Elevator

Invest in people, processes, and technologies together at the right place and at the right time.

Concerns

Organizations tend to view people, processes, and technologies separately when they have strong cross impacts. There is also the assumption that outsourcing, leasing, and other forms of using assets without explicit ownership does not imply investments. Organizations will also make decisions based on sales pitches and sometimes ignore the risks that due diligence would uncover. Organizations are often resilient to change and will sometimes refuse change even when losing competitive edge.

Practices

The enterprise architect does not view people, processes, and technologies separately, but as integrated people_process_technology units. The risk in units is the enterprise’s systematic_risk that is specific to the units interaction with the company. The enterprise architect must at the same time be aware of the enterprise’s unsystematic_risk from viewing the individual components of these units.

To aleviate some of these risks the enterprise architect must be_in_the_meeting with new technology product vendors, process planning, and informed of major people shifts. The enterprise architect then must be prepared to follow this up with with proof_of_concepts to demonstrate the viability of these new initiatives.

The investments in technology increase as a result of economies_of_scale as the organization uses them more, but it is a decreases as more competitive products are created and the technical_debt increases. The enterprise architect performs a health_check to determine the products suitibility over time. The enterprise architect, as part of this process, needs to determine where the products are in their life-cycles and the tolerance of the organization to change (i.e. are they on the bleeding edge or reactive).

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