„In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.“
– DALAI LAMA
Reacting to rapidly growing business and several mergers and acquisitions, your company started business process consolidation and new IT system acquisition process. The complexity of the project was too ambitious in terms of competence and experience both for ordering company and for the selected supplier, which lead to even more ambiguous situation than before.
The IT got high attention, after investors and senior management has changed coming with increased demands on the company. The overall architecture was challenged, because of very low customer satisfaction, manual and non-efficient processes, non-transparent information.
Subsequently, IT architecture assessment was ordered to evaluate if current systems will be able to meet changing business environment. The assessment showed low maturity on architecture capability and recommended to consider adopting of enterprise architecture practice.
Enterprise architecture adoption
How to establish an effective EA Capability? What is the best approach to select a fit for the purpose EA framework? How to adopt the selected EA framework into practice and culture of the enterprise? These are heavy questions relevant to everyone exploring the EA practice and they can’t be addressed without employing highly skilled individuals or external consultancy input.
Most of EA frameworks/approaches include some kind of process for enterprise architecture function development. For example, TOGAF’s ADM is the method created for Enterprise architecture capability establishment, yet at the same time it is wide and generic that can be tailored to any business transformation planning. Therefore, sometimes it becomes cumbersome to employ it correctly for specific industry and individual company’s situation. On more generic level, especially if you consider consultancy option, it doesn’t matter the fine-grained step beneath the surface, instead, you would focus on value creating steps producing the tangible outcomes to executive level. I’m referencing here improved EA adoption method (EAAM), developed by Dr. Nestori Syynimaa.
In comparison with traditional EA adoption methods it adds additional human interactive steps “Explain EA benefits”, and “Organize EA training”. While the first is relevant for senior management to understand the subject and gain commitment, the second is critical to spread the messages throughout the organization.
Another significant decision is to agree on how to run the modeled EA capability – internally, outsourced or hybrid. If internal EA team clearly demonstrates value to both the business and IT leadership teams, it does not make sense to consider this. However, not all EA teams are successful what triggers the CIO to start thinking about outsourcing option.
Enterprise architecture benefits
Typical outcomes of enterprise architecture adoption are an EA function integrated with change management, established EA governance and an EA tool with a repository of accurate content. In addition it helps to increase management awareness and involvement in EA process, to increase the EA knowledge and communication about the architecture and possible improvements.