All four executives residing in the Enterprise have teamed up and made a decision that they want to take the enterprise in the direction of conducting a huge rewrite of an older Enterprise System, which is written in COBOL. This will involve several new large-scale initiatives taking place, and in order for it to be a success, the right stakeholders will have to be invited to the table.

For the older COBOL System, DB2 is the primary database, and as you knowCOBOL runs on a mainframe. Decisions will have to be justified through adequate Research and Development because its unclear what database the executives will go with (Oracle, DB2, PostgreSQL, or Informatica). SAP is also being considered as a potential solution.

Another issue is that the older COBOL Code is poorly commented, so its a huge challenge for developers who are well versed in newer programming languages to understand the Logic of the older program(s) in which the older system is written in. The mainframe will be replaced with newer smaller servers, which run either Linux or Solaris Operating Systems. That too needs to be decided upon.

Executives #1 & 2: Tend to have Driver Personality Types, and are at times, very opinionated, but they are approachable, as long as the deliverer of the message is also a Driver. These Executives also tend to respect decisions that are adequately rooted in solid research. They have fierce reputations for Getting things done at all costs..

Executives #3 & 4: Are Analytical Personality Types, which tend to work alone, but are very thorough in the decisions that they make. They both tend to do a great deal of research on their own but have very little patience when it comes to meetings and decisions which have no data nor evidence to support the direction that theyre trying to pursue. They have reputations that are rooted in methodical thinking and crossing all their T-s and dotting all of their I-s.

Question:

As an Enterprise Architect, how would you begin to approach this set of facts to drive these changes? What two questions would you strategically ask, and to whom (and why)? What parts of the Spewak Model would each question feed? What are some steps that you can strategically take to work through this set of facts when using Emotional Intelligence, Business Chemistry, or DISC Assessments, based on your own observations and the backgrounds provided for each of the Executives?