve its goals.

• Integration of technology solutions: Another objective is to ensure that technology solutions are integrated effectively across different areas of the organization. This includes ensuring that systems are interoperable, data is shared efficiently, and that the organization has a cohesive technology strategy that supports its business operations.

• Optimization of technology investments: The EA team should work to optimize the

• Effective systems: EA team is also tasked with to have systems more accessible. reusable and easier to use than they are now, more scalable, efficient, flexible, accurate and less vulnerable to fraud. As part of this, EA Team is also tasked with in fixing the technical debt.

• Risk management: Another important objective is to manage technology risks by identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities and developing strategies to mitigate them. This includes ensuring compliance with relevant regulations and standards and ensuring that technology solutions are secure and resilient.

• Innovation: The EA team should also be focused on driving innovation and exploring new technologies and approaches that can help the organization improve its operations, increase efficiency, and drive growth.
  

Enterprise Architecture Capability:

Setting up an EA (Enterprise Architecture) capability can be a complex and challenging process,  but here are some key steps that we followed to help organizations get started: 

• Define the scope and objectives of the EA capability: The first step in setting up an EA  capability is to define the scope and objectives of the capability. This includes identifying the business units, systems, and processes that will be included in the scope, as well as the goals and objectives of the EA capability. 
  

• Identify the stakeholders and engage with them: It's important to identify the key stakeholders who will be impacted by the EA capability and engage with them early in the process. This includes business units, IT teams, senior management, and other key stakeholders like vendors. The CIO was the sponsor of the EA practice.
  

• Develop an EA framework and methodology: The next step is to develop an EA framework  and methodology that will guide the work of the EA team. This includes defining the EA  principles, standards, and guidelines that will be used, as well as the tools and techniques that will be applied. I came up with a customized TOGAF framework and repository. Refer  FIG-1 below for repository setup. 
  

• Build the EA team: Once the EA framework and methodology are in place, it's time to build the EA team. This includes hiring the right people with the right skills and expertise, as well  as defining their roles and responsibilities. I took the interviews to help the organization to select right combinations of Enterprise architects to handle, integration, application, infra  and mobile app skills.  
  

• Establish the EA governance structure: The EA governance structure defines the decision making processes and accountability for the EA capability. This includes establishing a  governance board, defining decision-making processes, and defining roles and responsibilities. Architecture board was steering and managing the capability under the leadership of CIO.  
  

• Develop and implement the EA roadmap: The EA roadmap outlines the priorities and initiatives for the EA capability over time. This includes identifying the key initiatives and  projects that will be undertaken, as well as the timelines and resource requirements for  each. I handled the Prepaid customer application portfolio and helped them to rationalize the application landscape.

Fig 1 - Architecture Repository

Roles & Responsibilities:

My responsibility was crucial as I established the Enterprise Architecture practice and standardized  the frameworks for EA practice. This includes tweaking the TOGAF for our needs, hiring the EA  team members, creating the roles and responsibilities, deliverables catalogue, and Toolkit for  delivering and running an enterprise architecture lifecycle.  

Also, I conducted workshops and stakeholder meetings to gather input and communicate the  benefits of the Enterprise architecture to all stakeholders.

Business Value & Benefits:

The Enterprise Architecture team delivered several business benefits to the organization including:  

• Improved alignment between IT and business goals and objectives 

• Increased standardization and consistency across the IT landscape 

• Reduced duplication of effort and improved efficiency. Also reduced the redundant applications in the landscape and removed around 30 applications from the landscape within first 9 months.  

• Enhanced agility and ability to respond to changing market conditions 

• Improved customer and supplier engagement through better integration and collaboration. This helped to launch Mobile apps quickly and improved customer experience.

Enterprise Architecture Practise KPIs:

Assessing the Enterprise Architecture (EA) practice is crucial in enhancing the efficiency of this  capability. Below are some sample KPIs that we used for EA Assessment:

KPI	Metrics
IT with business goals	• Percentage of IT budget spent on Strategic  projects.  • Tracking the percentage of IT projects  aligned with business goals.  • Measuring the value delivered by IT  initiatives.  • Number of IT projects delivered on time and  within budget
IT project delivery performance (quantitative  and qualitative measures that assess the  timeliness, quality, and cost-effectiveness of IT  project delivery)	Tracking project milestones and deadlines  • Conducting regular project reviews  • Measuring project budget and resource  utilization  • Conducting user satisfaction surveys  • Measuring project success rates
Application portfolio performance	• Assessing application utilization rates  • Analysing application performance and  stability  • Assessing application value  • Measuring application total cost of  ownership (TCO)
Innovation enablement	Number of innovative solutions  • Time-to-market  • Employee engagement  • Adoption of new technologies  • Business impact (include revenue growth, cost  savings, or customer satisfaction   improvements)
IT infrastructure performance	Network uptime  • Response time  • Bandwidth utilization  • Server utilization  • Storage capacity utilization  • Mean time to repair (MTTR)  • Energy efficiency
Business-IT satisfaction	Surveys  • Service Level Agreements (SLAs)  • Incident management  • Business value delivered  • User adoption
Cost savings and avoidance	Cost of IT operations  • Application portfolio rationalization  • Reduced vendor costs (better vendor  management, including consolidation of  vendors, standardization of software   licenses, and better contract negotiations)  • Reduced project costs (standardization of  technologies and processes, resulting in  reduced project cost)  • Improved resource utilization

Approach:

1. TOGAF Framework

Activity	TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) – the most sophisticated enterprise architecture lifecycle and methodology for adaptation across an organization
Purpose	The TOGAF architecture framework facilitates the design, planning, implementation, and management of enterprise architectures. This includes Business, Application, Data, and Infrastructure architecture.
Outcome	The outcomes of using the TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) Framework can be broadly categorized into the following areas: • Improved business-IT alignment: TOGAF provides a common language and methodology for aligning business and IT strategies, goals, and objectives, resulting in better alignment between the two. • Better IT governance: TOGAF provides a structured approach to IT governance, helping organizations to ensure that IT investments are aligned with business objectives, risks are managed effectively, and compliance requirements are met. • Increased efficiency and effectiveness of IT operations: TOGAF provides a framework for developing and implementing standardized processes, procedures, and best practices, resulting in increased efficiency and effectiveness of IT operations. • Improved agility and flexibility: TOGAF enabled the organization to respond more quickly to changes in business and IT environments by providing a flexible and adaptable framework for designing and implementing IT solutions. • Improved risk management: TOGAF provides a framework for identifying and managing risks associated with IT investments and operations, helping organizations to mitigate potential risks and avoid costly mistakes. • Higher return on investment: The TOGAF framework helped achieve a higher return on investment by ensuring that enterprise architecture activities are aligned with business goals and optimizing resource use.

2. eTom

Activity	eTOM Framework: Using the eTOM Framework, we facilitated the creation use cases with groups consisting of business and IT Teams. This helped us to identify the capabilities that are critical for us and prioritize the deliverables.
Purpose	eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map) is a business process framework that provides a comprehensive and standardized view of the end-to-end business processes required for service providers to run their operations and support their customers. The key purpose of the framework includes: • Standardize business processes • Improve customer experience • Enable end-to-end service management • Facilitate collaboration and integration: • Support business transformation:
Outcome	Improved efficiency: eTOM provides a standardized framework for business processes, which can help to streamline operations and reduce duplication of effort, leading to greater efficiency and cost savings. • Increased consistency: By following a common set of business processes, service providers can ensure greater consistency in the way they operate, which can lead to better quality and reliability of services. • Improved customer satisfaction: eTOM helps service providers to better understand and manage the end-to-end customer experience, from service design to delivery and support, which can lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. • Better service management: eTOM provides a framework for end-to-end service management, which can help service providers to manage their services more effectively and efficiently, from service design and delivery to ongoing support and maintenance. • Increased agility: By providing a standardized framework for business processes and operations, eTOM can help service providers to respond more quickly to changing market conditions and customer needs. • Improved collaboration and integration: eTOM provide a common language and framework for different departments and teams within a service provider organization to collaborate and integrate their activities, which can help to improve overall performance.

3. Risk Management Technique

Activity	Risk Management: Risks are normally classified as time (schedule), cost (budget), and scope but they could also include client transformation relationship risks, contractual risks, technological risks, scope, and complexity risks, environmental (corporate) risks, personnel risks, and client acceptance risks.
Purpose	The purpose of risk management in Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to identify, assess, and manage risks that could impact an organization's ability to achieve its strategic objectives
Outcome	Reduced risk: By identifying and mitigating potential risks, EA can help organizations to reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes that could impact their ability to achieve their strategic objectives. • Improved decision-making: Risk management helps organizations to make informed decisions about the use of technology, considering the potential risks and benefits associated with each decision. • Better alignment between IT and business: By identifying and assessing the risks associated with the use of technology, EA can ensure that IT initiatives are aligned with the organization's business objectives and the potential risks are minimized. • Increased stakeholder confidence: Effective risk management can increase stakeholder confidence in the organization's ability to manage technology-related risks and make informed decisions about the use of technology. • Greater agility: By identifying potential risks, EA can help organizations to be more agile and responsive to changing business and technology environments by anticipating potential risks and proactively implementing mitigation strategies.