Bridge the CIO/CEO Communication Gap
Use the Simon Business Architecture to illustrate enterprise architectures clearly to every project team member.
by Marc Sewell

October 20, 2005

Harvard Business School does not teach enterprise architecture to its elite MBA candidates and future corporate leaders. Why? Because, despite our best intentions or beliefs, EA remains an IT concept. We can model the business until we are blue in the face, but the goal of our EA plans remains the creation of technology structures. CEOs use spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations to communicate their business strategies, structures, and plans; they do not use Unified Modeling Language (UML). This disconnect creates the chasm between the two "sides" of the business. Wouldn't it be powerful if we all worked from the same set of plans?

So let's look at an EA model that starts with the business side and explore how they will use it to create a blueprint of their organization, mapping out marketing, management, initiatives, finance, technology, process, and so on. A picture is worth 1,000 words and a blueprint from this perspective would uniformly communicate to all departments in a way that far surpasses the current corporate tools. A key aspect of a business—and thus of this model—would be the technology that supports the business presented from a business perspective. Then, from this business blueprint, the technical side would use the same models (now understood by everyone in the enterprise) and extend them for detailed technology design.

The Simon Enterprise Architecture, using the Simon Visual Language, was designed for that purpose (see Figure 1). It is to be used by business architects to design enterprises as well as by enterprise architects and software architects to design the software-based technology to support these enterprises. You would read the model in Figure 1 like this:

The Enterprise is defined in a Simon Enterprise Architecture, which is represented in the Simon Visual Language and presented in a Blueprint. The Simon Enterprise Architecture is composed of a Simon Business Architecture and a Simon Technology Architecture. The Simon Business Architecture is the basis for the Simon Technology Architecture.

Simon Business Architecture for the CEO
The Simon Business Architecture is the CEO's blueprint of the business (see Figure 2). This blueprint would be used by the CEO when asked questions such as these: What does your business do? How is your business organized? Who are your customers? Who is your competition? What is your competitive strategy? What technology do you use to support your business? How is your business doing financially? Any business question now answered with spreadsheets, clip art, org charts, or simple arm-waving now can be answered with precise, visually interesting blueprints.

The Simon approach to business architecture segments the views of a business into Business Structure, Products & Markets, Strategy & Action, and Technology. Every aspect of a business, from the mission to the roles needed to execute the mission, is represented within these four areas. Any management system, measurement system, or strategic planning model can be assigned to one of these four areas. The Simon objects and models created from each area are used to create drawings for business activities such as initiatives, projects, marketing programs, or organizational change—even complex mergers and acquisitions. The sum of these drawings is the blueprint of the business. For a description of the four broad areas of the Simon Business Architecture Model, see the sidebar, "Breaking Down the Simon Business Architecture Model."

Visionaries are highly prized in business, yet their visions are, ironically, communicated in text; they are words on a page. Visionary executives must be able to communicate their visions in a way that can be understood quickly and deeply, then executed true to intent.

Simon Technology Architecture for the CIO/CTO
Just as a CEO can benefit from a uniform, understandable, compelling set of blueprints, so too can the technology executive. The Simon Technology Architecture (see Figure 3) accomplishes this using the same Simon Visual Language used by business professionals. The premise underlying Simon Technology Architecture is that the technology is designed to support the business or the business's products, so the objects and models used in the overall business blueprint are the same to be used to design the technology. For example, the processes and roles defined for a business function are expanded upon to create the equivalent of design use cases, interaction diagrams, and UML domain models. Simon Technology Architecture actually maps to UML 2.0 if needed by model driven architecture (MDA) or programmers.

The Simon Technology Architecture provides all the information from the views of current frameworks such as Zachman, the Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), and Rational Unified Process (RUP) in a uniform way that uses the Simon business models directly. The Simon approach to technology architecture segments views into Domain Design, Software Design, Machine Design, and Physical Design, and it is used to describe and present technology projects at an architect's level of detail. This level of detail might be sufficient for some projects, or it can be used to feed lower levels of detail representation such as UML drawings for software construction or dimensioned drawings for creating manufacturing floor layouts.

CEO and CIO: United by a Common Language
The Simon Visual Language (see Figure 4) is what makes the Simon EA possible. It depicts all aspects of an enterprise in a visual way that is as compelling and understandable as building blueprints. When planning and constructing a building, everyone involved refers to a common blueprint—especially to the pages that contain the details needed for them to fulfill their role. The Simon Visual Language creates an analogous common blueprint for an entire enterprise. Like a building blueprint, it uses a combination of shape, symbol, and text to communicate quickly and powerfully in a way those boring diagrams of boxes and lines, spreadsheets, and charts cannot. Simon drawings are infinitely flexible and can be very simple or extremely complex—but all are visually interesting and understandable at all levels of an organization.

It is the unifying aspect that makes Simon EA powerful. It will eliminate the gap between the business and technology sides and put everyone on the same page. CIOs and software architects are accustomed to modeling and they will be helpful up front in the business strategy and planning process. We can enable "business architects" to create business blueprints and, with them, they can validate, along with us, that our visions are being built true to their intent.

About the Author
Marc Sewell has more than 30 years of software architecture, design, and management experience, including chief architect of IBM, vice president of architecture and technology at Morgan Stanley, chairman and chief architect of Simon Labs, and president of the Worldwide Institute of Software Architects (WWISA). He also is a coauthor of The Software Architect's Profession: An Introduction (Prentice Hall, 2001, ISBN: 0130607967).