According to Kurt Lewin "An issue is held in balance by the interaction of two opposing sets of forces - those seeking to promote change (driving forces) and those attempting to maintain the status quo (restraining forces)". Lewin viewed organizations as systems in which the present situation was not a static pattern, but a dynamic balance ("equilibrium") of forces working in opposite directions. In order for any change to occur, the driving forces must exceed the restraining forces, thus shifting the equilibrium. Show
The Force Field Diagram is a model built on this idea that forces - persons, habits, customs, attitudes - both drive and restrain change. It can be used at any level (personal, project, organizational, network) to visualize the forces that may work in favor and against change initiatives. The diagram helps its user picture the "tug-of-war" between forces around a given issue. Usually, there is a planned change issue described at the top, and two columns below. Driving forces are listed in the left column, and restraining forces in the right column. Arrows are drawn towards the middle. Longer arrows indicate stronger forces. The idea is to understand and make explicit all the forces acting on a given issue. The FFA is a method to: How to conduct a FFA? Typically the following steps are taken: T I P : Here you can discuss and learn a lot more about driving and restraining forces and FFA. Combine with Force Field Analysis: Change Management Iceberg | RACI | Change Model Beckhard | Bases of Social Power | Crisis Management | Changing Organization Cultures | Core Groups | Planned Behavior | Business Process Reengineering | Kaizen | Dimensions of Change | Root Cause Analysis | Brainstorming | Six Thinking Hats | Scenario Planning | Game Theory | Real Options | Kepner-Tregoe Matrix | OODA Loop | Levels of Culture Force field analysis (Lewin 1951) is widely used in change management and can be used to help understand most change processes in organisations.
In force field analysis change, is characterised as a state of imbalance between driving forces (e.g. new personnel, changing markets, new technology) and restraining forces (e.g. individuals' fear of failure, organisational inertia). To achieve change towards a goal or vision three steps are required:
Thomas (1985) explained that although force field analysis has been used in various contexts it was rarely applied to strategy. He also suggested that force field analysis could provide new insights into the evaluation and implementation of corporate strategies. More specifically Maslen and Platts (1994) applied force field analysis to manufacturing strategy. Force field analysis is potentially a powerful technique to help an organisation realise a manufacturing vision. Driving forces, which help achieve the goal or vision, are shown as arrows pointing to the right in the same direction as the large arrow at the top. ▪Restraining forces, which hinder goal achievement, are the arrows pointing to the left in the opposite direction from the large arrow at the top. At some point, driving and restraining forces are in equilibrium. This is illustrated in Figure 5.1 by the wide vertical line labeled “Status Quo.” Driving forces move an organization from the status quo in the direction of the organization’s goal or vision. Restraining forces hold back this change from the status quo. These forces can be external or internal to an organization, or external or internal to the individuals in the organization. The relative strength of the driving or restraining forces determines whether change occurs. Assume, for example, that you want to change a part of a system in an organization. Two organizational driving forces could be a reduction in operating costs and the opportunity to electronically exchange purchase orders and invoices with a particular customer or supplier. An organizational restraining force could be the development cost for making the change. Figure 5.2 illustrates this concept. Figure 5.2. Force field analysis for making a system change. Of course, there could be many other forces at work than those shown in Figure 5.2. The nature of the driving and restraining forces could also vary by organization even if the organizations were attempting to carry out exactly the same tasks. In fact, they can vary among departments in the same organization. Essentially, the purpose of this model is to make all the driving and restraining forces visible so that decisions concerning change can be made with the best available information. There are various ways to use this model. If you want to make change more likely, you need to either strengthen the driving forces or weaken the restraining forces. Weakening the restraining forces is sometimes the best approach. Strengthening the driving forces can make the restraining forces stronger. In Figure 5.2, developing the electronic exchange capabilities of this change is restrained by the costs of development, effectively resisting change from the status quo. So, perhaps it is possible to adopt an industry standard for electronic exchanges, thus weakening this restraining force. In the figures that follow, weakened restraining forces are shown as gray arrows to indicate that the restraining force is fading away. Figure 5.2, for example, shows the costs of development as weakened and less of a concern. Read moreNavigate DownView chapterPurchase book Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123983572000051 Managing Change with Incremental SOA AnalysisDouglas K. Barry, David Dick, in Web Services, Service-Oriented Architectures, and Cloud Computing (Second Edition), 2013 Use Force Field Analysis for Each ProjectAs mentioned in Chapter 5, force field analysis uncovers the driving and restraining forces for the desired change related to the candidate project. You can get a group involved with the visual nature of force field analysis using flip charts or a whiteboard. Having a group inspect the completed force field analysis may allow you to discover that a project can be made smaller. For example, you may find that a restraining force is the lack of a tool to develop the service interface. You could decide that experimenting with development tools is a project unto itself. Therefore, the candidate project could be divided into two projects. One project is tool experimentation and selection. By dividing the candidate project into two projects, you eliminate a restraining force on the original candidate project and you get two smaller projects—one that is only tool selection. Presumably, the selected tool will also be used in future projects. View chapterPurchase book Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123983572000105 Change IssuesDouglas K. Barry, David Dick, in Web Services, Service-Oriented Architectures, and Cloud Computing (Second Edition), 2013 At the end of this chapter is a worksheet for laying out change issues and responses to those issues. There is also a consolidated force field analysis for adopting an SOA that builds on the analyses covered in Chapter 7. After completing my undergraduate work, I had a job as an analyst in a government agency. This was in a research group of about 40 people. Most of us worked in one large room. One day a senior analyst decided to move some of the desks around in the large room and, without discussing it with the people involved, went right ahead with the move. Orville, one of the older analysts, was not there at the time. Orville came back to find his desk in a different spot. Finding out who made the change, Orville ran screaming at the senior analyst and literally pushed him against the wall. Orville had an emotional problem that meant he did not deal with change well at all. The senior analyst, however, could have avoided this confrontation if only he had spoken with Orville before making the changes. Surprises of this nature trigger an automatic response of fright, flight, or fight and a variety of other reactions. Orville’s emotional problems probably amplified a normal response. Read moreNavigate DownView chapterPurchase book Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123983572000087 Getting Started with Service-Oriented ArchitecturesDouglas K. Barry, David Dick, in Web Services, Service-Oriented Architectures, and Cloud Computing (Second Edition), 2013 What If Things Are Not Going as Planned?The example development illustrated in Figure 11.7 addressed the design-related restraining forces for adopting an SOA. Those design issues appeared in the force field analysis illustrated by Figure 6.9 and are as follows: ▪Deciding what data to route ▪Delays getting data updates distributed ▪Deciding what data to warehouse ▪Delays in getting data to the warehouse ▪Redundancy of data ▪Data quality issues ▪Effects on operational systems for up-to-the-moment data requests ▪Identification and design of services But what if things are not going as planned? I’ll go back to the story about C. R.’s organization to illustrate problems and possible responses. Figure 12.3 represents, at one point, the systems supporting the SOA for C. R.’s organization (Figure 11.7 is essentially a subset of this figure). To add more detail to the story, let’s say two issues appeared at this point in the use of the SOA: Figure 12.3. Systems supporting the SOA of C. R.’s organization. 1.The data warehouse was growing much faster than expected. 2.The response time of the services provided by an internal system was inadequate and the indeterminate access requests were adversely impacting the operational system. This is the issue illustrated by Figure 12.2. The data warehouse was growing much faster than expectedThe response to the first issue was described in the section on adopting a platform as a service (PaaS) starting on page 74. This described how C. R.’s organization moved to a virtual private cloud to provide for a big data store, and is illustrated by Figure 12.4. The PaaS includes tools to help develop, manage, and analyze the data in big data stores. It provides an ESB within the virtual private cloud that is optimized for the big data store and the business intelligence (BI)/analytics software. The Internet is represented by the horizontal shaded area. Web services are shown as a black line within the shaded area. This represents that Web services protocols (SOAP, REST, JSON, etc.) are a subset of the protocols that can be used on the Internet. Note the adapters aligned with the big data and BI/analytics in the virtual private cloud. They are needed because those services use a somewhat different semantic vocabulary than the one used by C. R.’s organization. The response time of the services provided by an internal system was inadequateThe second issue can be problematic. C. R.’s organization, like many others, was not in a position to change the internal system that was being adversely affected when used as a service. One solution is a middle-tier architecture that uses persistent caching. Basics of a middle-tier architectureThis section goes into some technical detail. The purpose is to show that the systems underlying a service can go through significant changes, and yet the services themselves are affected very little. A middle-tier architecture is one way to leverage the use of existing systems and databases. The middle tier changes where integration occurs. Instead of directly integrating existing systems and databases, a new layer is developed so that the integration occurs in the middle tier. Moving integration to the middle tier is the solution used by C. R.’s organization to address the conflict between indeterminate and operational access. Figure 12.5 illustrates the basics of a middle-tier architecture2 that uses an application server and a middle-tier database. The middle tier is above internal systems. One of the internal systems that we have covered so far is at the bottom of the figure. It is also used as a service. Figure 12.5. Middle-tier architecture. Note that the adapter is at the bottom of the middle tier, above the internal system as it was in Figure 12.4. Since this application server is presumably new development, it can use the same semantic vocabulary and Web services message format as the ESB. An adapter is not needed for the application server. Figure 12.4. Using a PaaS cloud provider for a big data store and BI/analytics. Persistence in the middle tierIt is possible to add persistence to the middle tier. Adding persistence to the middle tier makes sense in situations that either have too much data to keep in the application server cache or situations where you need the protection of persistence to make sure no data would be lost before it can be written to the internal system. It can also be a way to boost performance of services provided by an application server when it needs to access data. Middle-tier persistence, however, will require additional development. A persistent cache adds capabilities to the in-memory cache. These include: ▪Expanded caching ▪Protected caching ▪Caching performance gain The examples assume that a database will be used in the middle tier to provide the persistent cache. A database manager ensures that all transactions will be recorded properly and has recovery and backup capabilities, if needed. There are several ways that a cache could be populated: 1.On an as-needed basis. An instance moves into the cache only when a program requests to read the values of the instance. 2.Fully populated at start time. All instances needed in the cache are populated when the system starts up. 3.A combination of the first two. An example is populating the cache with the most likely instances that are needed and then moving additional instances into the cache when a program requests to read the values of the instances. In any of these cases, the cache size simply could be too large to efficiently keep in memory. A middle-tier database could act as an expanded cache to offload some of the data cached in memory. Using a middle-tier database as an expanded cache adds options when the underlying internal system is updated. The updates could occur as they happen or at intervals, depending on the needs of the organization. For example, one option would be to populate the middle-tier database from the internal system at the beginning of a business day. All updates could be kept in the middle-tier database. These updates could then be written to the internal system at the end of the day or at intervals during the day. If all middle-tier cache updates are written to a middle-tier database, then the cached updates are not lost if the application server should fail. They can be recovered from the middle-tier database when the application server is restored. This, of course, would not be necessary if updates to the internal system are made every time an update occurs. That, however, can create a performance hit to the middle tier, as will be discussed in the next section. If the middle-tier database uses the same data model as the middle-tier cache, there is a good chance that performance will be significantly better than if updates were written to the internal system as they happened. This performance gain is possible assuming: ▪The internal system uses a data structure that is different from what is needed for the service. Chances are that this is true if the internal system has been around for a while. ▪The application server uses a cache that matches the needs of the object program in the application server. This cache could use either an object, XML, or other NoSQL data structure. ▪The middle-tier database uses the same data model as the cache. Given these assumptions, the time it takes to write an update to the internal system will most likely take longer than writing to the middle-tier database. As the complexity of the model used by the object program in the application server increases, the difference in the time it takes to write the update to the middle-tier database versus the internal system increases. This is because the mapping complexity also increases between the data model in the cache and the model in the internal system. The mapping simply takes time and costs performance.3As a result, an update to a middle-tier database can be significantly faster and allow processing to resume much sooner than if the update was to the internal system directly.4Figure 12.6 shows the sequence of this processing. Figure 12.6. Using a persistent cache in the middle tier. There are many database options available for middle-tier persistence, because middle-tier databases essentially store temporary data. This is in contrast to internal system databases that are often seen as databases of record, which are expected to last “forever.” When you are considering a database product for an internal system, it is reasonable to choose a database management product from a well-known, established vendor. In contrast, middle-tier databases—because they are temporary—open up the possibilities of using technologies that might significantly improve performance and reduce development as well as maintenance costs. There are many issues to consider in selecting a middle-tier database. A discussion of those issues goes beyond the scope of this book. More information on middle-tier persistence can be found at http://www.service-architecture.com/object-oriented-databases/articles/middle_tier_architecture.html. Putting it all togetherFigure 12.7 shows the systems supporting the SOA for C. R.’s organization after addressing the two issues that appeared after developing the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and using an internal system as a service. The customer relationship management (CRM) from a software as a service (SaaS) cloud provider was also added for completeness. Figure 12.7. Systems used by C. R.’s organization that include a PaaS cloud provider, SaaS cloud provider, and middle-tier persistence. View chapterPurchase book Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123983572000129 TIRM Process Stage AAlexander Borek, ... Philip Woodall, in Total Information Risk Management, 2014 A.3.4 Identify the organizational cultureOrganizational culture is always important for organizational success and every organization has its own distinct culture. To manage information risks, you have to understand the culture in the particular organization, then adapt and choose the methods that you are using for assessing and treating information risks so that it really fits with the organizational culture. According to Buchanan and Gibb (1998), there are two different approaches to identify organizational culture: ▪Stakeholder analysis (Grundy, 1993) ▪Force-field analysis (Lewin, 1947) While stakeholder analysis helps to diagnose key stakeholder influences on the information strategy, Lewin’s force-field analysis identifies the enabling and restraining forces that affect the information strategy. However, you do not need to analyze organizational culture with formal methods. The easiest way is to keep your eyes and ears open when you talk to people and try to identify cultural patterns. Keep these cultural patterns and characteristics in mind when you conduct the information risk assessment and treatment and whenever you communicate and consult with stakeholders as part of the TIRM program.
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