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For every challenge or opportunity faced by an enterprise, there are four general “buckets” to consider: People, Process, Data, and Technology. This is a system we use in our Enterprise Architecture practice at Chick-fil-A to help us ensure that we have objective conversations about the problems we face as a business. This also helps prevent over-indexing on a particular facet of the problem.
People
What is the organizational structure and systems delivery structure that has been established?
What incentives exist that the people involved in the solution are responding to?
Is there trust between the people working together?
What are the skills, capabilities, backgrounds, and biases of the people involved?
What change management concerns need to be considered with this solution?
Process
What is the business process in play?
What business capabilities does it support?
Do we have well-defined bounded contexts / domain boundaries or does the solution creep and sprawl?
Is the current process design sufficient or does it need to be re-invented?
Where is there friction in the current process?
Do all of the steps in the process add value?
Data
What data is involved in / produced by the process?
What data will the solution generate or require, and how will this data be managed?
What data quality control and governance measures are necessary and how can we design them in from the start?
Does the solution consider indirect stakeholders that may have data needs from this domain?
How will privacy and data protection regulations be addressed?
Is there a need for data integration with other systems in the organization?
Technology
What technologies will best support the people, process, and data needs of this solution?
Can the organization build, support, and scale the solution?
Should we build or buy the solution?
How will the solution integrate into the larger technology ecosystem of the enterprise?
How can we maintain agility—the ability to respond to future business landscape changes—with this solution (evolutionary architectures)?
The relationship between business outcomes and optimal solutions are asymptotical. Considering People, Process, Data, and Technology increases the probability of getting as close to an optimal solution “on the curve” as possible.