Logistics

  • 18 October 2024
  • Roll Call
  • Main Topic — Strategy and Governance
  • Itana Business
    • Steering Committee Updates
    • Working Group Updates

Notes

Itana Overview

Itana is a peer group for Enterprise, Business, and Technical Architects in Higher Education: https://itana.org

  • Founded in 2007
  • Over 950 members on EDUCAUSE Connect
  • Typically hosting over 80 events every year
  • EDUCAUSE:
    • Preconference Session, "Enterprise Architecture: Delivering Value from Streamlining Ops to Wrangling Disruptive Technologies"
    • Community Group session, "ITANA: Enterprise, Business, and Technical Architects Focus on the Year Ahead"
    • Informal gatherings

Call Notes

  • Strategy and Governance is the first topic in the Architecture Practice  
  • Eric Whitmore, MSU: What is Strategy?  The institution is kicking off a strategy refresh.  At the most basic level, the purpose of a strategy is to guide decision-making and resource allocation (of a team, an organization, a country, etc).  The key question for contributors is "how will we (or me) help the institution achieve its vision?".
  • positioning:
  • Goals (longer-term and more of a north star vs Objectives (more intermediary waypoints that help achieve the goals).
  • Michigan State has these goals, underpinned by objectives, but the problem is that sometimes there are differences in priorities and ideas and opinions about the best way to help the University achieve its mission, and that is where leadership and governance needs to come to the fore:
  • Mary Stevens, What is Governance?  It's there to help navigate those differences mentioned above, to align effort and decision-making.
  • Last year's working group on IT Governance broadly found that governance is governance, that there's not really much difference in the capability of IT Governance than other types of governance:
  • IT Management:
  • ...and note also that the HERM includes a recipe card for IT Governance.
  • Pulling It All Together: TOGAF has six governance domains. noting that architecture governance overlaps with the others and is at the heart of enterprise governance:

    ...and:
  • MSU has governance instantiated at the IT level and in the form of an Enterprise Project Management Office and also has formal and cross-cutting Data Governance in place at University level.  In other areas there are opportunities to strengthen the governance.
  • Where does Enterprise Architecture fit in the context of formal and informal governance responsibilities?
  • Polls and Discussions!
    • Governance at Your Institution: the results are almost "all of the above" for everybody!
    • Governance Structures at Your Campus: interesting to see that formal governance is not necessarily as high as it might have been expected to be... is this perhaps related to the positioning of Enterprise Architecture within the hierarchy of the institutions?


    • Governance Structures Domains: most of the engagement activity for the folk on the call today is related to data and technology and project-execution and cybersecurity, rather than things like research and teaching and business-capability-management:
  • Enterprise Architects (in reality probably all architects) do need to consider the financial and economic and value-engineering aspects of the decision-making processes to which they contribute.
  • At what point does Strategy turn towards (or dictate or shape) the choices around operating model and the adoption of frameworks such as SAFe or ITIL?

Further Information

Resources

ZOOM Chat

  • 07:09:08 From Brad Stone (BYU) to Everyone: I believe there is also a poster session at Educause on the Higher Education Reference Model.  Wed. Oct 23 at 9:15 AM CT. https://events.educause.edu/annual-conference/2024/agenda/how-to-save-the-world-global-perspectives-on-the-higher-education-reference-models
    07:09:17 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "I believe there is a..." with ❤️
    07:09:23 From Mary Stevens to Everyone: Reacted to "I believe there is a..." with 👍
    07:09:33 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Yes!! Thank you Brad!!
    07:10:06 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to "I believe there is a..." with ❤️
    07:20:14 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: Reacted to "I believe there is a..." with 🤡
  • 07:14:32 From Dana Miller to Everyone: Are “what problems are we trying to solve” too low level for strategy and governance?
  • 07:15:06 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Link to IT Gov'n material - https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/itana/IT+Governance+Capability
  • 07:22:25 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: "governance" is one of those words that some people freak out about and others see as a bureaucratic licence to ignore = we're starting to favour "coordination and oversight" to emphasise the active, engaged, and everybody-has-responsibilities nature of what's involved.
    07:23:12 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to ""governance" is one ..." with 👍
    07:23:26 From Todd Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to ""governance" is one ..." with 👍
    07:24:42 From Lonnie Smetana - UManitoba (he/him) to Everyone: Reacted to ""governance" is one ..." with 👍🏻
    07:31:09 From Adedamola Ibironke to Everyone: Reacted to ""governance" is one ..." with 👍
    07:31:43 From Tony Rimovsky - Notre Dame to Everyone: Reacted to ""governance" is one ..." with 👍
  • 07:30:23 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: ...for those who have Gartner access, this "quick answer" is a example of a useful piece that scopes "strategy", "strategic plan", "operational plan", etc: Cox, C. & Nielsen, T. (2024) Quick Answer: What’s the Difference Between Strategy, Strategic Plans and Operational Plans?, Gartner Research, Article ID G00768586, available at https://www.gartner.com/document-reader/document/4014860 — Strategic planning must cover strategy, strategic plans and operational plans. However, many CIOs confuse strategy with a strategic plan. By understanding the difference and why it matters, CIOs can create a more effective strategy, strategic plan and operational plan to drive better execution.
    07:30:37 From Eric Whitmore (MSU) to Everyone: Reacted to "...for those who hav..." with 👍
    07:31:42 From Lonnie Smetana - UManitoba (he/him) to Everyone: Reacted to "...for those who hav..." with 👍🏻
  • 07:31:26 From Todd Schaefer to Everyone: Governance = enablement
  • 07:31:28 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Great point Jeff. I often see similar conflation of strategy and strategy objectives.
  • 07:31:52 From Henry Pruitt to Everyone:     would you include reference architectures, standards, and architecture review boards all as governance related institutions/
    07:33:11 From Peter Churey (Sheridan College) to Everyone: Reacted to "would you include re..." with 👍🏻
    07:37:41 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: Reacted to "would you include re..." with 🤡
  • 07:31:55 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: ...or strategic goals to stay aligned with Eric's definitions.  :)
  • 07:32:11 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: Good call-out there @Stephanie M Warner = and for enterprise architecture and thinking about more-iterative approaches to doing and delivering i wonder about where things like adaptive governance, emergent governance, just-enough governance, lean governance, democratized governance, etc, all play their part (vs Big Governance Up Front!).
    07:32:18 From Eric Whitmore (MSU) to Everyone: Reacted to "Good call-out there ..." with 😃
    07:32:37 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "Good call-out there ..." with 👍
    07:38:43 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: Replying to ".. or strategic goal..." We have a "Vision 2030 and Strategic Plan 2025" that includes Strategic Objectives, so another variation on a theme! = https://www.auckland.ac.nz/assets/about-us/the-university/official-publications/strategic-plan/2021-2030/taumata-teitei-vision-2030-and-strategic-plan-2025.pdf
    07:42:27 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: ...and to the excellent conversation there and the questions @Rupert Berk - UWash asked, we have so many committees (likely you all do too!) that we have an A-to-Z list of them published at https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about-us/about-the-university/the-university/governance-and-committees/committees/a-z-committees.html) and for my part there are a couple of these i sit on and several others where i make cameo appearances... many in the "other" category for this current poll!
    07:44:10 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "...and to the excell..." with 🙌
  • 07:45:44 From A.K. Molteni to Everyone: Same here. We are consulted as part of the purchasing process.
    07:45:52 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to "Same here. We are co..." with ❤️
    07:45:57 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "Same here. We are co..." with ❤️
  • 07:46:13 From Tony Rimovsky - Notre Dame to Everyone: To me, understanding the cultural rules and norms around money is important, even if I am not directly involved in budget setting. Kitchen table budgeting is not the same as budget considerations for multi-billion dollar operations.
    07:46:29 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to "To me, understanding..." with 👍
    07:48:10 From Lonnie Smetana - UManitoba (he/him) to Everyone: Reacted to "To me, understanding..." with 👍🏻
  • 07:47:03 From Glenn Donaldson (Ohio State) to Everyone: Improvements can be made for sure.
  • 07:47:10 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: "financial" is increasingly becoming related in the same breath to both the money-dollars side of things and the environmental-carbon side of things.
  • 07:47:42 From Tony Rimovsky - Notre Dame to Everyone: Do we get value out of governance?  Yes.  Is it to the level of my personal “ideal”?  No.  Is it close to my CIOs ideal?  I have no idea.
    07:48:40 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
        Reacted to "Do we get value out ..." with 👍
  • 07:51:46 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Great point Shari. I sometimes see gov'n really being advisory to management where management makes the decision rather than governance.
  • 07:51:51 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: Again, it's Gartner, from https://www.gartner.com/document-reader/document/4238399, but this might be useful, thinking of Dana's question about the intersections:

    07:52:46 From Dana Miller to Everyone: Reacted to "Again, it's Gartner,..." with 👍🏼
    07:52:14 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to "{E5ADDBF7-8577-4B04-87B8-7531A00220F1}.png" with 👍
    07:53:26 From Brad Stone (BYU) to Everyone: Replying to "{E5ADDBF7-8577-4B04-87B8-7531A00220F1}.png" This looks really interesting, Jeff. Do you have a reference to this document?
  • 07:52:20 From Mary Stevens to Everyone: If you want to read more, COBIT is a good resource
  • 07:52:35 From Stephanie M Warner to Everyone: Good point, @shari.galitzer  Without administrative buy in, many governance ventures can fail.
  • 07:53:32 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: "monitoring" is that manifested here by anybody using things like KPIs or OKRs?
    07:53:34 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to ""monitoring" is that..." with 👍
  • 07:54:14 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Miro board - https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLRwN7iE=/?share_link_id=104162125941
    07:58:21 From Lonnie Smetana - UManitoba (he/him) to Everyone: Reacted to "Miro board - https:/..." with 👍🏻
  • 07:54:32 From Eric Whitmore (MSU) to Everyone: presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1krctjeWKPtJB0Z-ljPe5ue74pc08CPuP4UF6lOqctx8/
    07:57:50 From Todd Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "presentation: https:..." with 👍
    07:54:33 From Glenn Donaldson (Ohio State) to Everyone: Reacted to "Miro board - https:/..." with 👍
    07:55:28 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: Replying to "Miro board - https:/..." ...thank you! = i'd just pasted a screenshot image of that into Google Gemini and asked it to pull the URL for me!
    07:55:41 From Dana Miller to Everyone: Reacted to "...thank you! = i'd ..." with 👍🏼
    07:56:24 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "...thank you! = i'd ..." with 👍🏼
    07:56:28 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "Miro board - https:/..." with 👍
    07:56:45 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone: Reacted to "...thank you! = i'd ..." with ❤️
    07:58:21 From Adedamola Ibironke to Everyone: Reacted to "presentation: https:..." with 👍
    07:58:25 From Lonnie Smetana - UManitoba (he/him) to Everyone: Reacted to "presentation: https:..." with 👍🏻
  • 07:56:49 From Dana Miller to Everyone: https://connect.educause.edu/community-home?CommunityKey=cf36e1c4-7764-498d-a8bc-01922061cd0f
  • 07:57:38 From Mary Stevens to Everyone: Thanks to everyone it was great to see so many people here and have everyone participate!  It was a great way to spend fridays!
    07:57:56 From Todd Schaefer to Everyone: Reacted to "Thanks to everyone i..." with 👍
  • 07:57:45 From jeff kennedy to Everyone: EDUCAUSE < have a fantastic time there next week!
    07:59:41 From Dana Miller to Everyone: Reacted to "EDUCAUSE < have a fa..." with 👍🏼

Participants


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