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Enterprise Architecture & Sustainability

At the February Open Group conference Conexiam’s Ed Harrington & KPN’s Stuart Boardman will present on Enterprise Architecture & Sustainability.

Sustainability is not just about carbon footprint and it’s certainly not just about that nice CSR badge on your website. It’s a basic concern of every enterprise, starting with the question of how sustainable the enterprise itself is. Wikipedia describes “sustainability” as “the capacity of a system to endure and remain functional and productive over time”. Will your Enterprise, your Extended Enterprise be able to adjust to an increasing rate and scale of change and still “remain functional and productive”, achieve its purpose – retain its identity? Can it take a knock and bounce back again (repeatedly)? These are concerns every enterprise architect should be addressing.

But no enterprise is an island and, in the steadily diverser value chains in which most enterprises operate, the sustainability  (environmental, social and economic) of the wider world becomes a pre-requisite for that of the enterprise itself. So that needs to be a concern for enterprise architects. Dealing with a multiplicity of stakeholders, complexity of causes and effects and with uncertainty around every decision, requires systems thinking. That’s a skill good EA’s bring to the table. But it’s in the science around sustainability that systems thinking has become most advanced, so there’s much we can learn from that field too, use in our enterprises and contribute back to the world.

In this presentation, we’ll go into the arguments more deeply and look at some of the thinking that has emerged out of the sustainability movement (and before that from the field of cybernetics). We’ll show how this should be applied to EA. But more than anything else, we want to engage the audience in an ongoing dialogue, which will help us all to find ways to make a difference, because “theory is gray my friend but green is the tree of life“.

Key takeaways:

  • Understand the relationship between Enterprise Architecture and Sustainability.
  • Learn why the Enterprise Architect needs to consider Sustainability as a core element of their “To-Be” Architectures.
  • Learn how YOU can participate in a continuing conversation on Sustainability.

Presentation is on Wednesday February 4th at 2 PM

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A Year Later: 1% for the Planet

A year ago as part of our sustainability program, we applied to join 1% for the Planet. We planned to commit 1% of our TOGAF Certification revenue to “give back to blue”. Unfortunately, we cannot work through the required branding to be an official sponsor. That does not change our intention to “give back to blue“.

We directed our first donation to Trout Unlimited Canada. Their mission is to conserve, protect and restore Canada’s freshwater ecosystems and their coldwater resources for current and future generations.

Get involved.
Find the time, spend some cash, lower your impact.
“give back to blue“

I think you’re gonna feel you belong.

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Sustainability

At a recent team meeting, we were talking about the things we do for fun – a common theme was enjoying the wilder parts of our planet. Listening to the wolves in Algonquin Park, researching grizzly bears in the Rockies, dodging Polar Bears in the Arctic, boating with the Killer Whales in the Pacific, visiting a Sea Lion rookery in Scotland or a Penguin colony in Chile.

There were a few themes in this conversation: Conexiam’s team spend a lot of our free time in the wild; we have a healthy awareness of big animals with sharp teeth; we travel, and we think about our impact on the Earth.

As Consultants we can have a significant impact – high travel lifestyles inherently have higher carbon intensiveness and use a greater share of the earth’s resources: flights, hotel refreshes, and restaurants. We have been concerned about our impact on sustainability for some time.

Some things we can fix, some we work to mitigate.

We explicitly support our staff working in a way that minimizes their impact.

All Conexiam staff & contractors without required on-site client work have the option to work from home. Where that is not practical, we open offices within a human powered distance of home. We pay for all costs associated with human-powered commuting (bike lockers, showers, etc….). A green data center hosts www.conexiam.com in the Netherlands. Remote collaboration is a core competency to minimize the need to travel. Lastly, we offer to carbon-offset all work flights for Conexiam staff that make a personal commitment to reducing their footprint.

For our clients, we champion remote work, leverage specialist support resources, like formal modellers, and offer video-based TOGAF Certification training.

Good mitigation demonstrated flexibility, and commitment. Leadership from the top, engagement from everyone. Our plan has all the hallmarks of a good sustainability program. Also, we think we should know because we’re consultants providing advice to architect for sustainability, in fact, we are presenting on Enterprise Architecture & Sustainability at an industry conference in February.