Is Enterprise Architecture a Waste of Money?
I hear the talk, but where’s the walk?
Over recent years enterprise architecture has had mixed success, especially in big organisations where management layers and power structures often result in a disconnect where the “enterprise architects” manage upwards and deliver little to the factory floor where it really counts.
CEO/CIO’s should ask a few questions of enterprise architects and leadership teams to see how its really going.
- The enterprise architecture, business plan, business vision and business governance should be aligned.
- Ask for a joint presentation of the enterprise plan from your leaders of product, marketing, and enterprise architecture analyzing the current state, target state and transition strategy for your business.
- The enterprise architecture current state should recognize where all your business’s pain points are and have a plan to address all but the HR and financial reporting ones.
- Ask the same joint team how the enterprise plan addresses the current pain points.
- Ask the business how well they feel the IT group is meeting their needs.
- Take a trip to the factory floor and talk to the solution architect and technology delivery team.
- Ask them about how much guidance they receive from the enterprise architecture team in the form of frameworks, definitions, principles, standards, models, design patterns and technologies they should be using.
- Ask they how well they feel they understand the enterprise plan with respect to IT delivering capability to meet the businesses needs.
If the conversations are difficult it may not be enterprise planning which is the problem, but the people you’ve got doing it!