ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE: SIX CRUCIAL BEST PRACTICES

How do you ensure your Enterprise Architecture effort delivers the business value?

 

Many Enterprise Architecture (EA) efforts fail to deliver significant business value or are perceived as irrelevant by business stakeholders. In today’s economic climate, either of these conditions will likely be fatal to the EA initiative and/or to members of the EA team. Gartner Group recommends six best practices to ensure that business value is delivered and demonstrated in your EA effort.

1. Engage all stakeholders, both internal and external.
It is important to obtain buy-in from all those who will be constrained by EA decisions, not just senior business management. Include line management, business operations, development, IT operations, and support functions such as procurement and finance—get 360-degree representation from every aspect of the enterprise.

Don’t forget external service providers, outsourcers and other stakeholders from the enterprise ecosystem. These stakeholders are also critical to the success of the EA effort; their buy-in requires engagement and they can provide insights about enterprise drivers that the EA team might not otherwise encounter.

2. Approach all stakeholders with a straw model, not a blank sheet of paper.
It’s never a good idea to engage stakeholders with a set of open-ended questions. Stakeholder groups will have differing views of what is important and the level of detail required, and will tend to drive the conversation in a tactical direction. Creating and presenting a straw model is a more productive approach and can be used as a basis for refinement and further development. This approach ensures stakeholders are engaged at the appropriate level of detail and the discussion has some structure.

3. Validate, socialize, then validate again.
Although the EA process is fairly straightforward, it is highly iterative. Don’t underestimate the amount of collaboration and validation needed. Engage with stakeholders at every step along the way. This is an exercise in facilitation and engagement; the most important skills that the EA team will exercise are interpersonal and communication skills.

4. Do not expect the business strategy to be delivered to you, be prepared to discover it.
Often, business strategies are not well articulated but they are almost always there; usually they can be found in goals and in the compensation structure. The important question to be answered is: “What are the things that the business wants to do differently tomorrow, so it can be more successful than it is today?” High level statements are sufficient to derive the implications and requirements that will inform the business context.

In cases where the enterprise is highly federated, as a collection of business units with different business models and strategies, it will require more effort to articulate both general strategic objectives of the enterprise as a whole, and the specific strategies of the different business areas. Common strategic objectives must be established, and differences in priorities or conflicting objectives must be noted, as well.

5. In less-mature enterprises, take a less formal approach to the development of the common requirements vision (CRV).
In efforts where there is difficulty persuading the enterprise to go through the structured, formal approach to a CRV, a less formal approach should be adopted that uses the same constructs as the CRV. By positing as simple questions the structure of business change requirements, business information requirements and so on, the essential components can be retained and chances of acceptance are increased. Ask some simple questions like:

How must the business change?
What new types of information will be required?
What new technology capabilities must be provided?
What programs will support our strategic objectives?

6. Use the EA to inform other strategic and governance initiatives in the enterprise.
Most enterprises have a number of strategic initiatives running concurrently at any point in time. By using the EA guidance as the unifying principle, you can ensure that the strategic and governance initiatives of the enterprise do not collide with one another, but rather cooperate to support the evolution of the enterprise to the desired future state.

If you would like a copy of the full Gartner report, contact Software Consortium.

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