drEAmtime - EPIC SCAN

I continue to explore the great post from Ivo Velitchkov step-by-step, because his posts allow my thoughts to follow a red line. He pretty much eliminated a GLUE Disease in my very own head. Once again (and I will continue to say that till I reach the end of the red line) thank you for unplugging me.

So here again a quote from Ivo:

Big organizations in all sectors, especially in the service industries, tend to gather huge number of applications until they find themselves in a situation where there are far too many to manage. A good number of them are not used at all. Some other part is underutilized. Most of the critical applications have high maintenance or high replacement cost or both. Inevitably there are many which automate different parts of the same process but they don’t talk to each other. And this justifies new spending on building interfaces, or buying application integration packages first and then replacing them with BPMS and then probably with something better than BPMS. As a result – more spending and more applications to manage.

Ivo keeps continuing exploring that with some more statements, which all point to one specific problem: Unneeded complexity as the root cause of too high costs. Once again  a great observation and a situation I have also faced more than once (and most likely will face each and every day as long as I stay in Enterprise Architecture drEAmland. So what am I doing? Actually I am applying the EPIC SCAN approach to analyze the past (GLUE Defence).

• Emergent Complexity - consequence of many small and unrelated decisions. (Ivo: "Inevitably there are many which automate different parts of the same process but don't talk to each other")
• Perverse Complexity - consequence of clumsy attempts to reduce complexity. (Ivo: "And this justifies new spending on building interfaces, or buying application integration packages first and then replacing them with BPMS and then probably with something better than BPMS.")
• Irreducible Complexity - consequence of the real complexity of the demand environment. (Ivo touches this only between the lines: "Big organizations in all sectors [...] tend to gather huge number of applications [...]")
• Contrived Complexity - consequence of deliberately creation to benefit some stakeholders. (Ivo: "But as they rarely get to the cause of the inefficiencies or are in the position to influence the bigger system that produces these inefficiencies, the overall result is an oscillation or even increase in overall IT spending.")

By analyzing the problem at hand with the EPIC SCAN approach I am able to create transparency and visibility on the root cause of the problem. And then it is (once again) all about communication and people to optimize the information flow and by that find the best fit-to-purpose solution.

It does help quite a lot, if you don't panic and stop thinking to be an Enterprise Architect but start knowing that you are one. Remember, in the Enterprise Architecture Matrix you just have to let it all go, fear, doubt and disbelief. Free your mind.

As always over to you for commenting to help me improving my thinking and share as much knowledge as possible.