Mikkel Mertz, Morten Gryning and Ambreen Khan have allowed me to share their masters thesis about Coherency Management in Carlsberg. I warmly recommend it!

Abstract
Even though the amounts of information in enterprises are rapidly increasing, it does not directly provide the organizations with competitive advantages. A paradox of the Information Age is that while information have never been available in such vast amounts as now, the vast volume has caused the organizations to lose sight of the overall picture; what is required is a way to enhance and manage the information to provide a coherent vision. This can be described as Coherency Management.
This thesis examines how the novel concept of Coherency Management (CM) can be enhanced based on pragmatic problems identified in a complex enterprise. Carlsberg, which is currently undergoing a major standardization transformation, provides a unique opportunity to assess the standardization process and the effect on the enterprise. The empirical data obtained is analyzed to enhance the Coherency Management concept described in (Doucet et al, 2009), advancing it to cope with those problems found to be inside CM’s scope.
On the basis of the identified problems and findings in the thesis, a CM framework has been developed. This framework represents a more pragmatic view on CM, and can be implemented in an enterprise to introduce CM there. In addition, the framework can be utilized as a foundation for the further development of the concept.
The thesis asserts that: Coherency Management should only to a lesser extend possess domain specific knowledge; it should not be included in the Enterprise Architecture discipline; and it should only concern the improvement of cooperation between the departments and programs in the enterprise – by using the three modes for architecture.
The thesis also discusses how the scope of Coherency Management is best determined and the differences between CM and Enterprise Architecture. The paper concludes by elaborating on the findings of the thesis and discuss if the problem statement has been sufficiently answered.

This has been a great week, for several reason, but most notably because our book, Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance, is now in AuthorHouse’s hands and should be ready for ordering very soon. On the book’s website, we have published the Table of Contents and a chapter overview, and also some endorsements. And some background interviews with the editors (here’s the interview with me).

The book introduces the idea of Coherency Management, and asserts that this is the primary outcome goal of an enterprise’s architecture.

Editors of the book are Gary Doucet, John Gøtze, Pallab Saha, and Scott Bernard. With submissions from over 30 authors and co-authors, the book reinforces the idea that EA is being practiced in an ever-increasing variety of circumstances – from the tactical to the strategic, from the technical to the political, and with governance that ranges from sell to tell. The characteristics, usages, value statements, frameworks, rules, tools and countless other attributes of EA seem to be anything but orderly, definable, classifiable, and understandable as might be hoped given heritage of EA and the famous framework and seminal article on the subject by John Zachman over two decades ago. Notably, EA is viewed as an Enterprise Design and Management approach, adopted to build better enterprises, rather than a IT Design and Management approach limited to build better systems.

We will use the coherencymanagement.org website not just to promote the book, but also to be a platform for continued dialogues about coherency management and for publishing further studies. We’re especially interested in relevant case studies, and have published one such: Neil Kemp’s interesting case study about Winnipeg Fleet Management.