February 18, 2020

Where Can Enterprise Architecture Be in Two Years?

We are often asked, “Where will we be in two years?”, or “How do you see Enterprise Architecture in two years?”. The first thing we emphasize is, “Yes! You can have a mature Enterprise Architecture practice in just two years!” We determine the state of the enterprise with a mature practice based on a set of tangible and intangible characteristics. The tangibles are the elements you start with when building a practice. Over time, they develop into habits and we start to see the downstream benefit of the intangible elements. With consistent executive support and disciplined implementation, you can see the full breadth of benefits by the end of year two.

The Tangibles

Clearly Defined Projects: The organization structures initiatives into groups of steadily executed projects. There is a clear intake process where each project is discussed, designed, understood, and architected.
Strategic Impact of the Initiatives: Leadership weighs initiatives according to their contribution to enterprise strategy and financial impact. They base their decision-making and prioritization on standard, unbiased measures of strategic fit. These measures are leveraged consistently across initiatives.
Effective and Well-documented Processes: The organization defines, diagrams, and communicates business processes. Each process has a single method of execution with a distinct outcome. Each process is broadly understood and is used by everyone, versus many independent ways of doing something. All processes are measurable, include chronological checkpoints, and are periodically reviewed for effectiveness
- Rigorous Selection Process: Third-party products and services are evaluated according to fit-for-purpose, scalability, and future-proofing. Appropriate requests for proposals (RFP) are released allowing for fair competition between vendors.
Standardized and Current Artifacts: Templates, forms, and reports are tailored to specific business processes. Artifacts are reviewed and updated with the corresponding process. Consistent use of standardized artifacts builds a common organizational language. This reduces ambiguity and lack of context, which slow down decision-making and execution.
Mapped Technology Blocks: The organization has a comprehensive understanding of its technology landscape. Responsible teams inventory their assets, which the EA team groups by technology capability. The EA team creates different views of these capabilities for specific audiences.
Integrated Roadmaps: Each product, initiative, and project, has a living roadmap outlining future changes. Project roadmaps roll up into product and initiative roadmaps. These in turn combine to achieve objectives in the strategic roadmap.
Considered Reference Architectures: The EA team catalogs reusable designs, which are used to quickly design new products, platforms, and services. These include reference architecture documents, architectural blueprints, and architectural and solution building blocks. Clear roles are defined for creating these reference architectures and building blocks. Products go through a rigorous decision-making process, accelerated by the reuse of tried and true designs.

The Intangibles

Strategy Directs Business, and Business Directs Technology: The relationship of strategy to business to technology is well-articulated and broadly understood. by teams responsible for creating roadmaps and selecting third-party products. Effective selection and maintenance of technology ensure strategy and business objectives are realized. Without this awareness the organization stagnates, sacrificing first-mover advantage and potential market share.
Effective Business Planning: Enterprise Architecture (EA) identifies the technologies that impact business service. This enables detailed investment planning for upgrades and replacements due to product changes. The organization maps
- business goals to business activities,
- business activities to technology services, and
- technology services to technology blocks.
Informed Risk Management: Enterprise Architecture enables a more detailed understanding of the risk surrounding the business. Enterprise Risk Management programs tend to lump a significant number of risks into “Unknown and Undefined Risks”. EA frameworks include methods and taxonomy for defining and quantifying risks. This results in more effective risk management and fewer unknowns.
Optimal Use of IT Resources: Information technology (IT) resources are applications, data, and hardware. The organization distinguishes between resources required for active operations from those that support strategy. (“Keep the Lights On” mode vs. growth.) Each domain (Business, Applications, Data, and Technology) is regularly audited and mapped enabling:
- Removal or repurpose of duplicative resources
- Increased reusability of business components, business processes, and technology
- Improved accuracy and availability of reference information through a single consolidated source
- Use of enterprise data as a shared resource. Enterprise data is available to the right entity (people, systems, applications) at the right time for the right purpose
Clear Roles and Responsibilities: The EA team does not need to search for willing volunteers to complete tasks within a process. Individuals are assigned to clearly defined roles in each business process. A mature EA practice benefits from:
- Business process engineering and process improvements
- Clear definition and distinction of Line of Business (LOB) areas of responsibility
- Limited redundancy and rework within the organization
No On-The-Spot Solutioning: The rigorous practice of Enterprise Architecture increases leadership’s faith in the system. Confident leaders are not tempted to come up with an immediate solution when a problem appears. Instead, they work to identify the core problem and the appropriate group to which to delegate business analysis. The group defines a potential project for which architects create several solution options. The recommended solution and rationale are brought back to leadership to support an informed decision.

Any organization will find stumbling blocks in the way of achieving an Enterprise Architecture practice in two years. As you were reading through these you would have gotten a sense of where your organization is and where those barriers are getting in the way. An experienced guide will recognize potential barriers before they become a problem. A committed leadership team will remove these barriers to achieve a mature Enterprise Architecture practice in two years.

Want to learn more about our ideas and thought leadership, please read the following. If there are any areas of interest from your organization, please feel free to reach out to us.