Creating Sound and Credible Strategies for your Integration and SOA programs

I’m not really surprised to see the love-hate relationship between senior executives who own the integration portfolio and the ‘strategy consultants’ in my observation. Its love-hate dynamics because on one side where senior IT leadership strongly believes that a ‘strategic’ view is needed for creating the reliable roadmap for their initiatives, at the same time, there is really no reliable methods today to evaluate the appropriateness of the so called ‘strategy’ deliverables that consultants deliver. From the observation of the legacy in the enterprises I worked with, I find something very fundamental missing in those mysterious and high-end strategy documents: ‘Life’. Lack of life means that these strategies are more or less used as ‘initial requirements’ for certain programs/initiatives and as time progresses, strategies are not updated/maintained in line with changing state of the organization.

I have not seen too many of ‘good’ strategies in as far as integration/SOA is concerned for many large enterprises. So I thought I will put together a perspective on creating sound strategies for integration/SOA portfolio. To start with, I would like to share my view on what I found lacking in the strategy documents that I reviewed/audited for my clients:

• One of the big disappointment has been the ‘lose’ purpose and meaning of the strategy. Many of the strategy documents didn’t give me confidence if they had been developed being so particular about ‘strategy’ as such. So people who developed the strategy deliverables may have not paid attention what’s really needed in a strategy and might have limited the strategic view to just few principles/vision statements. It is quite evident when I see plethora of basic introduction to fundamental concepts like EAI/SOA/ESB/Architecture patterns etc in the strategy document. Will talk about it more in the next bullet.
• Next big issue I found in the strategy documents that really distracted the whole purpose of the strategy document. I find many of these strategy documents providing huge documentation around technical concepts, product capabilities etc and even the architecture blueprints in some of the cases. In my view, architecture blueprints and design guidelines need to be looked as separate elements and not mix them up in the strategy. Prime reason is that it dilutes both the purposes, strategy as well as architecture.
• Another key aspect that is critical for sound strategies is the clear understanding of the elements that drive and influence the strategies. I found it very difficult to figure out why a particular strategy was the ‘right’ strategy for the organization. Strategies need to be driven by the well defined drivers (like IT strategies, existing challenges) and the expected strategic results where number of strategic options need to be evaluated to arrive at a strategy that sounds ‘better fit’ for the organization.
• Almost in all the cases, I didn’t find any significant focus on the ‘strategy implementation’. Strategies were written mostly like ‘knowledge documents’ where implementation was not much of concern. So while strategies were interesting to read, my discussions with document owners revealed that organization really struggled to figure out how to implement these strategies and as result, most of the strategies kept sitting in the document only and find their way to real-life.
• Again, almost in all cases, there was no consideration of impact of these strategies on the enterprise and no aspects of ‘readiness’ of the organization to be able to roll out these strategies. I don’t find such strategies very ‘real’. Point of strategy is not to gamble but to strengthen the chances of success.

List doesn’t end here but let me stop here. If I were to suggest how integration strategies need to created for the enterprise, here is what I will recommend to be considered in the strategy formulation based on my experience:

• Team that is creating the strategy should not look at the strategy articulation as a template that need to be filled. If that is how it is being done, that’s first sign of the disaster. Team needs to clearly understand the ‘strategy engineering’ process where set of information (like vision, issues, expected outcomes etc.) are taken as input, processes and based on certain hypothesis, strategy formulation needs to happen.
• As I said, strategy starts with getting clarity into what is driving the strategy. It helps defines the goals that need to be put forward as a ‘result expectation’ for the strategy. For example, enterprise could say that one of the key goals of the strategy should be to reduce the our TCO by 10% in 12 months.
• Team needs to consider the major influencing factors for the strategies that could be recommended. To arrive at such factors, SWOT analysis of the integration portfolio is must. Further to that, team should consider the possible scenarios that the strategy implementation could be facing and from there analysis must bring out how these strategies are anticipated to perform in those scenarios. This will help kicking out the strategies that sound exciting but can’t perform to the results in most realistic scenarios.
• Before strategic options are identified, we must identify all the strategy areas/themes where strategies need to be built. For example, for integration portfolio, it could be Architecture/Technology, Service Delivery model, Sourcing model etc.
• While formulating the strategies, there are 3 elements that need to play a role in defining a credible strategy. First: Input – something that is given and cannot be changed. Second: choices – to meet the objectives with what is given, what strategic options are available. Third : Action – how selected strategies need to be deployed.
• Once set of strategies are defined, a prioritization needs to happen based on the feasibility. Input of scenario performance of the strategies will be a good input.
• It is very important to analyze and details out the impact of the strategies on the exiting eco-system of the organization. That makes the strategies real and practical.

Unlike technology and architecture, unfortunately we can’t have one standard solution for strategies. That makes it very vulnerable for enterprises in terms of their ability to judge a strategy. But I also believe that process of strategy development itself in many ways a revealing and learning experience both for the client and the consultants. Hence in area like integration where strategy may not have been playing so much critical role so far, it must be taken very seriously as move in the next-generation enterprises. I would keen to know how my experience aligns to other practioners in field. So drop your view-points on this topic if you are here.