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Research indicates that the most effective IT governance approach is a federative approach. In this approach, IT guidelines are developed at enterprise level but the actual IT decisions are made decentral. The pure centralised model however appears to be more popular, but less successful [1]. In an article about "Lessons from Iraq and Katrina", Bill Hall states that "From the organizational point of view, the processes of orientation and decision making must be moved closer to the periphery, where the deciders and actors can react faster and more accurately within the limits of what they are capable of observing." [2] The theoretical background is provided by a fighter pilot and military strategist Colonel John Boyd. His theory states that effective decision making by intelligent entities (persons / organisations) in a dynamic environment strongly depends on how quick the actor can loop through the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) sequence. Let's take a closer look at how central (IT) decisions are made. Observe First we have to get all the relevant information to corporate level. This of course takes time. During it's travel through the organisation, the data crosses multiple bounded rational filtering entities (management layers); these entities (as they are intelligent) have the tendency to mix facts with interpretations, add judgements and tweak them a bit (manipulate) to 'improve' quality. Orient The bigger the picture, the more there is to analyse and the harder it gets to synthesise (without compromise). The sets of 'improved' data do not per se help during this phase; inconsistencies between them cause disorientation and require additional (often arbitrary) assumptions to be made. Decide The golden path to central decision making means involving all relevant stakeholders. Unfortunately the number of relevant stakeholders at corporate level tends to be significantly higher. It takes time to liaise, to weight all the relevant stakes and to get all aligned. Act The larger the chain of command, the bigger the risk that actions are subject to mismanagement and misinterpretation. To make sure everybody acts as they should, one should take sufficient time to communicate. High level plans should be translated to detailed plans and even more detailed plans. And plans of course have dependencies. And people at different levels speak different languages so we have to repeat the intentions over and over again and explain. And, as it took quite a while to arrive at this point, and they - the eyes and ears of the organisation, the people who are closest to the real world - were not really consulted, they resist or they ignore or they … wait. I guess it is safe to say that in general the decentral OODA loop takes shorter to complete then the central OODA loop. Especially in a dynamic environment this is killing. To state it otherwise, organisations in a dynamic environment should avoid unnecessary centralised decision making. Higher level management should trust the people in the periphery to make decisions to the best of their judgement. And if they want them to act for the advantage of the whole they should give them proper guidance by explaining the key principles that binds the people in the organisation together principles that make the whole more then the parts. This requires mutual trust what Sun Tzu (544 BC – 496 BC) simply called "The Way". References: [1] Architecturen zonder muren , Atos Consulting, 2006 (page 9). [2] Organisations are more then people: lessons from Iraq and Katrina (pages 17-18) [3] Planning a service oriented architecture , Roger Sessions, Originally published in ObjectWatch Newsletter
The content presented in this editorial reflects the personal opinion of the author. Copyright notice: This publication is based on the principle of open content Erik Vermeulen is director of Stichting Digital Architecture and member of the Via Nova Architectura editorial board. He is executive business consultant at Atos Consulting. 
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