Building Block of Enterprise Architecture

1. Why the Need?

EA provides the model of how things fit together at enterprise level

Lack of enterprise planning has led to 

-Fragmentation

-Duplication

-Cross purposes

-Risk Silo's

2. What is EA?

Functional Perspective

Planning and managing the evolution of the enterprise IS environment from a current to target state according to certain agreed design principles

-planning role:Translate enterprise and IS strategies into an planning and design Framework

Must be actively involved in IS planning and decision making

-Design role: Develop enterprise and domain solutions for consistency with design principles

-Stakeholder management role: Must engage key business and IS decision makers

Process Perspective

Facilitate transition from current to future state

-Benchmark

-Capability/gap analysis

-Solution design

-Big bang

-By domains-incremental

-Solution based

Q:Why is EA a process?

A:Need to control change because

-Business strategy evolves

-Technology lifecycles and the increasing rate of obsolescence

-New information content and processing requirements

-emerge

-Business partnerships change

-Target markets change

-Decision makers come and go

EA as Process

Architecture is a key component of strategy that takes an organisation from where it currently is to where it needs to be.

Capability Maturity

Mature organisations exercise a disciplined approach to architecture management and governance.

Requisite to this are:

Standard Practices-universally applied

Enterprise Capability

Compliance as outcome of consistency

Zero tolerance towards opt-out

In a mature environment, business excellence and compliance are outcomes of sound work practice including People, Process and Technology elements.

SEI Capability Maturity Model

Initial: Enterprise activities are ad-hoc and transactional in nature.

Repeated: Pilot projects and single activities at Enterprise level.

Defined: Enterprise standards and processes creating efficiencies.

Managed: Creation, sharing organizationally integrated and improved.

Optimising: Developed continuously and is self organised.

Legacy Environments

Problems

-Growing and increasingly unmanageable complexity

-No integrated approach across different customer, supplier, and partner interfaces

-Disparate customer and operational data sources: creating ineffective operations and decision making

-Difficult to integrate back office processes

-Limitations regarding business agility

-Business unit focus not enterprise focus

-Technical driven solutions not business outcomes

-Inability to support corporate systems opportunities

-Information boundaries

The importance of Commitment

It is critical to mandate the Enterprise Architecture initiatives

Critical Success Factors

-Ensure senior executive Buy-in and Support

-Engage senior managers and Business Units/ IS leaders

The Biggest Obstacles

-Commitment of resources for an extended period of time

-EA planning alone could consume 8 or more resources for 6 months

-Chief Architect, Business Analyst, Data Analyst, Application Analyst, Infrastructure Analyst, Domain Specilalist, PMO resource, SMEs

-Adverse corporate culture and the perceived arrogance of IT

-Political differences and deciding who has responsibility for the EA