Business Architecture: Te War Game. For how the game eventually came to work, see “About the Game” on Page 16.
A SURPRISE REVEAL Two teams of ARDEC employees played the game for three days. On the final day of the game, the Tiger Team was declared the winner over Skunk Works. We held an after-action review with all of the participants and made clear the real purpose of the game. Most of the participants knew little or nothing about business architecture, and that was the point. We used the war game to drive home the message that business architec- ture can help make decisions at all levels of the organization.
Dan Crowley, chief of the Process Improve- ment and Management Group at ARDEC and a war game participant, said that he supports the development and use of a business architecture because “by adopt- ing a business architecture, anyone in the organization is able to assess the capabil- ities and use this information to make quicker and better strategic decisions.”
War game participant Kevin Hayes, deputy director in the Enterprise and Systems Integration Center, observed that “busi- ness architecture can be used to support annual budget planning as it provides the ability to quickly see where weak areas of the organization are and make better investment trade-off decisions.”
Managers can act in the role of the market team, determining which capabilities are necessary for investment. Just as, in the game, the budget proposal will contain capability investments and justifications. Managers, or higher-level organizations, now have data helping to drive decisions and support an enlightened strategic discussion.
CONCLUSION We have entered an age of disruption, where agility trumps scale and strategy takes on a new role and a new meaning. ARDEC Military Deputy Col. Richard Hornstein considers business architecture
“a great leader and management capability for strategic leaders to decompose infor- mation and aid in the decision-making process.”
Te business architecture war game is a powerful tool that can be used for any significant strategic undertaking that is fraught with uncertainty. As a planning tool, it raises the visibility of the make- or-break uncertainties that are sure to be common in modernizing the Army. Te acquisition enterprise is so complex in its vast number of capabilities that it takes a tool like this to make it comprehensi- ble to those who know only their little corner of it.
With a task as monumental as moderniz- ing the Army—the largest service branch of the world’s largest bureaucracy—the ability to visualize organizations as a whole, and understand what they are capa- ble of, matters more than ever.
I’m determined to show that business architecture can enable ARDEC—or any organization—to do a better job of look- ing at our capacity to execute our mission as the external environment changes. Tese changes might include budget cuts, hiring freezes and new requirements.
ARDEC, through its use of business architecture, is ensuring adaptability and flexibility to meet the challenges required to develop the future force. Tis model can be used by any Army organi- zation—indeed, DOD itself—to think in a more holistic way and to promote organizational learning and continuous improvement.
As we continue to find new opportunities to apply business architecture concepts to improve our planning and execution of the armament research, development and engineering mission, ARDEC will remain relentlessly focused on developing the world’s best armament and munition systems for the warfighter.
For more information, contact the author at
kathleen.r.walsh.civ@
mail.mil.
MS. KATHLEEN R. WALSH is a busi- ness architect at ARDEC. She is a Certified Enterprise Architect from Carnegie Mellon University, and holds a Master of Engi- neering degree in systems engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and a B.S. in computer science from Ramapo College of New Jersey. She holds a Certificate in Leadership Dynamics from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania; earned certificates in game design, story and narrative develop- ment from California Institute of the Arts; received business architecture training from the Business Architecture Institute; and studied filmmaking at the Barrow Group in New York City. She holds professional memberships in the Association of Enterprise Architects, the Business Architecture Guild and the International Institute of Busi- ness Analysis (IIBA), and she has spoken at the Business Architecture Guild’s Innova- tion Summit, the IIBA Building Business Capability, the Twin Cities Business Archi- tecture Summit and the National Defense Industrial Association’s systems engineering conferences.
CONTRIBUTORS: Mr. Joseph A. Brescia, chief of the Stra- tegic Transformation Office, ARDEC; and Ms. Radhika Patel, systems engi- neer, ARDEC.
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