Feeling a bit intimidated.

Leveraging EA for innovation

While in several other corporate organizations, Enterprise Architects (EA’s) are heavily involved in innovation project, there weren’t very much involved in DLL. Interviewing both employees of the innovation team and enterprise team, showed a difference in expectations. To understand how self-aware the architects and and train them about the innovation process at the same time I designed a workshop called planet potato. This planent was a metaphor for the DLL innovation/architecture context, yet with a bit of fun. All architects were given a new persona persona so they could empathize with all stakeholders involved in the innovation process.

I think the implementation phase was already way too late to get architects involved. It slowed both of us down unfortunately.

Innovation Project Member

We should step in right before the implementation phase.

Enterprise Architect

Integrating EA into innovation

The workshop caused the architects to reflect on their role within innovation projects which eventually led to changing their practices. In several meetings following this workshop, the architects and I brainstormed how their process fits with the innovation process. As they have their own handbook with their processes, I added a set of pages in which I explained the innovation process and how an architect is expect to be involved. This was quite new to some architects and important in this behavior change is the endorsement of the head of the department. Architects were now actively being involved or asked to be involved in projects and referred back to the handbook when they weren’t sure about their responsibility.

But there’s more

During my time with the architects, I wanted to get to know them and understand their day to day practices. I shadowed several sessions of their internal service in which they measure the health of the IT systems of the organization. They interviewed many employees and did something similar as I was doing, trying to understand their day to day lives but then from an IT perspective. I was curious to the user experience of these interviewed employees and did some interview on my own. I found out that some interviewees/employees weren’t well prepared, not completely honest out of fear, or misunderstood the objective of the meeting and were confused afterwards. I concluded that this will impact the quality of the EA service and so my objective became: how can I help the Enterprise Architects adapt their practices to get a more accurate understanding of the IT issues in the organization?

A strategic mirror

Based on my interviews, observations, and getting to understand how the architects’ brains tick through the potato workshop, I created a strategic mirror: a visual summary that initiates critical thinking about ones self, products, and services. It has fun and interactive elements such as a quiz and comic, which in this case, was meant for the architects to empathize with their ‘customers’. It also sparked a creative perspective on their practices that allowed for a brief brainstorm on the future of the architects. The outcome of the strategic mirror were a list of actions for changes that were all related to implementing empathic practices into their own. From UX, to branding, and communication.

What you are actually doing is sharing very confronting information about ourselves, that is actually very important in a funny but very clear way”

Head of Enterprise Architecture