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Mon, Feb 18, 2008 15:38 EST

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Posted by: Chris Potts in Best Practices Topic: Enterprise ManagementBlog: CIO Knowledge Space
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As the business climate and the technology market continue to evolve, no Enterprise Architect can risk being tied to one business scenario and one roadmap.
I was having a phone conversation last Friday with a CIO client of mine who joined a company up in the North of England a few months ago. The company has now appointed a new Chief Executive Officer - so the overall corporate strategy is about to go through a significant evolution. In this case, there's no real risk that the company will change its fundamental strategy, core business or target markets. But there's every chance of a different focus on how the strategy's executed, which in turn will significantly reshape the priorities for investing in change (and indeed who gets to execute that strategy and those investments).
The CIO is sharply aware of all of this, and we were talking about his best tactics over the next few weeks and months.
The corporate strategy for IT, which the CIO is leading from the front, promises that the company will efficiently exploit information and technology to delight its clients and customers, grow total revenues and maximise profit per transaction. The first part of that promise is likely to remain unaffected by the change of CEO, while the second part may need to be revalidated. The new CEO's strategy may demand different types of value from the people in the company who are making and exploiting IT investments.
The CIO's main concern is for the short- and longer-term impact of the change of CEO on the company's Enterprise Architecture blueprint and the accompanying roadmap. The trap they have fallen into, which I've seen more often than I care to say, is that their Enterprise Architecture is planned around only one strategic scenario. So it's now time for them to rapidly ascend the Enterprise Architecture maturity curve and plan for multiple business scenarios.
Any Enterprise Architect planning for just one businesss scenario and holding only one roadmap is likely to come adrift from the company strategy fairly rapidly, even without a change of CEO or something equally significant. The real danger is when nobody notices until it's too late, and projects based on the roadmap get executed even though events have rendered them obsolete. Thankfully, not true this time.
Dear Chris,
EA engagements are naturally costly and complex by themselves. By adding the scenario factor to the assessments, and possibly blueprinting alternative future models you'll probably hit resource limits sooner than delivering so much value.
In my opinion, a possible way to reduce the impact of such changes is to make the EA governance process more proactive and agile. I also believe from corporate point of view, the transition from current strategy to new strategy is a comprehensive exercise. That means there is enough space for EA to cope with new scenarios in a timely manner.
Being proactive and agile in governance can be achieved by tuning the level of granularity in architecture models and tools employed for managing them.
Thanks
Mehrdad Fatemi
enterprise architecture planning involves the following basics steps
1. Identify business areas relevant to the organization
2. Map IT application systems to business areas
3. Identify the systems that need enhancement
4. Identify the systems still not in place
5. Supporting technologies already in place
6. Technologies to be planned
7. Choices of systems i.e inhouse , off-the-shelf, off-the-shelf & customize
8. Technology choices for eg. Centralized , Decentralized, decentralized but regular automatic updation to central server
9. Security issues
10. Business continuity plan
11. Investment plan
12. ROI
EA plan done in the above method can be revised depending on the top management priority and so the plan does not collapse by mere change of CEO. It only gets revised based on the new person’s inputs.
Scenario-based planning is inevitable for an enterprise architect. The changing business models, organizational dynamics, and disruptive technology are some of the change agents that require enterprise architecture strategy to be agile enough to respond to these changes.
I have a detailed post at:
http://cloudcomputing.blogspot.com/2008/02/scenario-based-enterprise-architecture.html
Hello Chris,
- I enjoyed reading your article! The article was informative and insightful. However, I found that the article perpetuates a perception that is common in many organizations. This perception is that enterprise architecture (EA) is exclusively an IT enabler. Your article focuses on EA as an IT enabler when EA is actually an enterprise enabler that facilitates enterprise planning, decision-making, and strategic execution.
- The EA describes the enterprise and its human, materiel, and IT attributes that enable organizational leaders to understand enterprise capabilities and constraints. As a result, organizational leaders can make needed human, materiel, and technology investments to realize strategic goals and objectives. The EA is not exclusively about the enterprise IT capabilities as is suggested in your article.
- Organizations such as Wal-Mart, UPS, and Southwest Airlines continue to lead their respective industries because they understand their enterprise capabilities and constraints, describe desired capabilities, and make human, materiel, and technology decisions that advance accomplishing strategic goals. In other words these organizations use EA to facilitate enterprise planning, decision-making, and execution.
- EA advocates can help their organizations meet strategic performance expectations by advancing EA as an EA enabler rather than exclusively an IT enabler.
Stan Boddie
Stan
Thanks for your observations on my blog. Please take a look at my entry "Enterprise Architecture: breaking out of IT". You'll see we agree, so I'll reflect upon how I managed to convey the opposite view this time around!
All the best
Chris