The Essential EA Toolkit (Part 1)

In order to be effective, Enterprise Architecture teams need "tools" in their toolkit, and I don't mean technologies like System Architect or Troux. Rather, I am referring to a few deliverables that create enormous value for your business and can be realized as simple drawings, processes and existing collaboration applications. 

This four part post presents for your consideration some of the more effective tools I've identified:

1. A Business Capability Model
2. A Standards Repository based on a Reference Architecture
3. An Architecture Governance Process
4. A Strategic Blue Print and an Enterprise Roadmap

Tool 1 - A Business Capability Model

A recurring theme of this blog is the creation of business value through simple, easily consumed deliverables, which requires a common language in order to develop a pool of shared meaning (see Who's On First?). The moment a team realizes that it has to be able to talk to the business but does not know how is one of the bigger "a ha" milestones in EA maturation. A Business Capability Model provides a foundation for this type of communication. It is a simple "nested boxes" diagram that represents the "capabilities" a business has or desires. Here is an example, shown with some Strategy overlays:

You may notice that much of the model looks similar to a corporate organization chart, however the model is different - it is purely based on capabilities and not company divisions or locations. It may have some boxes that correlate to corporate divisions, but some do not. The best example is "Customer Engagement". 

Since many divisions deal with customers in some form or fashion, Customer Engagement is something an Enterprise must be able to do well across organizational boundaries. When no single executive has accountability for the Capability except the CEO, getting things done at a working level becomes challenging. One solution is to assign the single accountability; however that may not always be practical. 

The Business Capability Model helps align executive stakeholders when it is not by creating a set of "lenses" for describing the architecture in ways that are immediately useful to the business. Because the model is based on Capabilities, vice divisions, it drives enterprise thinking; especially in those Capabilities that are share functions with more than one department. 

Continuing the Customer Engagement example, a set of "Customer Engagement" architecture deliverables can be created that clearly communicate enterprise strategy, provide a basis for cross divisional alignment and set expectations for investment.

Here are some practical uses of the model:

• As implied, Architecture deliverables can be cast in terms of a Capability providing different views of the Enterprise Architecture to different stakeholders. For example, executives concerned with customer interactions, such as Marketing and Distribution, can focus on the Customer Engagement roadmap while those in Manufacturing and Purchasing may not pay as much attention. See The Quantum of Integration for more on the power of Views in architecture.
• Strategy overlays, as show above, are a useful way to identify required investment. For example, the strategy to "Open Web sales channels by improved segmentation...", show as a red line, impacts the Marketing, Distribution and Customer Engagement capabilities. Further drill down into these, specifically identifying functions that must be enabled or improved, can yield an appropriate set of IT investments focused on delivering the strategy.
• Capabilities can be used to classify investments as part of a roadmap. For example, capturing a qualitative estimate of the % contribution of an investment to driving Capabilities allows analysis of corporate investment

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