By The Open Group
A number of new Business Architecture methods are being built into the TOGAF® framework to better allow companies to address value stream and business capability mapping. At The Open Group London event in April, J. Bryan Lail, Business Architect Fellow with Raytheon, discussed how Raytheon is using Business Architecture as part of its overall Enterprise Architecture to create a new Sales and Operations Planning method for all the company’s various products and divisions.
Lail has also been an integral part in bringing the new Business Architecture updates to the TOGAF standard, a standard of The Open Group. The TOGAF Standard, Version 9.2 was announced at the London event on April 16, 2018.
What kind of transformation is Raytheon undergoing?
The case study that I presented in London describes a planning shift for Raytheon as a company. Historically, one strength of the company has been that there are so many contracts, across many different products and areas of the company. That if one area of the business goes up or down, it’s not a showstopper or big problem for the whole company. Raytheon has more than 15,000 contracts as a company with the majority in defense work. That breadth of work, however, can lead to a very complex ecosystem when resources are driven by each individual program.
The transformation we talked about in London is called Sales and Operations Planning, a value stream approach to aggregate business planning. It’s effectively about making better resource decisions for the whole business or company rather than resource decisions for critical supplies, manpower and factories driven by individual programs.
How is Raytheon using Business Architecture to enable this transformation? How is this different than using an Enterprise Architecture framework?
I’ll answer the second one first. When people ask me if Business Architecture is part of Enterprise Architecture or something separate, I say, you have to answer a question for me first—what is the scope of your Enterprise Architecture? If by Enterprise Architecture someone means just the IT stuff, then no, a lot of Business Architecture is not within that scope. If someone truly means Enterprise Architecture as the roles, processes, value streams, business capabilities and ecosystems for your manufacturing, supply chain, finance, human resources, or everything your company does, then absolutely Business Architecture is part of that. It’s about translating from the vision and strategy level in Architecture through an understanding of the business needs and gaps before then architecting, or guiding, specific solutions, where solutions include process, roles, systems, information flow, and the technology.
In that context, we’ve been building Business Architecture into the TOGAF ecosystem with a set of guides on how to apply Business Architecture as a very strategic tool and methodology. This enables the architect to flow from strategy around the ADM wheel to drive to the right solutions.
The case study we presented uses those same Business Architecture methods, following step-by-step, including examples in Raytheon for Sales and Operations Planning. We walk through business modeling at the Vision Phase, then through value-stream analysis and business capability mapping in the Business Architecture phase. The methods shown are all part of the approved TOGAF ecosystem, because we’ve been working on this in the Architecture Forum Business Architecture Workstream for a couple years.
Why did Raytheon choose to use the TOGAF framework for its transformation?
Many companies have been doing variations of solutions architecture for decades. For example, if you’re building a military system for a customer, you might tend more toward frameworks that are focused on developing products. If the architect’s goal is strategic transformation, however, that’s really an Enterprise Architecture effort. That transformation requires a broad perspective across strategy, business value, organizational aspects, and a deep understanding of the link between business capability gaps and operationalizing the required processes, information, and systems.
We’re challenging the enterprise; we’re going to fundamentally shift in a number of areas, which have to include organization and technology but also processes, roles, systems, and information flow. That means you have to use an Enterprise Architecture framework, and the TOGAF framework is the premier Enterprise Architectural framework.
What are some of the methods Raytheon is using that will be now part of the TOGAF ecosystem?
The TOGAF update itself is just one part of the growing ecosystem. The new methods in the TOGAF framework include a more thorough introduction to business modeling, now up where it belongs in Phase A, or the Vision Phase, using powerful methods that describe how a business delivers value. That helps the architect understand the leadership’s aligned view on strategy and value delivery, to ensure the Enterprise Architecture effort is focused on the right things. Related to that part of the TOGAF standard, we also have a business model guide that is currently under company review to become a series guide.
When you get into the Business Architecture phase, or Phase B, the TOGAF update now relays how to use value stream models, business capability mapping, organizational maps, and how all those methods fit together to architect the business before proposing solutions. Value streams characterize the activities that will deliver value to specific stakeholders. That maps to business capabilities, or what the abilities of your organization are, and then identifies where the gaps are in those business capabilities driven by inability to deliver the value in the stages from the stream. There are details and examples of these in guides that are already published as part of the TOGAF ecosystem.
Where are you in the transformation project at Raytheon? Are there results you can talk about?
For this Raytheon case study on Sales and Operations Planning, I showed specific artifacts in London for that we used for business modeling, the value stream analysis, and the business capability mapping. I’ll walk through the examples bringing the multiple methods together.
I would say we’ve made good progress on that strategic transformation at Raytheon, but also that we’re nowhere near done because it is a multi-year journey. We’ve done the vision, the business architecture and initial solutions, on the path to a realized transformation.
What is the end goal? What is the company hoping to achieve and what would success look like for this transformation?
Let me give you two pieces to that question. One is, what does success look like using the business architecture methods that are now part of TOGAF ecosystem? The second is, what’s success look like for the company’s strategic goals?
The first part is success at applying the strategy and Business Architecture methods in the evolving TOGAF ecosystem. You gain clear alignment and direction on how the enterprise is going to achieve value, and then the right focus for a transformation like this Sales and Operations Planning case study. Key leaders and stakeholders must understand their part of characterizing and delivering value. Then the mapping to the business capability gaps and how that relates to processes, roles, systems, technology gets the execution teams aligned and focused across multiple organizational elements.
This particular transformation, Sales and Operations Planning, wasn’t invented at Raytheon. It comes from the commercial sector as opposed to, in our case, the defense sector. It has been a key part of increased profitability and market strength for a number of commercial companies, taking a value stream approach to characterizing program demand and optimizingresources across the business. Our expectation is that as we continue to mature that Sales and Operations Planning journey, we are going to increase profitability and have much more effective use of our resources at that portfolio level.
So this business guide from other industries is guiding the project?
That’s absolutely an important part of it. We had benchmarking, we had documented case studies, and a couple really good books on how several commercial companies had gone through the Sales and Operations Planning journey. They characterized the value stream, the governance changes and provided lots of good lessons learned and recommendations about how to tackle that and implement it in your own company.
They did fully not characterize the Business Architecture needed for that journey, so we had to fully model the value stream back to the business capabilities. The linkage of value down to business capability gaps identifies where to focus your specific investments and energy on change management. The details, of course, are going to be somewhat unique to your company, so you have to actually walk through the steps of the path to increased profitability and optimization of resources, then to the gaps your business needs to fill.
So the TOGAF framework then augmented the case study and provide the business architecture foundation?
Absolutely. The TOGAF standard, with the recent updates and the associated guides, was a very powerful part of helping to realize the strategy that was already outlined in the commercial best practices.
Is Raytheon also undergoing larger transformations throughout the enterprise in addition to the Sales and Operations Planning?
There are other transformational efforts, but that doesn’t mean touching everything the company does; some things don’t need to be transformed. There’s the broad subject that we touched on, of optimizing how you do things at the portfolio level across all programs and products; optimizing resources through Sales and Operations Planning is certainly a critical part of taking that type of approach. That’s where you really see the power of some of the Business Architecture methods. The business value stream analysis, business capability mapping, and so forth are critical for the architect looking to transform the enterprise.
How significant have the TOGAF updates been in helping to address the issues you needed to address?
The raw methodologies are all methods and tools that those of us in the Business Architecture Workstream knew and knew how to apply. Our core members are part of the Business Architecture Guild®, and we shared parts of this body of knowledge. The combination of those best practices from the Business Architecture Guild, combined into the TOGAF ecosystem as the premier enterprise architecture framework, gave us a powerful capability that wasn’t there before.
For more information and materials, please visit The Open Group TOGAF Library.
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