How can Fragile to Agile help me as a COO?

At the direction of the CEO and board of directors, the COO is responsible for a broad mandate including leading the execution of the organisation’s strategy; planning and prioritising organisational requirements; allocating limited resources to the most productive uses to maximise value to the organisation; maintaining and monitoring optimal staffing levels to fulfil business needs; and driving performance measures for the operation of the organisation.

Challenges for a COO

I require planning certainty for business change initiatives to manage and minimise cost and risk to operations.

Fragile to Agile’s Conceptual Design Process (CDP) is specifically architected to ensure core decisions regarding scope and solution are made in the solution design phase so that solution delivery can commence with a level of certainty. Analogous to the construction of a house, the CDP generates the information required to commence the building phase such as the foundations, footings, floor plans etc. It does not consider the colour of the walls or internal fittings as these decisions can be made at a later stage and without significantly impacting cost and time.

The CDP captures measureable business intent of a change, assesses its business viability and provides a mechanism to terminate non-viable initiatives early to ensure constrained resources are optimally employed. It also produces a business case and conceptual solution summary and provides a greater level of accuracy in time and cost estimations. From an aggregated perspective, it is designed to improve the overall speed and quality of change within an organisation.

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Conceptual Design Process

Using the Business Capability Model, our collaborative approach to determine an organisation’s Target State Solution Architecture focusses on information gathering from all areas of the business and discussing their needs based on the business capabilities that must be supported. The target state, which includes the retention of existing and acquisition of new solutions, is supported by a well-defined strategic roadmap which is realistic, executable and structured within agreed funding parameters. The roadmap can cater for strategic business change, tactical imperatives, internal capability uplifts and the introduction of new technologies as they emerge.

Services

Target State Determination, Targeted Strategic Roadmaps

I need to ensure that the organisation is ready to adopt and exploit lean process improvement principles.

Determining the correct granularity of services is essential for maximising the reuse of services and realising the promise of service oriented architecture and business process management. Our approach to identifying service containers and their boundaries is unique within the industry and, together with our Business Capability Model, is based on well-defined engineering principles which are applied consistently for services, internally or externally sourced. The method is critical for mapping business design to technical design; defining the business boundaries for process, service and data responsibility; determining the boundaries between top down and bottom up process improvements and the scope and size for process/sub process steps for process optimisation opportunities.

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Service Container Determination

Strategic reference architectures provide guidance on technology investment decisions and how various domains of technology and business design will be achieved. They include high level reference architectures and a set of design principles, or building codes, to guide design. Their adoption accelerates the design and delivery of IT solutions by their re-use and alignment to agreed business based outcomes.

The Business Process Design Architecture describes how the business will operate and is used to develop efficient business process practices. If designed appropriately and in conjunction with a BPM discipline, it can facilitate process efficiency, effectiveness and continuous improvement; improve speed, time and cost to market for business change; promote the level of process reuse thereby increasing agility and reducing risk and total cost of ownership; and eliminate process complexity and waste.

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Reference Architecture Development (Business Process Design)

I need to be confident that our investment in technology will improve and optimise operations.

Identifying business intent and a clear set of measurable business outcomes linked to that intent should act as fundamental input into solution designs. We can enable the development of these inputs using a unique facilitated technique which identifies current issues, outcomes and actions. The outcomes are expressed from multiple perspectives and linked to architecture design principles which inform all domains of solution design from a business perspective. This approach ensures that the design elements of an organisation’s strategic projects and change initiatives are business driven and aligned to business outcomes.

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Business Intent Definition

Using the Business Capability Model, our collaborative approach to determine an organisation’s Target State Solution Architecture focusses on information gathering from all areas of the business and discussing their needs based on the business capabilities that must be supported. The target state is supported by a well-defined strategic roadmap which is realistic, executable and structured within agreed funding parameters. The roadmap can cater for strategic business change, efficiency based imperatives, internal capability uplifts and the introduction of new initiatives to optimise business operations.

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Targeted Strategic Roadmaps

The Fragile to Agile Investment & Prioritisation Framework provides a methodical and structured mechanism for choosing which business change initiatives to fund and how much funding to allocate. As there is always more demand than can be fulfilled, investment decisions need to be made in a systematic and prudent way against balanced decision criterion. Therefore, this process enables consistent and transparent decision making that is aligned with the strategic vision, objectives and values of the organisation. It provides the decision making mechanism for governing new technology investments by using decision criteria that is specific to each organisation.

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Investment & Prioritisation Process

I require a stable view of the business to direct effort and optimise operations.

The level of rigour applied to the development of our Business Capability Models make them suitable for both business consulting and deep technical design. It provides a single tool that can seamlessly flow from business consultation to technology architecture design and maintain business engagement throughout the process. This not only provides a shared language and collaboration tool to facilitate these discussions but is fundamental to converting business strategy into execution.

With the application of heat maps and overlays, which depict various organisational attributes, the Business Capability Model can be used as an important business design artefact for a number of business and technical purposes including to identify gaps in functionality, duplicated solutions, IT spend in proportion to strategic business capabilities and technology obsolescence risks. The unique visual representation of these attributes can provide a compelling case for change across all levels of an organisation.

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Business Capability Model. Heat Maps & Overlays

I need confidence in the quality and integrity of our information to measure operational performance.

Strategic reference architectures provide guidance on technology investment decisions and how various domains of technology and business design will be achieved. They include high level reference architectures and a set of design principles, or building codes, that describe how the domain will be realised. Their adoption accelerates the design and delivery of IT solutions by their re-use and alignment to agreed business based outcomes.

The Information Architecture applies to the knowledge and information assets used by the organisation and shared with external parties. It describes how information required by an organisation to operate its business is obtained, managed, classified, disseminated, retained, interrogated and converted into knowledge.

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Reference Architecture Development (Information)

Data modelling defines and analyses data requirements to enable business capabilities. It models data in a standard, consistent and predictable manner to deliver a logical data model which acts as the single source of truth for the data needs of solution design and information governance. This ensures quality, consistency and integrity of corporate data and information.

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Data Modelling Delivery

We have difficulty identifying process improvement opportunities to streamline our operations.

Strategic reference architectures provide guidance on technology investment decisions and how various domains of technology and business design will be achieved. They include high level reference architectures and a set of design principles, or building codes, that describe how the domain will be realised. Their adoption accelerates the design and delivery of IT solutions by their re-use and alignment to agreed business based outcomes.

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Reference Architecture Development (Business Process Design)

Contact Us

Please contact us if you require further information about our services.