A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture

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A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture
More
Brett Bobley, CIO, National Endowment for the
Humanities Co-Chair, Small Agency CIO
Council bbobley_at_neh.gov
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Introduction

• My goal is to show you how a small agency/bureau
  can easily create a useful Enterprise
  Architecture (EA) that will help you plan for the
  future.
• For the purposes of this demonstration, I will be
  using examples from my CY2001 EA.
• Why am I using an old version of my EA? In order
  to demonstrate that an EA really works! As of
  2004, I have already reached the goals in my 2001
  target architecture.

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Step 1 What is Your Mission?

• What does your agency/branch/whatever actually
  do?
• Don't describe it in computer terms.
• Do your best to describe it from a business
  perspective.

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Step 1 Mission Example

• Example At the NEH, our core mission is making
  grants. Accomplishing this mission involves
  advertising our grants, receiving applications,
  reviewing them, making awards, and doing
  post-award tracking.

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Step 2 Put Together a Team

• Doesn't have to be huge! ltggt
• But you need to get the key players from your
  business together in a room to have good
  discussions.
• Don't forget that you'll need people from both
  program and administrative sides of the house.
• You need a combination of people from different
  levels of the agency. Often the secretaries know
  a lot more about the business process than your
  executives!

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Step 2 Team Member Examples

• For my EA, I got the following folks together for
  my team
• Representatives from each grant-making program
  office.
• Reps from our Grants Management office.
• Reps from our Publications and Public Affairs
  staff.
• Reps from our Strategic Planning staff.
• Reps from our Administrative Services staff.
• Reps from our General Counsel staff.
• Our Deputy Chairman.

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Step 3 Customers

• Define your customers. Who are they?
• What do your customers need? What role do they
  play in your business?
• How do they interact with your agency?

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Step 3 Customer Examples

• The NEH's customers are scholarly institutions
  like universities, libraries, and museums.
• They interact with us as follows
• They must learn about grant opportunities.
• They must fill out and submit grant materials.
• Those materials go through a merit review
  process.
• Some applications are awarded a grant. Some are
  not.
• Those awarded a grant will receive monies and
  will also complete certain post-grant tasks like
  submitting reports.

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Step 4 Business Vision

• You can use this step to talk about where you
  want to go. How might you improve your business
  going forward?

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Step 4 Business Vision Examples

• We want our customers to be able to apply online.
  This will be a big time and cost-saver for both
  the applicant and the agency.
• We want to replace many of our mail out peer
  reviews with online peer review. This will save
  a great deal of time, paper, and postage.
• We want to be able to create committee books
  automatically rather than having to manually
  assemble them from photocopied application
  materials. This will save weeks of work for our
  staff.

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Step 5 Write up Your Baseline Architecture

• Now the fun begins!
• For the chosen mission area, figure out, step by
  step, your business process!
• Flow charts are an easy way to make this happen.
  (I used the lines and boxes in Powerpoint).
• Put your flowcharts up on a white board and ask
  your team to go through it step by step.
• I guarantee that you will learn new things about
  your business process you never knew before.

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Summer Stipends Flowchart
Page One How the Applicant finds out about the
Summer Stipends program and obtains the
application materials.
Summer Stipends Flyers
Ad Placed in Chronicle
Information posted via listservs
Department Chairs
Newly Interested Scholar
Requests Guidelines be Mailed
Gets Guidelines from Web site
Scholar with Application Material
Scholar is only eligible if he/she is
Nominated by Institution
Independent or Exempt
Scholar eligible to mail in Application materials
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Summer Stipends Flowchart
Scholar eligible to mail in Application materials
Page Two The paper flow between the applicant,
the NEH, and the panelists.
Scholar Mails in the following materials Applicat
ion Cover Sheet (Form) Narrative (text) Sample
(only for translations) Bibliography
(text) Resume (text)
Referee Mails in the following materials Referenc
e Letter Form (Form)
Stipends Team Opens Mail
Rating Sheet sent back
Is Application Complete?
Applications sorted into piles by discipline for
panels.
Application Entered into Wang, app generated
IRM mails Acknowledgement letter to applicant
Reference letters copied, stapled to
applications and filed in folders
Use Wang and WP to create a panel agenda document
Mail panelists large envelope with application
materials
After 2 weeks, Mail panelists late arriving
documents
Panelist
After 1 month, panelists mail back rating sheets
Panelists are paid
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Summer Stipends Flowchart
Stipends Team receives ratings from panelists,
and collates, copies, and gives to Panel Chair
along with pile of applications
Page Three Once the ratings have been received
from the panelists, this page shows how the
recommended applications are found and then
placed into the committee book.

• Panel Chair (one of several)
• will now
• resolve splits
• call panelist to resolve typos/mistakes
• meet with Program Officer to make
• final recommendations

Gives instructions to Panel Chair
Program Officer now has thee types of rec. 1)
Fund 2) Not fund 3) Borderline for Staff Review
Gives recommendations
Gives borderlines for review
Staff Review Team (Prog. Off 2 Chairs) Will
now discuss and come to a consensus of who is
recommended and who isnt.
Division Director Deputy
Gives input
Grants Office
Approves book, writes cover memo

• Stipends Team
• Collects face sheets for the rec.
• applications. Assembles committee
• book consisting of
• list of applicants by panel
• face sheets of recommended app.
• index
• panelist rosters

Division Directors
5th Floor Staff
ASO Staff Makes bound copies of committee book.
Program Officers
Council Committee
General Counsel
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Summer Stipends Flowchart
PreCouncil Team (Chairman, Deputy, Div.
Directors, OSP, Office Heads, GC,
Division Staff) They will read committee book
and may flag some of the applications.
Division Staff
Page Four Once the committee bookhas been
distributed, flagsare found and
eventuallyresolved. After theChairman and
post-councilteam makes final decisions,letters
are sent to notify theapplicants.
May need more info
Council Committee Mtg Discusses applications
and attempts to resolve flags. May add their own
flags.
Final Motion
Full Council Discusses and makes recommendations
to chairman.
Chairman Post-Council Team Make the final
decision on who to fund/not fund.
Funded Applicant
Not Funded Applicant
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Step 6 Write up your Target Architecture

• Now take your baseline flowchart and have fun
  with it.
• Work with your team to explore ways of removing
  some of the boxes to make the process faster or
  less complex.
• With the end business goals in mind, brainstorm
  on ways in which you can dump the current process
  entirely and come up with a better one!
• Look at ways that technology can help you achieve
  these goals.

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Step 7 Technology Forecast

• Once you have a target architecture you are
  comfortable with, it is time to get "real" and
  look at how you might accomplish this.
• In your technology forecast section, you can
  describe your baseline technology and then talk
  about where you'd like to go to get to your
  target architecture.

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Step 7 Technology Forecast Example

• We currently use a Wang mainframe for storing
  grants data. It doesn't speak to other
  computers, so we can't exchange data with the web
  or export data to any modern COTS tools.
• We want to move to a platform that can talk to
  websites, that can use web services and XML, and
  can allow us to import/export data to other
  products.

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Step 8 Standards Profile

• In this section, you'll get a little more
  specific and talk about the technology standards
  you use at your agency and what you'll be using
  to get to your target architecture.

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Slide 8 Standards Profile Example

• At this time, we're moving away from the Wang
  mainframe. We are standardizing our databases on
  SQL Server our web servers on Internet
  Information Server ASP.NET as our web
  programming environment Crystal Reports for
  reporting.

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Step 9 Sequencing Migration

• Now for the actual plan for getting to our goal!
• Lay out a timeline of milestones in order to
  reach the target architecture.
• Don't be super-detailed. You will later expand
  on these milestones in your IRM Strategic Plan,
  your business case, and other documents.
• Keep it simple. This document will be useful
  when it comes time to brief OMB, your budgeting
  office, your upper management, etc.
• The idea is for all your team (and your agency)
  to get behind this plan as an important strategic
  goal.

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Step 9 Sequencing Migration Examples

• Complete testing for SQL based grants database
  and begin processing live data.
• Once conversion is complete, we will be able to
  import/export data to e-grants systems on the
  web.
• Complete testing of electronic grants website.
• Ensure that applications can be properly filled
  out and imported. Work with customers to ensure
  it meets their needs.
• Begin accepting electronic grant applications for
  1 - 2 test programs.
• Concentrate first on those with simpler
  requirements. Get best bang for the buck.

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Step 10 Risk and Gap Analysis

• What are the risks, issues, and gaps that might
  throw up roadblocks?
• By documenting these risks, you'll be able to
  come up with ways of mitigating or even
  eliminating them.

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Step 10 Risk Analysis Examples

• Collecting Information Electronically
• Some parts of the application will be easy to
  receive electronically (like the narrative or
  cover sheet). But what about videotapes? Or
  catalogs? Or books? What policy decisions might
  have to be made to deal with this mixture of
  analog and digital application submissions?
• Certification of Applicants
• Currently, applications are certified by an
  institution via a pen and ink signature. How will
  we handle this in the digital domain? We must
  work with general counsel to ensure digital
  signature is used appropriately.

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Questions??

• Contact me at
• Brett Bobley, bbobley_at_neh.gov
• Slides and materials available at
• www.neh.gov/whoweare/cio.html