People Model Layer

We’re now at the last step in on our business architecture routemap journey……the people model.  This part of a business architecture relates to understanding and closing the people gap in terms of the experience and skills an organisation has versus those it will need to perform successfully once the business transformation (or key parts…..i.e. releases…..of it) have been completed and are in routine operation.

This step is intentionally the last on our routemap because to do it justice it helps to have sight of all the information generated in the the preceding steps; e.g. as for any Outsourcing Model implications there may have been from the previous routemap step!

At the business architecting stage we do not need to finalise headcounts, action all recruiting and fix training schedules.  This sort of detail will be the work of later business transformation stages and will be accomplished within the context of the scope of a given release.

However, we do need to have a picture of approximately what all the change we are envisaging will mean in terms of the recruitment and development of people.  Is it a modest matter or a huge step-change?  Roughly what will it all cost and how long will it take……this all needs to be built into the overall transformation initiative plan and business case!

What we are talking about doing here is conducting a people gap assessment between what people, skills and experiences are available to the organisation now versus those that will be needed as the transformation initiative progresses through its release(s) and delivers change into the operational business.

An approach for conducting this people skills gap assessment is shown in the figure below (click on it to see an enlarged version in a new window).

To use an approach such as the above you need, once you have adapted it to your own environment and requirements, some sort of competency / skills framework.  This can be something you have developed yourself, one you have purchased / licensed (e.g. Kenexa Job-Based C0mpetencies) or an amalgam of some of the free frameworks (e.g. SFIA Framework) that usually each address a point area of skills (e.g. IT).

The idea is that you need to have something to assess people’s skills against, hence the requirement for some sort of structured framework.  We suggest for business architecting purposes that you assess the skills gap at an individual level of detail only for executive / senior management and for any other roles that you may consider business critical (e.g. due to scarcity).  For all other roles at this point we suggest you do this by major skills group and not by individual.

What this means is you will gain a good feel for total headcount numbers, costs, likely timelines, level and implications of change, etc without doing all the detailed work upfront as part of the business architecture.  For key roles such as executive / senior management, and those that are business critical, you will then be able to build actionable recruitment, development and training plans while for the other roles this detail (the largest volume of effort) can be developed and actioned later at the appropriate stage of a business transformation release.

At his point you should now have a completed business architecture and a VERY sound understanding of the why and how everything in your business transformation initiative fits and plays together!

To some doing all this planning upfront appears to delay ‘getting on with the real work’.  However, what they never seem to see or understand is that a judicious amount of time spent wisely upfront in our experience ALMOST ALWAYS pays itself back handsomely later.

This is normally courtesy of the avoidance of the MANY costs, delays and blind alleys usually traceable back to everyone not having had an adequate and common understanding of the business transformation initiative in the first place and resulting in a classic case of…….”too much haste, too little progress”!!

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