How the OV-6c Exposes Process Gaps and Redundancy

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Adam Pasch
We do.

00:00:01:23 – 00:00:20:04
Adam Pasch
A ton of enterprise architecture. Lots of artifacts. Some people look at it as just governance. We know that it’s more. Yeah. What are some of the most overrated and underrated artifacts out there that you produce?

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Dave Smith
Well, I think you hit on it as far as I mean, architecture is not just for certification anymore. It’s much more about just compliance documentation and to put a check in the box. I think it’s really all about relationships and engagement and how you work with a client to to come up with a compromise or a solution. That’s going to be a win win.

00:00:45:17 – 00:01:13:16
Dave Smith
And really, I think whether it’s the Department of Defense architecture framework or whether it’s the, you know, United Architecture framework, it’s it’s something that it’s a tool that we utilize, that we engage, that we, you know, explain that we explore. And, you know, having that opportunity to do that and sit down face to face with a client and develop all of those architecture products is just a huge, valuable opportunity.

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Dave Smith
And so if you ask me what my favorite way to engage your client is, is it’s probably the the over 60.

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Adam Pasch
That was exactly.

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Dave Smith
You know, I mean, because it gives you an opportunity to show the client where they fit into a process. It lets them see, hey, here’s my activity, here’s the system that I use. Here’s the information I’m I’m sharing with another performer in this process. You know, is there a gap? Is there something that we can improve? Is there a redundancy?

00:01:46:00 – 00:02:03:09
Dave Smith
Am I really doing all of this with this system? Is there something that that I can do better, something that I can do different? And we also have those black box processes where, you know, we throw it somewhere else and we have no idea what they’re doing with it. And you know, that gives us an opportunity to explore.

00:02:03:09 – 00:02:24:09
Dave Smith
Well, maybe that’s where we need to dive in and do a little bit more process exploration with a client or what somebody that’s outside of the process. So to me, that’s a perfect opportunity to kind of springboard into some of the other models that we have and dive deeper with the client in terms of, you know, you do this, you say you do this here.

00:02:24:11 – 00:02:48:02
Dave Smith
What tools do you use? Who else is involved? What information are you sharing? Are you the right person to do this? Is there training that’s missing? Is there something that’s a gap? So I think it’s just the over 60 is such a perfect springboard into a whole enterprise architecture experience that we can engage the client with.

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Adam Pasch
Yeah. Like the picture that I’m getting from what you’re describing is there’s the kind of national map that gets generated, right? You know, we’re not down to the individual street level view yet, but that there’s this big orientation of the major components involved. So that way you don’t have to map everything from the beginning at the granular sand level of detail, which means you’re ten years away from ever having to able to show value.

00:03:21:19 – 00:03:28:18
Adam Pasch
But that starting broad and strategically picking where now to go deep and create opportunities of value.

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Dave Smith
That’s a perfect way to put it, because I mean, yeah, you don’t want to scare people away by immediately getting into the minutia of what they do, why they do it. You know, it’s because it can be scary. Yeah. A lot of times you come into and engage with a client and they don’t understand why you’re there in the first place, you know?

00:03:45:18 – 00:03:56:14
Dave Smith
But when you start to engage with them and show them what the value of that particular product is, how they can use it, how it can improve their lives and how it can help them going forward. I think that’s just a huge opportunity.

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Adam Pasch
Yeah. So go, go in a little bit more then for me. How do you see.

00:04:03:11 – 00:04:23:12
Adam Pasch
Skeptics of architecture on either the functional or technical end that have viewed it as compliance only in the past? What are some of those ways that they start to see the bigger value of, of having those architectures empower them in what they’re trying to achieve?

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Dave Smith
Yeah, I think specific to some clients, I mean, they don’t they think that maybe enterprise architecture is just the fact that there’s a whole nother menu of those that we can pair together and show them, you know, those gaps, those redundancies, specifically when you get into the A, when you’re when you’re pairing activities with system functions and you go back and look at an over and see what the capabilities that that enables, and then you compare that across to maybe an architecture for one system and architecture for another.

00:05:01:12 – 00:05:26:17
Dave Smith
And you can see that they’re duplicating capabilities, they’re duplicating functionality, they’re doing things that, you know, maybe if you saw it in another light that you would say, well, I would never do that because it’s just not cost effective. It’s just not, you know, efficient. But if you’re viewing that in a silo and only from your system, never expanding beyond just, you know, the engagement that you’re having outside of that, you’ll never see that.

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Dave Smith
And you might not see that in 60 without pairing it with some of those other artifacts that are necessary to kind of pull peel the onion back and show them.

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Adam Pasch
Yeah. So I love that example. So how how does it happen that you ended that, that a client ended up having the same functionality across five different systems that work together every day, but they have that level of redundancy.

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Dave Smith
I think it’s kind of an institutional silo. Maybe if you want to, to coin a term, is that, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it and that’s the way we think we need to do it. And we’re only going to improve what we have and influence over, rather than stepping back and saying, okay, you know, it might be a little bit painful for us to to realize that, hey, we do have a gap, we do have a redundancy, and we’re going to have to change our process and hopefully there’s enough, you know, intellectual honesty and candor that they’ll they’ll see that.

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Dave Smith
But you have to you have to work with them. You have to get them to the point by showing them through these artifacts, through the engagement, through the relationship of that. That’s really the case. Yeah. And that’s hard. I mean, and at the end of the day, maybe, maybe their position is right and we as the consultants might have to step back and say, you know, be honest to.

00:06:46:07 – 00:07:19:03
Adam Pasch
Know I love that I and I love that we’re always open to being wrong. Right. That the piece about the silos is really interesting where, you know, especially in large global enterprises, that it is so easy for different groups that don’t collaborate together on a daily basis, but that are part of the same global mission, ends up creating the same functionality.

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Adam Pasch
And it sounds like because it’s so necessary.

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Dave Smith
Exactly.

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Adam Pasch
That as different systems are being built over time, that redundancy makes sense then not nefarious, but by nature of how important that thing was.

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Dave Smith
Exactly. Because, I mean, there’s there’s always the overriding operational necessity. And you want to get flash to bang as quickly as you can, you know. So there is that maybe that desire to well, we’re just going to take it on ourselves and we’re just going to going to solve today’s problem today and not think about the long term and how some of the impacts, you know, the tertiary impacts on other on their systems, other organizations, and just fixing the problem that’s in front of us today, and that’s where we have to kind of step back and them to step back, take a look at that through architecture, through discussion, you know, and realize that some

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Dave Smith
self-realization, so to speak.

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Adam Pasch
Right. Because what I’m getting from you is that they that that opportunity to remove those redundancies came from it was working today like objectively the mission is getting done and that’s a good thing. It’s now by by taking this opportunity to look from this architecture lens that you’re identifying now there’s an opportunity for efficiency to be introduced, free up resources that now can be directed towards more capabilities.

00:08:43:18 – 00:09:00:17
Adam Pasch
Exactly. That’s that’s fantastic. And it also has me wondering if not through architecture, how would you even go about in a large global enterprise? How would you even go about identifying those, those redundancies in the first place?

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Dave Smith
I think it’s tough and it’s it’s a way that I think that maybe that’s how some of those silos were created, because we didn’t have that picture, you know. You know, pick a point in time, right? I mean, architecture has been around for a while. And those silos, silos have still, you know, developed. But have we been using it in the most appropriate way, or have we exposed people to some of the power of enterprise architecture, you know, have, you know, we can do a better job at that.

00:09:29:02 – 00:09:44:17
Dave Smith
And, you know, I think that’s it is going to be redundant. It is going to expose gaps. It is going to improve efficiency. It’s just a matter of of getting people on board, you know, those creating those relationships to show them the power of what we’re doing.

00:09:44:19 – 00:10:18:03
Adam Pasch
Yeah. Well, that sounds like where operational architecture then comes into this. And the idea of having this mission thread going all the way back to national security strategy all the way through your prioritize backlog and functionality. Yeah. Creating that transparency all the way through. Can you talk a little bit, help me understand where operational architecture may be one of those ways to start shining light in some of these areas?

00:10:18:03 – 00:10:44:19
Dave Smith
I wish I had a little bit more experience than that, but as I’ve seen kind of architecture development, our operational architecture team, you know, engage with the client and see what the value is. And it is really solving today’s problem today through architecture because we’re we’re engaging with the right people. We’re showing them decision ready things and, you know, decision making products that they can, you know, operationalize.

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Dave Smith
And I think that’s really the key, not just creating something that’s that’s documenting the as is. Right. But we have to document the as is in order to, to improve, you know, the to be. But it doesn’t stop there. You know, we’re documenting the as is so that we can move forward and operationalize a particular problem, a particular process.

00:11:05:08 – 00:11:25:10
Dave Smith
And we’re doing that at scale and we’re doing that at speed. And that’s the power of operational architecture. Like I said, I haven’t been involved directly personally in that. But we do have a team that does that, does that every day and is getting better and better and better at it through iteration, through engagement, through relationships. So I think that’s just awesome.

00:11:25:10 – 00:11:28:18
Dave Smith
And that really shows the power of what architecture can do.

00:11:28:19 – 00:11:49:10
Adam Pasch
Well. And it sounds like, yeah, from what I’m getting from you is that it’s also then based in the outcomes, the mission outcomes that are needed that, that being front and center. And now you have this through line with the architecture that inherently it’s all outcome oriented. It’s not artifacts for artifacts sake.

00:11:49:12 – 00:12:08:09
Dave Smith
Exactly. I mean, you know, we’re not creating just shelf where, you know, we’re creating something that’s actionable, something that’s operational, something that’s that’s going to work. Yeah. You know, and and doing that at scale and at speed, quick iteration. And if we fail fast, we can fix it fast too, right.

00:12:08:11 – 00:12:18:04
Adam Pasch
And yeah, because I think at the end of the day, the one thing that everybody here would agree is that if it’s not furthering mission outcomes, then it’s it’s.

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Dave Smith
A no value added. Let’s let’s get rid of it.

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Adam Pasch
Yeah, absolutely. This is great. That’s all I got for you.

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Dave Smith
All right. Thank you.

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Adam Pasch
Adam. Thank you.

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Dave Smith
Sir. Yep. You bet.