sharing insights on innovation in established organisations

altershape blog

December 7, 2015

Going straight to your goal by looking sideways

Remember the last time you’ve made a non trivial purchase, like a fridge, a smartphone or a new car. Would you be comfortable if you were given only one fridge, smartphone or car to choose from? Probably not. However, in business, we often tend to stick to the first solution that comes to mind, even though the investment is typically much bigger.

What role can alternatives play when defining and implementing business changes?

November 12, 2015

What I learn from a tennis star

I remember some legendary tennis matches from my childhood. Matches between top players like John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker. But most of all, it was Andre Agassi that kept me hooked on TV. Apart from being a great tennis player, he had some rock star allure, was funny at the right times, was just enough underdog to earn extra sympathy points and he made an impressive comeback. So when he’s interviewed by HBR, I’m all ears. And he has some interesting life lessons to share.

October 30, 2015

No goals, no glory

Take a minute to think about your latest change project. Did you achieve the goals of the project? Can you actually, honestly tell? If not, you’re not alone. Most projects fail to specify concrete, falsifiable goals. Goals that allow you to check whether you have achieved them or not.

Why is this, and how can we improve?

October 19, 2015

Finding the missing link between goals and solutions

Often, the trigger for new projects consists of ideas at two levels: very generic and very specific. For example:

Generic: “We need to improve customer experience.”
Specific: “We should let customers enter their personal data online before their visit to our branch office.”

Both levels are relevant. Both contain useful information. But something is missing: the link between them. Luckily, the BA is in the perfect position to make that link visible.

October 8, 2015

Shaping changes – Business Analysis Conference 2015

It’s been already two weeks after the end of the 2015 edition of the European Business Analysis Conference, but it still feels like yesterday. I’ve finally come around to write up some of the things that stick with me (a good trigger to revive my blog :)). Only some of the things, though: there were plenty other inspiring moments and ideas. But here’s a small sample to give you a taste.

June 19, 2014

EACBPM 2014 – Some conference themes

Back home after an inspiring and entertaining co-located EA conference & BPM conference. There was way too much going on to wrap it up in a short blog post, but here are some themes that stick with me after the talks and informal discussions.

May 28, 2014

Strategic choices should be customer driven

Roger L. Martin‘s recent HBR article on adaptive (= reactive) strategy vs proactive strategy got me thinking.

In his article, he disagrees with the VUCA driven school of thought that claims that, due to the increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in today’s world (hence VUCA), strategy is now fast reaction thinking. People that regard strategy as planning are likely to take this approach. However, as Roger also explains in his book, strategy is not about planning. It’s about making difficult choices and organising your company around these choices.

May 15, 2014

Some take aways from the 23rd BAEA Café with Chris Potts

Always inspiring, a seminar by Chris Potts. So I was keen on joining this evening’s EA Café about linking enterprise architecture to enterprise investment. If you haven’t read his books or participated in one of his workshops, I strongly encourage you to do so. Here are some things and questions that stuck with me today.

September 29, 2013

Simplicity and change

[Cross-post from the Dutch version for AE.]

The twentieth BAEA Café was once again very inspiring. Koen Knaepen, known from the COSTA model, talked about how your approach to modelling may help or impede business architecture from improving an enterprise. Tom Graves (twitter, blog, Café slides) moved enterprise architecture’s focus away from IT and towards people.

Some take aways from this seminar:

February 26, 2013

Real-time process analytics: improvement or innovation?

Gartner says by 2016, 70 percent of the most profitable companies will manage their business processes using real-time predictive analytics or extreme collaboration. By making processes “aware” of a wide range of work interactions and their context, these processes can dynamically change their behavior through a feedback loop.

Looking at the clients I have recently worked with, I can see examples where process execution can benefit from such real-time analytics. For example, in the postal sector, the sorting and transporting activities could become more efficient when they are dynamically optimised for the current flow of incoming mail items. This may even improve the customer service and experience: as the logistic process becomes more dynamic, there is less need for planning, which increases the customer’s flexibility. Business process managers and architects should thus assess the trade-of between cost efficiency and customer experience.

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