The construction of a building requires careful thought related to the type of design as well as aesthetical features. The art in bringing all these facets together in essence starts with the concept or idea from the owner or developer, followed by consultation sessions with the architect. The architect gathers all inputs and create the master piece (the blue print and plan) capturing the requirements, needs and wants from the owner and or users. The plan provides design guidance for all construction disciplines to follow, from civils, electrical to the actual construction. The plan is used to depict the construction of the building, and could be referred to as the construction architecture.

The design of an enterprise requires similarly architecture to create the blueprint to guide the design of the enterprise whilst informing or influencing strategic choices and decisions, ranging from investment, capabilities to enterprise governance.

Enterprise design however, needs to draw clear distinction between the enterprise function and enterprise construction. The enterprise function refers to the relationship of the enterprise (provisioning system) with that of its environment (using system) having certain needs and wants. Only through a thorough understanding of the environment construction, for example who the consumer is, or which markets the enterprise operates in can functional requirements and functional architecture be developed.

Firstly, functional architecture will guide and inform enterprise construction, and only through enterprise design will functional properties manifest and be brought to the forward. Secondly, constructional requirements and constructional architecture will guide the design, construct as well as evolution of the enterprise. The functional and constructional architecture combined guide the iterative nature of the design science process. Take a serious look at your enterprise architecture and investigate its origin, who or what informed the architecture, based on which principles or requirements, and lastly does it provide guidance to distinguish between function and construction.

The question is, are you constructing an office block to function as an apartment building?

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The formal meaning of engineered is “to design and build or modify by manipulating its genetic material, and skilfully arrange for something to occur”, whilst future’s meaning is “at a later time, going or likely to happen or exist”, cited by the Oxford dictionary. In other words, (re)design needs to take place for something that will happen later. The question one has to ask is whether the ‘likely to happen’ already happened? Has the impact of a global epidemic such as COVID-19 fast forwarded the timelines and we are in the midst of the future?

The change enterprises require is now greater than ever, and unfortunately stretches across all domains of the enterprise, from the environment (context), organisation (operation and internal arrangements), ICT, Information and Human skills and know how. These domains are interrelated, for example if team collaboration platforms are installed to enable virtual work but the human skills to operate these platforms are not in place, or information flow to enable decision making is not aligned to a new way of work, or internal processes do not support collaboration and so on, problems could be self-inflicted having adverse impact on business performance.

In order to skilfully arrange the enterprise, to address this disruptive changing environment, enterprise engineering as an integrated set of disciplines for building or changing an enterprise, its processes, and systems are positioned. A scientific approach can help business owners, heads of departments to name a few to efficiently and effectively navigate the storm. The CUBE approach will enable you to be, remain or become engineered for the future.

Without a doubt, ‘that will happen later’ has indeed happened, and (re)design needs to take place.

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