Is Walmart a Great case study for any EA? I came across the Walmart story in “good strategy / bad strategy” by Richard Rumelt

Richard suggests Conventional strategy for the Walmart market was …


“A full line discount store needs a population base of at least 100,000”

And goes on to describe how the Walmart strategy differed.

“a regional network of 150 stores serves a population of a million.”

The EA design in the first strategy would be predicted on population sizes and the design of the store with a decentralised mindset

The EA design in the Walmart strategy would be about how the 150 stores work together as a network, the data flows, the management flows, the distribution hubs the shared set of policies to work together – its a network business model not a decentralised business and it scales fast.

For me the Walmart story brings out the best attributes of an organisation thinking in a strategic way – looking at the outcome targets of the business across many operating metrics, looking to design an operating model that improves all the metrics not just one and ending up with a result that challenged conventional thinking.

The walmart story would have pulled on tech, would have pulled on data, would have pulled on operational teams and would have surely needed enterprise architecture to play its part.

I guess the real question was were enterprose architects involved in any way or were the leaders intuitively competent in enterprise design as it’s at the heart of leading how an organisation operates to get results.

I’m a strong believer that any strategy is about action, it often results in more than one aspect of the business changing and as a consequence the change needs to be shaped and continuously reviewed with course corrections as more insight is found.

Organisations that can measure and provide simulations of the changes and consequences needed across the operating model to execute on the strategy must have a way to model this and therefore must need the competencies of the enterprise architecture profession.

This way of thinking and operating is either in the core competencies of the senior management teams who drive a forensic review of the changes needed in the operating model. With operational managers able to design the new normal and coordinate the changes across teams. Or it’s part of the Enterprise Architecture team to work with senior sponsors and operational managers to make the change happen.

I’d love to know what you think of theWalmart case study does it provide food for thought from an EA perspective