Executive Reception

We invite you and one of your colleagues to attend the Executive Afternoon Reception on the topic of “Connecting business and technical strategy – Architecture as a verb not a noun" on September 23 from 15:30 to 17:00 at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University.

Join us for an inspiring afternoon with special guest Gustav Normark Toppenberg, Enterprise Transformation Leader at Cisco Systems

The Executive Reception offers rich opportunities to discuss the afternoons’s topic with the guest speaker, researchers from Aarhus BSS and not least with the other participants from the corporate world and the public sector taking part in this event.

PRESENTATION

 Connecting business and technical strategy – Architecture as a verb not a noun. 

Gustav Normark Toppenberg,
Enterprise Transformation Leader at Cisco Systems

Most industries in today’s competitive environment are undergoing some level of business transformation to evolve its value and impact. As organizational leaders look to continue to differentiate their companies from those in the marketplace they plan transformational efforts to build or maintain competitive advantages.

Change initiatives are time consuming and costly, significantly impacting an organization’s drive toward success and nearly half of them fail. In the face of mounting pressures to continue to deliver value fast, organizations are looking to agile practices and principles to generate the needed speed to deliver solutions to the marketplace faster than their competitors.

Agile practitioners will not be surprised to learn that while 82% of Fortune 500 CEO's feel their organization did an effective job of strategic planning, only 14% of the same CEO's indicated that their organization did an effective job of implementing the strategy.

Change and transformation is unavoidable. Organizations need to resolve how to successfully adapt and sustain change, bridging the gap between strategic intent and execution to deliver the intended value.
In this session, Gustav Toppenberg will share how Cisco Systems is implementing ‘delivery transformation’, a combination of Agile Development and Continuous Delivery practices and principles to ensure the speed of value delivery is faster than the pace of its competitors.

As head of enterprise architecture operations at Cisco IT, Gustav will share how in the face of the need to change the pace, Cisco has changed the role of enterprise architecture and portfolio management - capabilities that spans beyond IT & technology to business and operating models, to enable a succinct and coordinated approach to enable the execution teams to ensure that their work is tied directly to the strategic intent.

Learning Outcomes:

• The presenter will share the Cisco ‘Architecture-led Investment Planning’ process utilized at Cisco pausing to show specific examples of how the EA and the Portfolio Mgmt. capabilities have changed to be useful and enabling for agile delivery teams. The examples will include the connection of architectural roadmaps, investment planning and the transfer of architectural decision to agile teams.
• Participants will be precented with real-life examples of the challenges and benefits Cisco is seeing from this transformation. They will also see first-hand the roles and responsibilities architects, agile team members and others in Cisco IT have that make the transformation possible.

Biography

Gustav Normark Toppenberg presents himself as: 

A goal-oriented, insightful and seasoned strategic leader & transformation agent, with 14+ years of experience in start-up, high-growth and Fortune 100 companies.

Extensive experience building & leading transformational efforts for both small & global operations.

A strong track record of achievements in leading and enabling cross-functional alignment, transformation & delivering client centered results.

I continue to strike a balance between professional & academic endeavors, through my practitioner work at Cisco and my academic work at Copenhagen Business School, UC Berkeley and Stanford. The opportunity to get deeply involved in specific real-world practitioner issues and then to step back and reflect on broader trends helps me to be more effective on both fronts. My goal is to continue to peer over the horizon to understand how the impact of emerging technology mgmt. on business transformation is being reshaped & to translate the insights into actionable advice that deliver tangible impact to businesses today. 

WHEN
Wednesday September 23, 2015, 15:30-17:00

VENUE
Aarhus BSS
Aarhus University
Fuglesangs Allé 4
8210 Aarhus V 
Building 2610, Room S313

REGISTRATION

Registartion for this event is closed.