Modern enterprise need to rapidly respond to changes. Goal modeling techniques are intuitive mechanisms that help in modeling and analyzing rationale behind enterprise's response to change. In spite of their intuitiveness, there are several challenges that need to be addressed for their practical adoption and application. We present a problem statement based on real world case study and possible ways in which these challenges can be addressed.
Practical Goal Modeling for Enterprise ChangeContext: A Problem Statement
1. Practical Goal Modeling for Enterprise Change
Context: A Problem Statement
Sagar Sunkle, Hemant Rathod, and Vinay Kulkarni
2. Motivation
Business Change Drivers
1. Cost reduction/revenue increment
2. Mergers/acquisitions/divestitures
3. New regulations
4. Audit findings
Changes due to Business Drivers
1. Process changes
2. Product offerings
3. New functionality needs
4. New data needs
Technology Drivers
1. Vendor-driven upgrades
2. Technology consolidation mandates
3. Mobile/cloud presence
Changes due toTechnology Drivers
1. Process changes
2. Product offerings
3. New functionality needs
4. New data needs
• Multiple change drivers in enterprise context
Enterprise
3. Motivation
• Effective and efficient response requires coordinated
treatment of what, how, and why
Business Change Drivers
1. Cost reduction/revenue increment
2. Mergers/acquisitions/divestitures
3. New regulations
4. Audit findings
Changes due to Business Drivers
1. Process changes
2. Product offerings
3. New functionality needs
4. New data needs
Technology Drivers
1. Vendor-driven upgrades
2. Technology consolidation mandates
3. Mobile/cloud presence
Changes due toTechnology Drivers
1. Process changes
2. Product offerings
3. New functionality needs
4. New data needs
Enterprise
4. GORE Techniques
• Examples- KAOS, GBRAM, i*, Tropos, GRL
• Advantages:
– Enable representation of stakeholder goals, relationships to other goals,
alternate ways to achieve them, and consequences of choosing specific
alternatives
– Analyze satisfaction or denial of goals- what-if or bottom-up analysis and if-
what or top-down analysis
– Other analyses- ability, workability, viability related with a course of action to
achieve goals, criticality of depending on network of actors for achieving a goal
and so on
– Initial applications of planning (best sequence of actions leading to
achievement of goals), simulation (goal achievement over time), and more…
• Key issue is- while intuitive and clearly useful, how to practically apply
GORE techniques?
5. SR+SD For All M&A Problems under Consideration
Products and
Services
Rationalization
Branch
Consolidation
Workforce
Integration
Application
Rationalization Data Migration
Capacity
Enhancement
Business Layer
Application Layer
Infrastructure Layer
• Merger of Two Wealth Management
Banks
– Real world engagement for our
organization
– Merger as a change driver
– Could we capture rationale of merger,
and subsequent integration, albeit in
retrospect
– Use i*
– Large problem, broken down into
multiple sub-problems
– One key strategic goal in solving each
sub-problem
– Set of rationale and dependency models
for each problem
Practical Exemplar Details
6. Practical Exemplar Details
SR+SD For All M&A Problems under Consideration
Products and
Services
Rationalization
Branch
Consolidation
Workforce
Integration
Application
Rationalization Data Migration
Capacity
Enhancement
Business Layer
Application Layer
Infrastructure Layer
• Restricting to 3 or 4 actors [mainly at the top level of
org hierarchy with only representative actors at
operational levels]
• Several gotchas upfront-
– How to represent two organizations themselves that
merged; how to differentiate actors from either
organization? what about the merged entity?
– How to capture external drivers like market condition that
led to merger?
– How to represent inside and outside of organization-
essentially self + environment?
– Main problem divided into 6 sub-problems; how to put
best alternatives together as an optimum solution to
merger?
– Merger initiative for 5 years- how to represent course of
actions over this duration-If we really want to use Why
models!!
– Merger is often driven by existing context and ongoing
goals- how to represent merger goals as not being
detrimental to existing goals?
• Several hacks applied- modeling effort led to
following observations
7. Observation I- Goals in Organizational Hierarchy
What to Model
Top
management
Middle
management
Operations
Strategic
Goals
Unit Goals
Unit
Execution
Operational
Execution
Actors from
different
levels of
organization
hierarchy
Strategy Modeling and Execution in
Practice
Strategy Modeling with Intentional
Modeling
• Actor/agent orientation quickly identifies involved roles but the ensuing model far from reality-
mainly because:
– Identified roles were at arbitrary levels in organizational hierarchy- no guidelines on who to really
include and where to stop
– Tough to separate out dependencies from delegation
– Roles belong to specific units- this context is often lost; should there be unit-specific rationale and
dependency models? Is a specific unit an actor?
8. Observation II- Ownership of and Contributions to Goals
CFO
BU
Head(s)
FAs
SR
SD
Rationalize
portfolio
CIO
COO
AIT
CIO’s
Responsibility
CIO’s Contribution
Rationalize
Application
portfolio
Application
Rationalization
Products and Services Rationalization
What to Model
• Due to breaking down of large problem, several roles/actors owning
as well as contributing to several goals
– Do courses of action for owned and contributed goals affect each other? If
they do, how to model this situation? How to evaluate it?
– Particularly when sub-problems are part of larger problem
9. Observation III- Distinguishing Current Goals from Future Goals
• Organizations exist, specific units and roles are doing whatever is required to achieve ongoing
goals- business as usual (AS-IS or BAU) goals
• Merger is one change driver
• What about other concomitant change drivers? Regulatory compliance for one- organizations
in the exemplar are banks with presence in multiple geographies
• Existence of several change drivers is the norm
• Must distinguish goals in response to change drivers (transformation goals) from BAU goals
– BAU goals in fact need to be prioritized- often the reason for merger failure is not taking into
consideration the context of BAU goals when adopting merger goals
– How to ensure that actions for transformation goals do not jeopardize BAU goals?
– How to distinguish goals resulting from different change drivers? How to balance them or model
tradeoff? What does it mean to balance them?
• This apart from several realities of real world: uncertainty within and in environment of
organizations, negotiations-again quite prominent in merger context- to name a few
What to Model
10. Observation III- Assumptions and Course Corrections
What to Model
• Merger change initiative for 5 years
• In retrospect, over the duration of 5 years, several assumptions changed- there
were several course corrections
• What changes between courses of actions when assumptions change?
• How to make use of knowledge that certain assumption(s) led to wrong/sub-
optimal course of action?
11. Observation IV- Who Models the Goals and how to Keep Track?
Who Models Goals?
• Who/where are the domain experts?
• For practical use, do we need to enable several modelers with knowledge of GORE
techniques?
• Will CXOs help in defining the goals- ideally they should but in reality many
difficulties
• Adoption is difficult in general
– The results of using GORE models will show after time- how to convince anyone to help
modeling goals?
– How to keep track of all the modeled goals and synchronize suggested and real courses of
action?
– How to create modeling and operationalization infrastructure suitable for entire duration of
change initiative?
How to Apply the Models?
12. Conclusion
• To make GORE techniques practically applicable-
– Intuitive and useful but require further research in several dimensions
– Ongoing modeling efforts for large case study revealed some of these;
possibly more- depending on specifics of change drivers in enterprise
context