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A Cutter Associates study of enterprise architectures in buy-side asset-management firms cites six reasons why these firms should adopt a framework and structure for enterprise architecture. The report cites six reasons why these firms should adopt a framework and structure for enterprise architecture:

1. Achieve greater flexibility and capacity for acquisitions, new products and new investment instruments.
2. Reduce IT’s time to market.
3. Adapt better to changes in the vendor landscape, industry trends and regulatory environment.
4. Align IT and business to the same set of priorities.
5. Reduce cost to business and IT.
6. Improve communication within IT and between IT and business people.

Source: Wall Street & Technology

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture, Architecture, Cutter, Research, EA

The  United States Government Accountability Office defines enterprise architecture as follows:

An enterprise architecture is a blueprint that describes the current and desired state of an organization or functional area in both logical and technical terms, as well as a plan for transitioning between the two states. Enterprise architectures are a recognized tenet of organizational transformation and IT management in public and private organizations. Without an enterprise architecture, it is unlikely that an organization will be able to transform business processes and modernize supporting systems to minimize overlap and maximize interoperability.

United States Government Accountability Office, "Enterprise Architecture: Leadership Remains Key to Establishing and Leveraging Architectures for Organizational Transformation," August 2006. An abstract of the work (with links to the full version) can be viewed and downloaded here.

 

Technorati Tags: Definition, Enterprise Architecture, Architecture

Photo by marj k

 

"You should treat decisions as an enterprise asset. You should make even the most high-volume, operational decisions as though they are enterprise decisions." - Smart (Enough) Systems

Enterprise architecture is really all about effective decision making….! At its core enterprise architecture is a tool that informs and guides decision-making…

• Planning decisions
• Investment decisions
• Solution decisions

Enterprise architecture is a tool that consists of frameworks, principles, standards, processes, reference models - anything that can help us make better decisions! What’s unique about an enterprise architecture, is that it’s built upon the a core belief that an holistic or enterprise perspective is produces better decisions than taking a silo view of the problem. A high-level holistic perspective the enables decision-making from an overall systems perspective.

 

Creating architecture, although required, produces no value. Value only comes from applying architecture to influence projects. This is best supported by a decision making approach as:

• Decisions move us from the “as-is” to the “to-be”, one step at a time.
• A focus on decisions makes enterprise architecture practical and action-oriented …rather than theoretical.
• Focuses enterprise architecture on helping to foster decision-making, rather than on the frameworks and the processes. Focusing on ends, rather than means.
• Ensures that enterprise architecture addresses stakeholder decision-making needs, as they make decisions at different levels of abstraction

 

Technorati Tags: Decisions, Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, System, Management, Practical

Andy Willmot writes on his view of enterprise architecture and he believes that enterprise architecture is best described as a set of principles, as follows:

• Framework driven - "….The important lesson is one of ensuring conformity to a framework, whatever that framework be. All organisations are different, and it’s up to the EA community to identify, base upon or create a fresh the most appropriate framework to use. Without a framework driving EA activity, the deliverables are often inconsistent and have little understanding beyond the EA community."
• Abstractional and Dimensional - "Our current thinking on an organisation generally leads us to perceive in two main ways. Firstly, in differing levels of abstraction. That is, the level of depth viewed of an organisation. E.g. a CTO’s level of abstraction is far different to that of a Developer.
  Secondly, by dimension. This is the vertical facet of the organisation we’re wanting to perceive. This could be information, people, function, etc. This will be very much dependent on the objectives of the EA activity."
• Vertically and horizontally interdependent - "Interdependency is key to EA. Without it EA activities become individual, siloed analysis streams that cannot relate to one another. One of the clear benefits of EA is to align these activities across an enterprise and produce architectural insight that benefits the development of the organisation."
• Purposeful - "Many EA activities today do not have clear purpose…… It’s therefore very important we remember to set clear objectives for any EA tasks and ensure we stick to them throughout."
• Measureable - "There aren’t many projects within major business today that don’t have a business case to back up the benefits of completing the project…. It’s important though to think of any EA activity as we would any other project and ensure we measure benefits to the organisation throughout."

A great list of the attributes of enterprise architecture. What attributes do you feel are missing from this list?

 

Infosys have published the results of their Enterprise Architecture Survey 2007 which is always an interesting read.

 

The key findings..

• EA is emerging as a strategic tool at the corporate level, and moving outside the realm of IT
• EA is becoming more professional through the use of standardized, well-defined processes and tools;
• EA Governance, in particular its marketing and communications approach, needs to be improved.

 

The survey also shows that the key expectations from EA are business agility, IT-business alignment and portfolio simplification.

EA has gained acceptance as an important tool for corporate decision making. This is apparent from its role in strategic planning and its reporting lines. It is a key component of IT governance.

As EA recognizes its responsibility for objectives outside IT, business architecture becomes more important. However, application and technical architecture still prevail and continue to be key deliverables.

Marketing and communications is crucial when influencing a large organization; incidentally, this is not exactly the strength of many architects. The lack of a structured multi-channel communication strategy results in a serious awareness gap concerning the architecture vision.

The lack of appropriate metrics also makes it difficult to manage the IT assets of the organization as a portfolio. As most organizations do not penalize non-adherence to architecture, the architect’s task becomes a ‘battle against windmills’.

Our findings indicate that EA teams need to change. They need to strengthen their business level capabilities, build a consistent body of knowledge and the best practices of a mature profession, and improve their skills in influencing the organization.

 

Some of the highlights from the research for was the following findings:

 

EA Objectives and Benefits

The primary objective of enterprise architecture is business agility…

"Agility is the objective of the day – not just for IT, but for the entire organization. The most cited objective of EA is flexibility of business and processes to enable the enterprise to stay competitive."

 

click for larger image  

 

EA Focus Areas

 

"With agility and flexibility being the key objectives of EA, enterprise architects are focusing on service-orientation and integration. Close to 80% of the survey participants listed this area as critical” or “high” in terms of significance."

 

click for larger image  

 

 

EA Deliverables

 

"Even though EA teams are engaged in strategic planning efforts, a key expectation is to govern the enterprise technology landscape. Therefore, Enterprise Technology Standards, Technology Roadmaps and IT Strategy continue to be the three most common deliverables of EA teams."

 

 click for larger image 

 

EA Frameworks and Processes

Infosys analysed the adoption of three types of architecture frameworks:

• Generic Enterprise Architecture Frameworks, such as TOGAF, Zachman, FEAF and DODAF
• Industry frameworks such as eTOM, Acord, SAGA and CIMOSA
• Generic IT management frameworks such as ITIL and COBIT.

We found that framework adoption has increased significantly; with almost 70% using one or the other framework. Architecture frameworks have been adopted by 55% of the respondents’ organizations and almost all leverage industry standards. This is speedy progress compared to the 16% in our last survey.

click for larger image 

 

You can download the comprehensive Infosys 2007 Enterprise Architecture Survey here.

 

Technorati Tags: Research, EA,Enterprise Architecture, Architecture, Infosys, Strategy, 2007

Michael Roberto a professor of management at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, has an interesting post on his blog, "The Power of Integrative Thinking" where he discusses an article in the June issue of Harvard Business Review, on how successful leaders are integrative thinkers. By that, he means that they attack problems in the following manner:

• They examine problems as a whole, with careful consideration of how different parts of a situation fit together, rather than analyzing different elements in isolation.
• They consider multiple avenues of causation for a problem, as well as possible nonlinear relationships between cause and effect, rather than thinking of terms of simple linear relationships between a single cause and effect.
• They embrace the tension between opposing ideas, and they use that conflict to generate creative new alternatives, rather than making simple either-or decisions.

Integrated thinking is a critical mode of thinking which architects need to learn to master. Integrated thinking is essential if architects are to "address the enterprise as a whole". One of the challenges faced by integrated thinkers and architects in particular is cognitive overload. Michael Roberto makes the following suggestion, on how to move forward when experiencing cognitive overwhelm, based on Karl Weick’s famous 1984 article entitled "Small Wins":

"…large, complex problems can sometimes be cognitively overwhelming. Thus, he argued that decision-makers should break complex problems into parts, and seek a series of ’small wins’ as a means of generating solutions to complicated issues. …seek small wins while working through the organizational decision-making process required to solve the problem."

In my architectural and strategy work, I have often experienced cognitive overwhelm when attempting to solve complex problems. I have found that by just starting, by simply writing down your initial thoughts and ideas generates the small wins required, provides a foundation for discussion and helps to move the whole process forward.

How do you deal with cognitive overwhelm in your architectural work?

 

Technorati Tags: Complexity, Problem, Integrative Thinking, Architecture, EA, Enterprise Architecture, Thinking, Decision-Making, Paradox

 

“Time after time, we have found that in the midst of profound and complex change, more than one significant aspect of the enterprise is changing at once. Often key leaders or team members don’t see the whole system in the same way - each sees a different portion of the overall picture. They generally do not agree on the range of forces affecting their business or on their importance. They often do not have shared views on the key strategies the business should use to respond to these forces, what the business must become, where they currently stand, or how they will go about the change or development that is needed to survive in the changing environment. Even when different members see parts of the system from a common perspective, key elements in the system are often “invisible” to any particular group, and their disagreements often lie in just these invisible areas. Conflicts arise because not everyone is on the same page regarding the key elements of the enterprise as a whole.” - Friedman & Gyr “The Dynamic Enterprise”

Silo-based systems are developed due to a lack of seeing the whole or the big picture. Seeing the whole is a collaborative rather than individual effort as each stakeholder helps us to gain an important insight into the whole. This can be likened to the parable of the "Blind Men and the Elephant", where, “Knowing in part may make a fine tale, but wisdom comes from seeing the whole.” See the whole is analogy to effort of blind men and the elephant: In a sense, each individual is blind to the invisible big picture.

The capability to address the enterprise as a whole, distinguishes the enterprise architecture paradigm from the others. Enterprise architecture is about “seeing the whole”, as such there can only be one enterprise view of the organisation….

 

 

The value of enterprise architecture is it’s role in identifying the big picture of the enterprise and to provide the enterprise definition for each architectural domain, so architects can design the IT architecture from an enterprise consideration. Enterprise architecture can be distinguished from other styles of architecture by it’s enterprise perspective. Enterprise architecture is the discipline of seeing the whole, of seeing the big picture.

 

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