Enterprise Architecture: Key to Netcentricity

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE: KEY TO NETCENTRICITY



DoD leaders need to adopt and use EA for netcentricity planning,
resource investment and battlespace operations execution.

By William Boddie and Edward Newman
 

The U.S. military's experiences in the Operation Iraqi Freedom campaign underscore that the future is now, and that forces must anticipate being engaged in warfare against determined, dynamic, highly dispersed, asymmetric and autonomous enemy forces. DoD must manage battlespace information effectively to defeat these enemies and must achieve netcentricity to achieve full warfare spectrum dominance. The Joint Vision 2020 document defined spectrum dominance as "the ability of U.S. forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations."

To achieve full-warfare-spectrum-dominance netcentric capabilities, DoD must describe its current warfare operations and support capabilities and constraints, describe its desired capabilities, and transition to the desired capabilities. The sheer scale of this transformation is immense.

DoD policy statements, such as the Quadrennial Defense Review, emphasize the criticality of the department transforming its warfare operations and support capabilities. Large and complex private industry organizations such as Wal-Mart and United Parcel Service and various multinational corporations faced similar enterprise transformation challenges, and turned to enterprise architecture (EA) to inform strategic enterprise transformation planning, decision-making, and execution.

An actionable EA provides organizational leaders information sufficient to make enterprise plans, investment resource and management decisions, and to optimize key operational and support processes. An actionable EA is critical to DoD realizing netcentric capabilities. This article describes netcentricity and relates the criticality of DoD using EA to achieve netcentric capabilities.

Network-Centric Operations

Network-centric operations (NCO) enables military forces to anticipate and adapt rapidly to changes in the environment such as enemy warfare tactics. NCO touches all aspects of department operations and, by integrating organizational networks and information, enables enhanced warfare operations effectiveness. NCO is enabled through dramatic changes in mindsets, processes, IT and access to information and networks.

Let's briefly explore NCO concepts and examine additional key NCO characteristics. Rear Admiral Thomas Zelibor has said about NCO that "warfare commanders could execute [operations] without asking 'mother may I' with me," and "workup cycles staff and warfare commanders were three to four steps ahead of the [other] fleet staff" in the region.

Zelibor also stated that "because of the way that information was distributed [and the structure of the] command and control, whether they were off the Horn of Africa, Northern Arabian Gulf or 500 yards of the stern of the [aircraft] carrier, we were all connected in some way," and, "We were able to get inside the OODA loop."

Getting inside the OODA (observe orient decide act) loop perhaps captures the essence of NCO. The OODA loop premise is first to sense a threat or opportunity. Secondly, one decides on a course of action (COA) that is executed faster than the opponent's COA, forcing the opponent into a reactive or defense posture.

The OODA loop is a "sense and respond" cycle driven by actionable data and information for superior information management, battlespace awareness, and operational decision-making. Superior information enables synergistic behaviors-"The whole is greater than the sum of the parts." When organizational components use rich and timely information, dramatically improved battlespace operations effectiveness can be realized, as emphasized by Zelibor and the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski.

Other military leaders also have emphasized the criticality of netcentric capabilities for enabling future U.S. warfare capabilities. Marine Corps General Peter Pace emphasized the criticality of netcentric capabilities to defeat future U.S. enemies. Although Pace, using a 10-point performance scale, gave the military an "eight" on understanding the transformation intent, he gave the department only a "four" in transformation execution. Achieving netcentric capabilities involves significant enterprise transformation considerations.

Enterprise transformation is challenging for relatively small organizations. Imagine the enormous challenge for DoD. Complicating things more, federal government entities, such as Department of Homeland Security, and coalition partners are also involved in the DoD transformation. Transforming DoD involves changing current military mindsets, business processes, solutions and resources.

DoD is developing solutions such as the Future Combat Systems, the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, the Navy's ForceNet, the Air Force Command and Control Constellation initiative and its Network-Centric Collaborative Targeting project, and DoD's Global Information Grid to realize netcentric capabilities.

Although DoD has experienced some transformation success, it must leverage a unifying approach that clearly maps proposed warfighting solutions and processes to netcentric goals. However, the department is challenged in using a unifying approach to achieve netcentric capabilities. Many of these challenges can be attributed to uncoordinated narrowly scoped initiatives, organizational parochialism, and other pathologies.

DoD leaders need keen insight regarding current warfare capabilities and constraints and must clearly describe desired capabilities. This insight can enable DoD leaders to develop and implement strategies to realize netcentric capabilities and to win in the battlespace of the future. As we emphasized earlier, the single unifying management approach that delivers the needed information and insight is enterprise architecture.

Enterprise Architecture

An enterprise architecture is a description of the organization's current capabilities and constraints, a description of the organization's desired capabilities, and a description of the plans to enable the organization to transition from the current to the desired capabilities. DoD in 2007 cited architecture as critical to enabling netcentric capabilities. The Office of Management and Budget defined an EA as a "management practice for aligning resources to improve business performance and help agencies better execute their core missions; an EA describes the current and future state of the agency, and lays out a plan for transitioning from the current state to the desired future state." Enterprises can be adequately described by answering six business questions, and the actionable EA answers these questions.

These questions involve the who, what, when, where, how, and why regarding enterprise operations. DoD leaders can gain insight into enterprise capabilities by identifying key warfare operations and support processes, identifying the human, material and technology resources used to perform these processes, and identifying when the processes are performed, where the processes are performed, how the processes are performed, and why the processes are performed.

By answering these questions, DoD leaders can understand current warfare operational and support capabilities and constraints. Government agencies such as departments of Labor, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development used EA to answer these questions and, as a result, implemented the desired capabilities and realized dramatic enterprise performance effectiveness. Although these departments might be less complex than DoD, their adoption of EA, governance, and portfolio management to progress toward to enterprise goals is directly applicable to DoD.

An actionable EA provides organizational leaders critical insight into current and desired enterprise capabilities and constraints. An actionable EA is critical to the DoD realizing netcentric capabilities similar to what the departments accomplished for their core business activities. Unfortunately, DoD has struggled in implementing an actionable EA.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), in its most recent evaluation of federal EA capabilities in 2006, found that the EA programs of the departments of the Air Force, Navy and Army were among the four most immature EA programs within the government. The GAO reported that government organizations were challenged by organizational parochialism and cultural resistance, adequate human capital and financial resources, and top management understanding.

The congressional watchdog agency also emphasized that strong executive leadership was critical to government organizations in advancing effective EA capabilities, and found that strong executive leadership could resolve all of the challenges organizations experienced in developing and using actionable EA capabilities. We next discuss strategies the DoD must leverage to advance departmentwide EA adoption to realize enterprise netcentric capabilities.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership and education can enable the DoD to implement effective EA capabilities and progress effectively toward enterprise netcentric capabilities. By far the most critical of these strategies is leadership. Implementing an actionable EA capability can take up to five years and requires leaders who focus on strategic long-term performance improvements. Strong leadership throughout DoD organizations can enable the department to develop effective EA capabilities. More specifically, transformational leadership is critical to DoD developing, implementing, and using effective EA capabilities to realize its netcentricity goals.

The transformational leader possesses vision, integrity, communication, inspiration, and empowerment. Each of these characteristics is necessary for DoD leaders to enabler the department to achieve enterprise netcentric capabilities. The transformational leader establishes a clear and compelling enterprise vision and uses various means to communicate the vision to enterprise members and stakeholder through one-on-one meetings, small group meetings, town hall meetings, staff meetings, Website portals, and any other means to communicate the vision.

The transformational leader's actions are consistent with the organization's vision. In other words, transformational leaders "walk the talk." These leaders inspire organizational members to realize the organization's vision. Additionally, the transformational leader empowers organizational members with human, materiel, and financial resources to accomplish the vision. As a result, the transformational leader establishes a clear and compelling vision, communicates the vision, inspires organizational members to excellent performance, and empowers enterprise members to achieve the vision.

As an example of transformational leadership, the Labor Department realized sustained excellent performance based on the President's Management Agenda evaluation reports from 2005 to 2007. The department's senior leaders embraced transformational leadership and adopted strong enterprise governance, EA, portfolio management, and capital planning and investment control to realize dramatic long-term performance improvements.

Conversely, the absence of transformational leadership can constrain organizations from realizing dramatic long-term enterprise performance improvements. As an example, a senior DoD official, accountable for enormous department financial investment management, informed the authors that the official's organization had not implemented an EA because the organization was too complex.

This perspective was interesting because the official lacked the awareness that an effective EA provides organizational leaders insight into enterprise capabilities and constraints and enables these leaders to make effective enterprise planning and resource investments. It is apparent the DoD leaders need EA education. EA education can help DoD leaders gain awareness of the criticality of EA enabling the department to realize netcentric capabilities.

The National Defense University (NDU) Information Resources Management (IRM) College developed an enterprise architecture certificate program in 2005 and offers this multiple-course certificate program free to all eligible DoD members. Additionally, DoD-sponsored contractors can also complete IRM College courses for a fee. The program prepares participants to effectively lead and manage enterprise EA programs. The one-week program courses are offered in residence at Fort McNair, in Washington, D.C.

For those unable to travel to the nation's capital, the program courses are offered in 12-week online distributed learning formats. The IRM College's program is the only graduate-level DoD enterprise architecture certificate program offered free to DoD members. The program courses are graduate level, and convey three academic semester hours. After completing the certificate, students can transfer up to 15 semester hours to one of our 35 partner universities, which accept the courses toward a master's degree. Not only can DoD members receive free graduate-level education, but also the members can use the education to help their organization implement and use an actionable EA to enable the DoD to achieve netcentric capabilities.

DoD is transforming to netcentric capabilities to achieve future battlespace superiority. This transformation requires the department to change its cultural mindset and to implement different warfare operational and support capabilities. To achieve netcentricity DoD must understand its current warfare operational and support capabilities and constraints, understand its desired capabilities, and transition to the desired capabilities.

An actionable EA is the single enterprise management approach that delivers this understanding. DoD has struggled in implementing an actionable EA. Embracing the transformational leadership qualities of vision, integrity, communication, inspiration, and empowerment can enable DoD leaders to adopt and use EA for netcentricity planning, resource investment and management decision-making, and battlespace operations execution. Just as critical as realizing netcentric capabilities is to achieving future warfare superiority, an actionable EA is equally as critical to the DoD realizing netcentric capabilities.

The IRM College's program prepares DoD leaders to lead and manage enterprise EA programs. The college stands ready to assist the department in transforming to netcentric capabilities and to win in the battlespace of the future. ♦