Delivery Documentaries are a behind the scenes look at how our Enterprise Architects (EAs) in the field perform Value Realization activities for customers. They are raw and real, and the purpose is to share what actually happens on the ground. They are always a learning opportunity, and we hope that over time we can help bridge the state of the art with the state of the practice, and continue to move the ball forward.

Executive Summary

In this engagement, an Enterprise Architect supported a hospital facing challenges related to having no strategy for supporting user devices, as the devices rapidly proliferated among the staff.

The EA helped the hospital identify an actionable strategy, educate stakeholders about mobility issues, provide a strategic direction, and introduce a framework for addressing mobility. During the engagement, the EA worked primarily on-site, and with the close support of the engagement manager, services executive (SE), and account technology strategist (ATS).

During the engagement, the EA met with primary and secondary stakeholders to perform assessments, performed research into mobile strategies using existing IP and personal contacts, and created a deliverable that contained key findings for a mobility strategy, recommendations, trends, adoption frameworks, and best practices.

Joining the Engagement

Contoso Hospital was having pre-sales conversations with an account executive (AE), ATS, and SE about the needs of the hospital for a mobile strategy. I began participating because I had experience working with mobility and BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device,” where employees use their own devices to perform work).

Initial Pre-Engagement Meeting

I was the point person in the pre-engagement meeting. Our goal for the meeting was to try to understand and scope the engagement. I was joined by the Microsoft delivery excellence director and the account team.

The initial stakeholders were IT decision makers, directors that report to the CIO. We set expectations right from the start about what a strategy is, and what it isn’t. We discussed that the deliverable would lay out priorities and address the issues that the hospital is experiencing now.

We discussed that the deliverable would achieve the following:

Identify actionable strategies
Provide a high-level architecture and roadmap
Educate stakeholders about mobility issues of which they’re not aware
Provide a strategic direction
Introduce a framework for addressing the BYOD challenges

We discussed that the deliverable would not:

Solve all the mobility issues
Address overarching security problems
Lay out a detailed initiative plan

Pre-Engagement Activities

Over the course of the next two weeks, I visited again with the account team, and did some basic preparation for the engagement while the contracts were signed and the sales motion finalized.

Holding the Kickoff

The heart of the kickoff was level setting. During the kickoff, I communicate the following to the stakeholders:

The services for which the hospital had signed up
The planned deliverables
The conditions of satisfaction
A communications plan
The initiatives as we understand them
What success would look like

Beginning On-Site Work

I began working full-time on-site, finding it valuable to be close to the stakeholders. I was able to introduce myself, my work, and my associates. My account team also helped with appropriate introductions.

My engagement manager and account technology strategist attended assessment and planning meetings. They helped provide insight and ensure that we were working towards the goals of the engagement.

Researching

When I began working on the deliverable, I had a sense of the stakeholder priorities from the prior meetings, but to identify more details I needed to conduct a wider stakeholder assessment. I decided to use personas as a cornerstone for developing strategy, and for communicating about mobility tools and scenarios.

Stakeholder Assessment

Following guidance from the key stakeholders, I identified primary, secondary, and additional stakeholders with which to perform assessments. I met stakeholders, learned about their roles, interests, and stakes in the mobility initiatives. For example: how mobility affected their activities, what they saw as the main issues and valuable opportunities, and the look of success.

Strategy Development for BYOD

I then started developing a BYOD strategy for the hospital. I accessed many resources during my research. Here are some examples of the resources I used:

Content from practitioners and worldwide communities which helped to provide structure and vision.
Our practitioner community of EA’s who are on similar engagements, and other contacts who have experience in mobility-related engagements. They gave me information and advice about components and data points that would characterize a good mobility strategy.
Information about health care solutions that Microsoft has delivered. This helped me further develop an appropriate strategy, grounded in reality and leveraging proven practices.

The Final Deliverable

In the final deliverable, I aimed to provide a focused collection of items for the hospital to explore. Here is a list of some of what I identified:

Items that must be addressed immediately, and high-value items that are easy to quickly solve
A longer list of more difficult items to solve
Themes that I had learned from the engagement
A framework for thinking about their BYOD best practices and strategy.

My final deliverable for Contoso Hospital was a presentation supported with a slide deck that included the following topics:

Executive Summary: I described the business goals of the hospital, so the stakeholders were aware that I had a good knowledge of the goals.
Persona summary: We presented personas that bring life to the mobility framework, and provided a summary of the departments and people we interviewed.
Key findings: The high-value items, and the difficult problems to solve.
Recommendations: Framework for thinking about BYOD best practices and strategy.
The world and industry contexts for BYOD: Trends and challenges, BYOD adoption frameworks, BYOD best practices (mobile device management, governance, support, and change management)
Summary
Call to action
Appendix: Selected health care scenarios enabled by Windows 8 apps and devices, Reference material about personas
Acknowledgements: Many stakeholders provided contributions to the final deliverable. Part of the art of the EA is to help turn these contributions into something valuable, and I feel it’s very important to directly thank these stakeholders. It is often a thankless job working with consultants, so I make it a practice to formally thank stakeholders in my deliverables.