Quality in Architecture

Architecture is about change. Not change for change sake. Real change that produces value and leads to Desirable Futures that enhance delivery of value to all stakeholders, incl. customers, employees, shareholders, business partners and society at large. Futures that enhance people’s lives. To deliver that change, what we produce (including the internal ones) have to be delivered at quality. That said, it is surprising how few architects understand Quality Management. This post will explore a few fundamentals.

Quality is not a vague “goodness” it is defined as Conformance to Requirements. OK, but whose requirements? Well, everyone affected. E.g. If we are introducing a new product or service this will include: customers, service personnel, business partners, the organisation (represented from a financial perspective by the CFO), other board members with responsibilities such as compliance, return on investment), regulators, implementors (who design, build, test and deploy the product) and support and maintenance personnel. Requirements include functional aspects: “what must it do?” as well as non-functional aspects: “How should it do it?”. E.g. function: “Generate Energy” and non-functional: “With minimal noise and pollution & at least as efficient as existing options”.

The performance standard is Zero Defects. This means meeting requirements, not perfection. E.g. A power generation service should produce energy 99.99% of the time and be recoverable in < 1hr if it does go down. Provided it performs within these parameters, it is considered “Zero Defect”.

The System of Quality should be Prevention rather than Appraisal. The latter focusses on inspections at the end of the lifecycle to stop bad product/service going out the door. This is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to track down root causes of deviations and eliminate them. This is prevention. Using prevention, we only spend on correcting a given type of error once, reaping recurring benefits on every instance of the process / product / service delivered. Spend on prevention yields continuous improvement. The rate of spend determines the rate of improvement.

The Price of Quality is measured as the Price of Conformance plus the Price of Non-Conformance. The former includes all costs to ensure we do the best job and make it Right First Time. Examples include training, methods, standards, inspections, tools etc. The latter includes all costs incurred because something was not right. Examples are: waste of materials, waste of time, financial loss, consequential damages, loss of reputation etc.

Using prevention, the Cost of Quality is lowest at Zero Defects. This is great news and gives us the empirical rationale for allowing and doing great work. Proof is the remarkable 2-3x improvements in productivity realised by organisations like Hitachi Software and Computer Sciences Corp by focussing on quality and eliminating errors early, i.e. in requirements.

Positive Risk? Should we take more risk? If so, why?

Watching Rory Sutherland, I saw an example where avoiding a small risk eliminated a major innovation opportunity.

As a one-man plumber, we must do each job well and follow proven best practices to avoid reputational damage and future business harm. The cost of a botched job is significant and may harm our cash flow. We’re likely risk-averse.

As a larger plumbing enterprise, we can spread risk by allowing one plumber to try a new approach. If the job fails, it won’t significantly impact our cash flow since other plumbers are operating normally. Even if we have an unhappy client, the other 19/20 or 95% will still recommend us, so our reputation is high. If we address the issue, we can restore 100% satisfaction.

By spreading risk across the organization, we can make it relatively small. If the new approach is successful, it can save us 20% effort on similar jobs, increasing our margin or profit and recurring over time.

We can divide risk (limited to one job and one client) while multiplying benefits by team size and job frequency. However, we must define success (e.g., client satisfaction and time or resource savings) and measure these. If the innovation fails, we must stop doing it.

If we want to limit the downside further, we can partner with the client where we intend to try it. Many will accept some risk if we pass on the savings or benefit. They’ll also tolerate problems or glitches more happily if they’re informed upfront.

Taking this into account, we need to be more tolerant of taking controlled risks and bringing in innovation, especially in large organizations.

The graphic shows a concept we introduced two decades ago for bringing innovation into an organization in a controlled way. A small number of innovators try out new things that may be beneficial. For those that are, they create proofs of concept and do some organizational learning, distilling how we can usefully use the technology or approach. The methods group translates their learnings into how these would be applied in the organization at scale and trains the operational teams in how to apply them. The operational teams apply what they’re taught and measure the results, feeding back to the methods group. This way, we exploit the effects of innovation - large infrequent gains, sometimes through radical change, while limiting the negative effect of taking the whole organization through a learning exercise and drop in productivity. The cycle of improvement, application, measurement, and improvement between the operational and methods groups exploits the principles of Kaizen, viz. small continuous incremental improvements, leading to high quality and efficiency.

Be a force for good

Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough..

and I will move the world. So said Archimedes, apparently.

When we train you as an architect, particularly a business architect, we are giving you a long lever (= much power). We also hope to give you some solid principles and moral grounding as a place to stand. Architects are change agents.

Be a force for good.

For each change that you propose, ask:

  • Which stakeholders will this impact positively? How? To what extent?

  • Which stakeholders (and potentially other parties) will this impact negatively? How? To what extent?

  • Then try to maximise the good and minimise the harm

  • Apply systems thinking to anticipate consequences

  • Ensure we are thinking long term and that proposed approach is sustainable

  • Try on a small scale (think MVP, prototype, etc. ) to prove concept, benefits, identify negative impacts

  • Iterate and improve or pivot before scaling up. Scale when benefits are being realised

  • Design and adjust metrics to get desired behaviour

  • Involve everyone affected (or at least their representatives) in the design of the future. Those closest often have knowledge that we don’t. They have history of what has been tried. They have ideas to contribute. They need to be on board to help make the change. If roles are affected or eliminated, people need better and significant roles to play going forward.

Context and IQ


Alan Kay is the source of two quotes I love:

1. The best way to predict the future is to invent it

2. Context is worth 60 IQ Points

Many enterprise and business architecture methods advocate aligning with business strategy. This alone indicates that they themselves are coming from another perspective than business strategy! In the case of methods like TOGAF® that is reflecting their history as IT Enterprise Architecture approaches.

We contend that Business Architecture and Strategy are inextricably interwoven. We also believe that the important stuff to worry about when doing strategy is “out there”, i.e. in the context, not internal. We have control over things like organisation structure, process, value stream (to an extent) and capabilities. What we don’t have control over, but which we absolutely must pay attention to in our strategy is the stuff out there, such as competition, legislation, social change, technology innovation, politics and the state of the economy.

It is absolutely vital that we understand our current context and future scenarios for how this will evolve before we choose direction and commit resources. For example, we don’t want to build a new internal combustion engine car model when we will not be allowed to sell it in a zero emissions future city. We don’t want to create a physical store to try to compete in an industry that has gone completely digital (e.g. music), unless, of course we have identified and are happy with a niche audience (e.g. those who prefer buying music on vinyl). We do not want to bring a service to market that legislation will prohibit us selling.

Understanding the context is vital to making sensible choices for future product and service offerings and hence the organisation, capabilities, partners, processes, technology, systems and data these will require. A good technique for considering contextual issues is STEEPLED, which stands for: Social, Technology, Economic, Environment, Politics, Legal, Ethical and Demographics. These are best considered in facilitated workshops exploiting scenario analysis techniques. We may also have to draft in participants with specialist knowledge.

Equally important is understanding all the Stakeholders and how we interact with them. These parties include Customers, Shareholders, Partners, Suppliers, Regulators, Unions, Industry Bodies, Related Companies etc. We like to do a Stakeholder Net Value Exchange (SNVE) model to identify what each party contributes and expects. This can be a brilliant starting point for downstream analysis including business events, value streams, process analysis and information analysis.

If you want more information on methods that integrate these perspectives and techniques, please visit inspired.org. There is also training, the Holistic Architecture Language and tools.

Intelligent Enterprise

I saw videos on Youtube addressing “Signs of intelligence” in people - one good one was from Success Formulas. Contemplating how intelligence translated to action creates value and how that applies to organisations vs people. So, here are 13 marks of intelligence in enterprises:

  1. Curiosity - A desire to be aware of, to know and to understand. This applies to the environment, competition, economy, technology and many other factors. Enhanced by open culture, available resources, sharing and availability of open channels and information

  2. Adaptability and Flexibility - Willing to change procedures, processes, ways of working for the better, especially based on facts and evidence. Supported by investment in research, training and mentoring. Encouraged by value driven culture

  3. Sense of Humour - Being able to find the funny in the absurd or adversity. Being able to see our own faults, recognise them, acknowledge, learn from them and move on

  4. Learning from Mistakes - Not just allowing mistakes, but actively learning from them and spreading the learning so we don’t make them again

  5. Versatile Memory - Recording things, organising things, sharing knowledge, use of ontologies, making knowledge explicit rather than than tacit. Supported by semantic technology, graph database, AI

  6. Emotional Intelligence - Paying attention to the people side, desires, aspirations. Creating a good culture which values individuals and looks to satisfy their needs, but also demands high standards and delivery

  7. Intellectual Humility - Our way is not the only way. We can always learn more. Take in research, see what competitors are doing, find new models. Being open

  8. Creativity - Sparked by open innovation, forums, pet projects supported by enterprise resources, some pure research just based on curiosity. Leaving space for serendipity

  9. Open Mindedness - Accepting of new ideas, diversity (age, race, gender, culture, language, income, values…)

  10. Effective Communication - In all forms. To the ecosystem surrounding us (Partners, Regulators, Industry Bodies, Interest Groups, Unions, Media, Employees, Public, Shareholders…) via various media. Also encouraging free and open communication internally. Creating collateral which clearly communicates who we are and what we are about

  11. Self Awareness - Reflection, good metrics. Knowing our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Able to focus on what we do uniquely and well while outsourcing other things or improving them

  12. Strategic Planning - Thinking long term, but acting in the present in alignment with vision. Enhanced by business and enterprise architecture

  13. Range of Interests - Diversification. Not putting all our eggs in one basket / product / service or small group of customers. Being aware of the “adjacent possible” to come up with new, possible Blue Ocean offerings

Here’s to more intelligent enterprises in the coming year, leading to Desireable Futures.

Pareto and saying “No”

In contemplating the New Year and plans for the future, I came across a simple process by Vicky Zhao that looks at 1) Review 2) Plan 3) Prioritise using five techniques a) Pareto b) confirmation bias c) inversion d) "one thing" e) SMART objectives. I was struck by how similar these are to an architecture process and how we can exploit two of these ideas in particular.

The first is Pareto or 80/20 analysis in the review of past performance. Simply put, Pareto analysis tries to find the things that may have consumed 20% of effort or resources, but produce 80% of the desirable results. This is a great way to identify those things we should double down on in the future. If we can spend 60% of our effort and resources on them in future, we may be able to generate 3x the desirable results!

The inversion idea in planning is to start with the end in mind. We do this routinely in architecture through developing a vision or scenarios. We can then decompose this to identify what will be required to make it a reality. We can do this for several time horizons to give us short, medium and long term goals. Think Transition Architectures.

Next we need to ensure that we are not distracted or diverted from the focus we need to progress meaningfully and continuously. The “one thing” in the planning approach encourages finding just one key thing/theme to focus on per time horizon.

Steve Jobs extolled the virtues of focus powerfully:

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things."

Extending the architecture idea of gap analysis, we can look at:

  • Which things are on the 20% Pareto list? We should be saying “yes” to these and “no” to the others

  • What should we Stop doing? Many of the things in the 80% effort Pareto list can fall here

  • What should we Start doing? These would be things that support our goals and vision that are not already in our capabilities

  • What should we Change? This can include improvements in efficacy, quality or efficiency

Finally, we need to further decompose the goals remaining to objectives and ensure they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bounded (SMART).

Happy planning. Remember Pareto and the power of saying “No”. Also keep in mind this wisdom from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress”

Leveraging Assets

An asset was traditionally something you own which had value or which you could use to derive value. An example of the former would be cash or gold. An example of the latter would be an item of equipment.
We can update this in two important ways:

  1. Assets can be virtual or digital, so we could have something like a skill, a design, a patent or a recording

  2. We don’t necessarily have to own them to derive value from them

Some of the fastest growing and valuable companies do not own the assets they leverage. Uber does not own cars; AirBnB does not own accommodation; YouTube does not own the content it serves.

Virtual assets, such as a design, can be very valuable. We can profit from royalties, copyright, trademarks etc. without necessarily ourselves making the product or delivering the service. Consider the inventor of the crown bottle cap, William Painter, whose company received a royalty on every cap used for several decades!

Digital assets are also profitable. A music track is recorded once, but can be listed on thousands of websites virtually for free, then duplicated, again virtually for free and shipped to consumers, again almost for free. This can occur millions of times, generating substantial revenues while not parting with the original asset.

The best though, is using someone else’s assets to deliver value. Uber, for example, uses the assets of owners (cars), the assets of drivers (skill and time), the global infrastructure of the Internet (funded by advertising, corporates and governments) and the asset of the user (cell phone) to deliver a valuable and desirable service.

In doing business and architecture planning, it is useful to contemplate Asset Leverage.

First list assets. Look for things that you own, things that you know, things that you know how to do. Try to find things in the categories of physical (e.g. property, stock, equipment); monetary (cash, investments, shares, bonds etc.); knowledge/designs/patents (e.g. books, recordings, designs, models); virtual (e.g. skills, customer goodwill) and digital (e.g. recordings, images).

Next think about assets you do not own that you can leverage. Examples include those of Partners (e.g. supplier knowledge, skill, equipment, stock); Customers (e.g. premises, network, computing, cell phone, time); Investors (expertise, connections); Infrastructure (e.g. Internet, public facilities); other Owners of something you need (e.g. Accommodation, Cars, Images, Location data).

Figure out to what extent you are currently leveraging the assets. Look for opportunities to leverage them to a greater extent. A great deal of value can be unlocked this way. You can find the best opportunities by looking for those assets that can generate a lot of value that you can access with relatively little effort or expense.  

#businessarchitecture #strategy #businessanalysis #digitaltransformation #assets

Stumbling towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)

Elegant Architecture overcomes limited and messy implementation?

A new article discusses Hugging GPT which uses Chat GPT as a human interface and executive controlling module to control tasks to complete a goal. The tasks are delegated to specialist AI models that perform narrow functions well. The video discusses the ideas and is a great introduction to the paper.

Better Search: Will ChatGPT (or similar) displace Google?

Google has become indispensable in our work and personal lives. Finding products and services, checking out reviews, finding the cheapest supplier and doing professional research. Google has built a $150Bn advertising revenue business on top of that ubiquity.

The ChatGPT large language model from OpenAI burst on the scene recently, attracting over a million users in a week. It boasts a conversational interface accepting complex queries in natural language, a human language response and allows to refine our search, seek more detail or pursue other aspects easily. This style of interaction is extremely attractive - it’s a bit like having a hugely knowledgable human expert on tap to instantly understand our questions and answer in an accessible paragraph or two. It raises the question “Is this the future of search”? Fuel has been added to the fire of this debate with the investment by Microsoft of a further $10Bn in OpenAI. Remember that Microsoft has long promoted Bing in competition with Google search.

But not so fast… The results from ChatGPT are not always accurate. It is based upon a predictive model which has ingested huge amounts of data from the Internet and document sources. Because it is a mathematical model based on probability, it will favour average and mainstream opinions from its training set. It can be prompted to produce factually incorrect answers which are stated very convincingly as facts. Annoying if the recipient already knows the facts, but dangerous or misleading if the recipient does not. The model is also trained on this corpus of data at a given time, in a “batch” mode. So it may not reflect information recently published, or which has been updated since the last training cycle.

OpenAI and others wanting to promote these kinds of systems for search will have to find ways to improve accuracy and currency of the underlying models and provide caveats to users about potential bias and inaccuracy. Meanwhile, Google, which itself has significant AI systems and probably the best, biggest data sources to train them on, can easily add a conversational interface.

To date, ChatGPT has been offered for free use (to gain experience, publicise capabilities and refine the models), but this is likely to change very soon. OpenAI does not yet have in place an advertising supported model like Google and is likely to first try subscriptions. But when it is no longer free, other competitors will spring up.

One smaller but interesting player is looking to offer the best of both worlds, starting now. This is Andi (andisearch.com). Andi search lets you use GPT style prompts and provides a summary answer (much like ChatGPT), but also provides references and search results on the right to allow validation or further exploration. This is very promising! It should be an exciting time in search this year.

Dealing with Change

We probably all feel a little battered by the levels of change we are experiencing. Technology, pandemic, business models, social mores, ethics, sustainability, legislation and more. It is hard to retain our sense of perspective and balance and self worth when everything seems to be shifting around us!

As architects we are often the agents of change for the organisation, processes, products, systems and technology. But that does not mean we ourselves are always that happy with change! The threat is that it brings risk: Are we focussing on the right things? Are there new factors we aren’t aware of? Is our “known good solution” still relevant?

I find comfort in Jeff Bezos approach which advocates:

“Find what is not going to change and optimise for that”

He recommended, in the case of Amazon, that the following factors were unlikely to change:

  • Customers want cheaper prices

  • Customers want fast delivery

  • Customers want increased selection

And in the case of Amazon Web Services:

  • Customers want reliability

  • Customers want low prices

  • Customers want rapid innovation in adding APIs (increasing utility of the platform)

Find the things in your business / industry that will not change and optimise for them.