The Open Group China September 2017 – Event Highlights

Top Design, Technological Innovation, and Digital Transformation

The Open Group China event was held September 21-22, 2017 in Shenzhen. One hundred government leaders, heads of authorities, corporate general managers, and ICT experts attended the event to jointly discuss top-level design and technological innovation for enterprise transformation under the background of the digital era.

Following the excellent tradition of The Open Group, this event attracted many prominent speakers and guests from government and technology. Dr. Zhou Jian, Secretary General of Joint Work Working Group of Management System of Integration of Informatization and Industrialization under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, delivered a keynote speech titled ‘Practices and Achievements of the Integration of Informatization and Industrialization (III) Management Systems Standardization in China’. He interpreted the importance and necessity of architecture from the strategic level.

Other speakers included:

  • Wang Xiang, Chief Technical Expert of China Certification & Inspection (Group) Co., Ltd., with ‘Global Data Architecture Governance under Belt and Road Initiative’ expounding the theme from the levels of interconnection, intelligence and easiness
  • Luo Min, Chief Architect of Huawei and Dr. Chen Xiangang, Senior Architect of Huawei, jointly contributed the keynote speech titled ‘Business Driven and Harmonic EA Practice in the Agile Paradigm – Back to the Basics’
  • Chris Forde, VP Enterprise Architecture & General Manager APAC, The Open Group, delivered ‘Current Activities of The Open Group’, providing information on the multiple channels to connect to The Open Group and those interested in architecture

The event also featured an ‘Ask Experts’ session.

Wang Xiang, Cheng Yan, Richard Freggi, Luo Min, Chris Forde

The following are some golden words excerpted from ‘Ask Experts’:

“Ten years ago, our enterprise realized profit growth through EA; ten years later, our enterprise makes more use of EA to boost strategic planning.” Luo Min

“What role the architecture can play in an organization mainly depends on two points: One point is the risk tolerance and corporate culture of the organization and the other is that the architecture itself is flexible and feasible in any department.” Chris Forde

“We have also experienced several stages in the implementation process. At first, an independent group made the architecture and additional several groups made the development; we established all kinds of roles of architects. Later, we removed the posts of all these architects, because we integrated the process of the TOGAF® standard into other processes gradually and imperceptibly.” Wang Xiang

The event culminated in a debate – ‘Who is the Master of Business Architecture’ hosted by Chen Peng, CEO & Board Member of Chengdu GKHB Information Technology Co., Ltd.

Pros: Business architecture should be built by business department

Cons: Business architecture should be built by specialized administrative or IT department

Presenting on the pros was Chen Chen, Senior Business Architect of Service Strategy and Architecture Department of Huawei. Presenting on the cons was Cheng Yan, Chief Architect of AVIC Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

Chen Peng, Cheng Yan, Chen Chen

The debate was a very active conversation and Q&A.

The summary of the ‘pro’ discussion:

“I want to insist on a viewpoint: The whole business architecture shall be responsible for a strategy and its result – whether IT department or specialized department – should be responsible for the business result.  This is very critical; the building result will not be in your hand if you can’t be responsible for such things.”

The summary of the ‘con’ discussion:

“In right and responsibility allocation model, I think more should be given to the policy maker, or the person who determines this thing; the implication of responsibility that I understand is to ensure the delivery of result, I believe this is the core. For architecture, I think it needs a large number of organizational processes and communication processes. It needs to express as well as special organization and design, and to reach a consensus. I think it should be done by a specialized department.”

Tremendous thanks to all who helped make this a very successful, engaging event!

@theopengroup