The Business Transformation and Enterprise Architecture Framework: Holistic Skills Design and Evolution (HSD&E)

Background

The riskiest CSF in a Project transforming a traditional business environment (BE) into a lean and automated BE, is the role and skills/human factors of the Manager and his capabilities in managing the implementation phase of the Project. The basic skills set and education background of a Manager has not been sufficiently investigated in a holistic manner in order to design and define the right skills set; and that is the main chapter’s goal (Trad & Kalpić, 2013a); by holistic the authors refer to a generic or cross-functional approach. Manager skills/human factors set that has to manage the complex implementation phase of a Project that requires a specific set of DMS, KMS, EA, design and implementation skills. The Project’s Implementation Phase (PIP) is the major cause of high failure rates (CapGemini, 2009). Analysing the failure rates, the authors have found that only around 12% of BEs successfully finish Projects (Tidd & Bessant, 2009). Therefore, there is a tremendous need for more research on the Manager skills set that needs holistic EA and implementation skills for the PIP. The knowledge gap was acknowledged and confirmed, due to the fact that the existing literature and various methodologies treating Projects offer practically no insight into the skills set/human factors of the Manager as an Architect of Holistic Business System (AofHBS or simply a Manager) (SAP, 2013a); Actual Projects are reliant on business schools accountants skills sets... Holistic approach and managing PIP complexity requires a mixed method that is mainly based on a hyper-heuristics model. The AofHBS must be capable of transforming the BE’s Information and Communication Systems (ICS) and to exploit the technologies in order to successfully conduct the Project. Such Managers and organizations need holistic methodologies, like SAP’s BTP2 or even better, the one proposed by the authors, that encompasses Enterprise Architecture (EA), HR activities, and the management of Projects (Uhl & Gollenia, 2012). Using Google Scholar to match the combinations of the keywords: 1) Manager and DMS; 2) Manager and EA; 3) EA and DMS… shows that the authors and their unique framework have a total lead (Trad & Kalpić, 2019a). This chapter shows that the Manager is an AofHBS with holistic or cross-functional skills, is mainly a holistic technocrat, which opposes business schools’ approach, to use cheap interface and brutal accountants, who are schooled to deliver tuned balance sheets, with no understanding of complex environments (The Economist, 2000).

The AofHBS manages Projects that involve complete digitization of value chains and business processes automation, and enables a traditional BE to create new business models and hence business excellence. A capable Manager can make transformed BEs like Cisco Systems, Dell Computer and many others report important financial gains due to Projects (Barua, Konana, Whinston, & Yin, 2001). This research phase uses the Trad Kalpić Methodology and Framework (TKM&F), as shown in Figure 1 (Trad & Kalpić, 2018f), which is based on CSFs from various areas like EA, DMA, business processes, accountancy, enterprise skills….

Figure 1.

The research framework’s concept (Trad & Kalpić, 2016a)

This chapter presents a set of HHFD&EP managerial recommendations and combines needed fields, like Knowledge Management (KM), applied mathematical models, EA, information technology management, HR management and business transformation. Integrating a HHFD&EP should be a fundamental strategic Project’s goal (Trad & Kalpić, 2018a, 2018b; Cearley, Walker & Burke, 2016), where Figure 2 is fundamental to understand the whole research project and it is used in the whole book.