drEAmtime - PACE SCAN

I continue to explore the red line laid out by the great post from Ivo Velitchkov. So far I have created following posts:

1. drEAmtime - Communication
2. drEAmtime - Bridging the Silo
3. drEAmtime - Capability Cemetery
4. drEAmtime - EPIC SCAN
5. drEAmtime - Archetypes
6. drEAmtime - WISE SCAN

Ivo has now fixed some typos in his post to cleanup. I decided (for the moment) to keep my posts as they are, at least as long as the flow goes.

To quote Ivo 

The part related to complexity certainly deserves a separate post and may be more than one. As this one got pretty long already, for my standards that is, let me just finish with the following: dealing with complexity is not reduced to finding ways to reduce it. It requires much different understanding of what happens when interactions are not linear. When there is dynamics, adaptation, self-organisation, irrational behaviour, politics and power.
 

Here Ivo touches the concept of transorming from As-Is to To-Be. Here he doesn't rant, but points at some specific points which need attention to execute successful on the transformation. Here I apply the PACE SCAN to secure the information flow through the GLUE Discovery and the transformation from one stable state to anohter stable state.

• People - to transform people will make the difference between success and failure.
• Adaption - to transform the complete solution must be adapted to reach fit to purpose.
• Communication - to transform communication is key to secure that the targets will be reached.
• Emphatic - to transform it is required to sense also the unspoken which enables to deliver and help that people and solution form a perfect fit-to-purpose environment.

The typical complexity to be found after executing in a poor way (not doing the PACE SCAN right) is contrived complexity, where a subset of the stakeholders was handled, but not the holistic complete set. By that highly biased solutions are created which unbalance the whole system. Sometimes is worth to unbalance though, because it allows to find innovation which will not be found if you always stay in a balanced world. But before the innovation can be found there is normally a time of tension and pain. Ivo doesn't touch this in his post, because he is very much focussing on efficiency, but sometimes his statement "And indeed they shoot inefficiencies and get all the glory and the money to shoot more." with a slight twist is also a good outcome, when something is done effectice: "And indeed they create innovative solutions and get all the glory and the money to create more."

Which leads to another root cause of complexity: Perverse Complexity, where the intention has been good (WISE SCAN), but the execution was not done with all the needed resources and skills in place. On top my observation is that in many transformations there is quite some theoretical effort on showing the importance of the change management, but quite often (a pity) the execution does not follow the theory or the scope and money to do change management gets downscoped. Here Enterprise Architects with a focus on people can help.

 

With respect to Ivos post I have the impression that he has mostly seen Enterprise IT Architects with a strong skillset on IT but no real awareness of people. So my advice to Ivo: Look for Real Enterprise Architecture and you will find great solutions and even greater people.