Case USA120: How an Energy Utility Mistook Outage Maps for Enterprise Architecture Readiness

Sunil Dutt Jha
Aug 6
2 min read

Overview:

This case is part of a 120-diagnostic series revealing how utilities have mislabeled customer-facing visibility as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”

In outage management programs, a recurring pattern is treating public outage maps and status updates as proof of architectural maturity.

Customers could view real-time outage areas, estimated restoration times improved, and call center volumes dropped — yet the enterprise structure linking fault detection, crew dispatch, asset management, customer communications, and regulatory reporting was never modeled.

P1–P6 Insight Preview:

These six perspectives define how an enterprise connects intent to execution — P1: Strategy, P2: Business Processes, P3: System Behaviors, P4: Component Governance, P5: Implementation, P6: Business & Technology Operations.

P1 (Strategy): Outage maps were positioned as a customer engagement win, but no architecture-led roadmap tied them to resilience metrics, restoration speed, or operational efficiency.

P2 (Process): Customer update workflows improved, but crew mobilization, resource allocation, and cross-department coordination processes remained fragmented.

P3 (System): Outage visualization tools weren’t behaviorally integrated with SCADA, work management, or GIS systems for coordinated restoration.

P4 (Component): Mapping, customer communication, and dispatch components were governed separately, leading to data mismatches.

P5 (Implementation): Rollouts prioritized front-end transparency while integration with operational control systems was delayed.

P6 (Operations): Business ops could inform customers quickly, but tech ops manually bridged gaps between outage detection and field execution.

Stakeholder Impact Summary:

CEO/Utility CEO – accountable for reliability, customer trust, and regulatory performance: Limited by weak P1 Strategy — visibility improved public perception but not actual restoration performance.
CIO – responsible for technology stack and operational integration: Impacted by P3 System Behaviors and P4 Component Governance — disconnected platforms slow coordinated recovery.
Sales Head (Customer & Regulator Relations) – manages communications and compliance reporting: Affected by P2 Processes and P5 Implementation — can share outage info but can’t guarantee faster service restoration.
Chief Enterprise Architect – ensures outage management aligns with grid strategy and resilience goals: Confronts P1–P6 issues — the map is a transparency layer, not an integrated restoration architecture.
Head of Field Operations – oversees crews and restoration execution: Feels P2, P3, & P6 — must manually coordinate between detection systems, crew scheduling, and customer updates.