The Molson Coors Operational Portfolio Architecture: A Case Study

After decades of progress, IT projects are still too likely to fail. Managing projects for success has become a critical goal for many organizations. Project portfolio management started in the Coors Brewing Company (CBC) as a way to improve the success rates of IT projects. Before the creation of an IT program management office (PMO) about 65 percent of running projects were rated as healthy (essentially on-time and on-budget); after the creation of the IT PMO, as many as 95 percent of the ongoing projects became rated as healthy. While the IT PMO was dramatically improving the efficiency of the IT organization, the New Product Packages (NPP) organization was implementing its own product program management office. Ultimately, the combined buzz of these two success stories within Coors led the CEO to sanction the creation of a U.S.-divisional PMO - known as the CBC PMO. With the recent merger with Molson Canada another layer was created called the Global PMO. What started as a strategic IT initiative ended up changing the entire culture and framework of the company - Coors had entered the elite group of companies that could prove stellar technology investment success rates. Now, while its vision is to create PMOs in its other two subsidiaries, Coors Brewers Limited (CBL) and Molson Canada, as it did with the creation of its CBC PMO, the company is running into some new challenges. This case study is split into four main sections: Introduction, Background (Coors history, project portfolio management history), IT PMO, and Global PMO. In the introduction we present the two organizations that have driven the creation of the Molson-Coors operational portfolio architecture: the IT PMO and the Global PMO. This summary then allows us to frame the four core problems of this paper in both the context of these two PMOs and in the context of the recent merger with Molson, Inc. After clarifying the goals of the paper, we then step back and review the history of the Coors Brewing Company and the history of project portfolio management. With the goals outlined and the background established, we start the section on the evolution of the IT PMO. Finally, in the last section, we show how the four core problems derived from the Global PMO and how lessons learned from the IT PMO may be applied. We hope that by framing the four problems from different perspectives (corporate history, industry approaches, IT PMO evolution and the Global PMO architecture) the reader will be able to more easily develop solutions

Architecting the Firm: Coherency and Consistency in Managing the Enterprise

International audienceTraditional Enterprise Architecture (EA) practice lacks a clear and effective governance and management layer that is easily understandable and intuitive to senior decision makers with the modern organisation. This paper uses three case studies to demonstrate the relative maturity of different EA practice groups within these organisations to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of a traditional ICT management approach versus those that include EA practice in all levels and domains of management. Concepts of Coherency Management and Pervasiveness will be used to explain the idea of a next Generation of EA practice that permeates all layers of the organisation and no longer remains the domain of technologists but instead influences and informs decision-making at all levels (operational, tactical, managerial / strategic) of the organisation. Conditions of such future EA practices are also discussed

Analysis of Latin America's Corporations as a Rational Response to the Economic Environment Present in the Region - Part I

This is the first of a series of working papers analyzing the basic characteristics of the economic environment in which Latin American Corporations live and the optimal design of incentive programs compatible with such environment. By economic environment we mean the technology that the organizations have access to, the legal framework present in these countries, the macro-economical characteristics, the markets in which they operate (competitors, monopolies, customers, reliability of suppliers, etc.), the nature of their capital markets and in general of the sources of financing for their companies, etc. We could broadly say that any key feature of the economy that has the potential to influence the way business is run in Latin America is part of its economic environment. The underlying unifying idea in this series is that, unless we have clear evidence to the contrary, corporate practices observed in Latin American firms are rational responses to the environment in which they operate. They are a sort of Darwinian adaptation to such environment. Therefore, much like in biological systems, these characteristics of corporations should be considered optimal in a relative sense. That is, in order to survive in the market, the observed corporate practices should be better that the ones from the competition for the given economic environment. This observation suggests that improvements to the observed practices are indeed possible. In fact, the present series of working papers is in part structured to explore possible improvements. These improvements, however, are not likely to be the simple copy of corporate practices that evolved as an optimal response to the environment of the developed world. In this first work we present some important empirical characteristics of the Latin American Corporations and the first key aspect of the economic environment prevailing in this region: the legal framework. We show how many of the empirical characteristics presented can be see as optimal responses to the legal framework.

Towards a Light-weight Enterprise Architecture Approach for Building Transformational Preparedness

The need for business agility in order to cope with the increasing rate of changes brought by disruptive technologies and paradigms is more stringent than ever; unfortunately however, it also encounters many hurdles. To start with, typical strategic transformation planning featuring successive specify-design-implement phases is no longer suitable, as the resulting sequentially staged processes can no longer catch up with the changes in internal structure and external environment. The blurring of top organisational role boundaries in regards to the allocation of management and architecture skillsets is another issue significantly affecting agility. Finally, the lack of structure and integration of business transformation and architecting methodologies offered by various disciplines and vendors affects the ability to use them for specific endeavours. This paper elaborates on and illustrates the above-mentioned problems through a case study and proposes a way to solve them in a holistic, lifecycle-aware manner using a ‘lightweight’ architectural framework approach

Growing an information infrastructure for healthcare based on the development of large-scale Electronic Patient Records

The papers of this thesis are not available in Munin. Paper 1. Silsand, L., Ellingsen, G. (2014). Generification by Translation: Designing Generic Systems in Context of the Local. Available in: Journal of Association for Information Systems, vol. 15(4): 3. Paper 2. Christensen, B., Silsand, L., Wynn, R. and Ellingsen, G. (2014). The biography of participation. In Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference, 6-10 Oct. Windhoek, Namibia. ACM Digital Library. Paper 3. Silsand, L. and Ellingsen, G. (2016). Complex Decision-Making in Clinical Practice. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16). ACM Digital Library. ISBN: 978-1-4503-3592-8. Paper 4: Silsand, L., Ellingsen, G. (2017). Governance of openEHR-based information Infrastructures. (Manuscript). Paper 5. Silsand, L. (2017). The ‘Holy Grail’ of Interoperability of Health Information Systems: Challenges and Implications. Available in: Stigberg S., Karlsen J., Holone H., Linnes C. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 294. Springer, Cham. This thesis provides empirical insights about socio-technical interdependencies affecting the making and scaling of an Information Infrastructure (II) for healthcare based on the development of large-scale Electronic Patient Records. The Ph.D. study is an interpretive case study, where the empirical data has been collected from 2012 to 2017. In most developed countries, the pressures from politicians and public in general for better IT solutions have grown enormously, not least within Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems. Considerable attention has been given to the proposition that the exchange of health information is a critical component to reach the triple aim of (1) better patient experiences through quality and satisfaction; (2) better health outcomes of populations; and (3) reduction of per capita cost of health care. A promising strategy for dealing with the challenges of accessibility, efficiency, and effective sharing of clinical information to support the triple aim is an open health-computing platform approach, exemplified by the openEHR approach in the empirical case. An open platform approach for computing EPR systems addresses some vital differences from the traditional proprietary systems. Accordingly, the study has payed attention to the vital difference, and analyze the technology and open platform approach to understand the challenges and implications faced by the empirical process. There are two main messages coming out of this Ph.D. study. First, when choosing an open platform approach to establish a regional or national information infrastructure for healthcare, it is important to define it as a process, not a project. Because limiting the realization of a large-scale open platform based infrastructure to the strict timeline of a project may hamper infrastructure growth. Second, realizing an open platform based information infrastructure requires large structural and organizational changes, addressing the need for integrating policy design with infrastructure design

Understanding the Performance Impact of Enterprise Architecture Management

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) is becoming a widely accepted management approach deemed to improve, among others, the long-term development of organizations’ IT and the performance of corporate IT functions. Profound EAM often requires a significant amount of financial and human resources. Therefore, practitioners and researchers alike aim to understand the mechanisms that lead to the desired benefits. However, the way in which EAM generates value is not yet sufficiently understood and the related research lacks a theoretical foundation. We argue that the resource-based theory (RBT) is well suited to explain the influence of EAM on the performance of corporate IT functions and present a framework that helps elucidate this impact. We report on a single case study that we conducted at a large professional service firm. The empirical results identify a first set of causal relationships between the theoretical framework’s elements. The study\u27s findings make it possible for practitioners to better understand the performance impacts of EAM. This work is part of ongoing exploratory research aimed at explaining the mechanisms through which EAM affects firm performance within a testable theory

Organizational framework for microfinance success? Structural elements of microfinance institutions

Microfinance (MF) is a relatively young and somewhat ambiguous concept. The phenomenon has, however, proven to contribute to making the lives better for many poor people whist being financially sustainable, thus the interest for the industry has grown substantially. The increased attention has stimulated various types of organizations to enter the market, some achieving astonishing results both in financial and social performance. This study aims to map the organizational framework that associate MF institutions (MFIs), using successful sustainable organizations with different business models as references. Literature does not provide comprehensive and practical tool to define qualitatively the internal structuring of MF institutions, but allowed the collection of methodologies and successful cases to discover a central thread within their organizational frameworks

A Lean Enterprise Architecture Approach as an Enabler for Organizational Agility : Case: Metso Outotec

In the era where delivery speed is perceived more important than IT landscape integration, consistency and long-term planning, different architectural approaches have become important considerations of information systems management. Moreover, recent studies have shown that the need for a holistic EA is often overlooked, when organizations try to apply agile development models, which may lead to several problems, such as technical debt, redundant rework, inconsistent communication, decentralized and siloed architecture design, unsustainable architecture, and inconsistence in coding style. Hence, with the growing deployment of scaling agile methods there is a need for purpose-fit approaches to integrate EA frameworks to enable organization agility while maintaining long-term vision. This study aims to explore how EA activities are put into practices in a company deploying large-scale agile development methods – namely EA deliverables, EA benefits, EA concerns and EA enablers. In total, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted from a case company, and an analysis was done using the Gioia method. As a result, EA deliverables (business objective deliverables, intentional architecture deliverables, and emergent design deliverables), EA benefits (organizational agility and organizational robustness), EA concerns (immaturity, disengagement, urgency, and resistance and anti-patterns), and EA enablers (communication and collaboration, Lean EA, and EA culture) were identified. The enterprise architecture practices used by the case company were in line with the guidelines and best practices recommended by the literature and industry experts. Moreover, a literature review provided some theoretical constructs and suggestions, namely the Lean EA development (LEAD) method and the design principles of architectural thinking for supporting organizational agility, which can be recommended to be applied by the case company or any other organization scaling agile

An enterprise engineering approach for the alignment of business and information technology strategy

Information systems and information technology (IS/IT, hereafter just IT) strategies usually depend on a business strategy. The alignment of both strategies improves their strategic plans. From an external perspective, business and IT alignment is the extent to which the IT strategy enables and drives the business strategy. This article reviews strategic alignment between business and IT, and proposes the use of enterprise engineering (EE) to achieve this alignment. The EE approach facilitates the definition of a formal dialog in the alignment design. In relation to this, new building blocks and life-cycle phases have been defined for their use in an enterprise architecture context. This proposal has been adopted in a critical process of a ceramic tile company for the purpose of aligning a strategic business plan and IT strategy, which are essential to support this process. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.Cuenca, L.; Boza, A.; Ortiz, A. (2011). 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