What
enterprise doesn’t need management and technology practices that improve its
performance by enabling it to see holistic and integrated views of their
strategic direction, business practices, information flows and technology
resources? Without current and future enterprise views, it becomes hard to
manage the transition from current state to the future operating state, while
adding more duplication and disjuncture to existing systems.
Alignment
within an enterprise leads to the optimization of the usage of resources. This
is where EA comes in, it helps ensure enterprise activities are not disjointed
and helps reduce duplication of processes and applications. It also leads to a complete
approach to management, planning and documentation; creating aligned strategy
and business driven views of the enterprise. EA also should help ensure that
investments have a linkage to strategic goals and business outcomes are
obtained in the most efficient manner, if your EA is not doing this for you,
then it isn’t being effective (Bernard, 2012, Chapter 1).
How
does EA promote this alignment exactly? It draws from accepted standards and
promotes the use of non-proprietary commercial solutions, enhancing integration and allowing for the “plug and play” of components, promoting agility to
address change (if your EA has shifted to allow for this). EA can ensure separate
sub-architectures are not needed to reflect different levels of the enterprise
and it will enable you to provide ongoing capability and coordinated views of
the strategic direction of the enterprise, and in regards to the business
services, information flows and resources. An effective EA allows decision
makers to make optimal judgments by obtaining coordinated information. This capability
is aided by the standard language and methodology that EA brings, which all
stakeholders can speak, in alignment (Bernard, 2012, Chapter 3).
How
do we know whether our EA practice is actually delivering on the items we have
outlined? Defining and tracking EA business-value metrics (qualitative and
quantitative) improves the value proposition and impact of EA efforts (Brand
& Smith, 2018). Projects guided by EA principles, road-maps, guidance and
standards can also be measured directly and indirectly. “The direct measure of
the impact of standards is the number of exceptions or waivers that are granted
during the architecture assurance process. The indirect measure of the impact
of standards is the business outcomes” (Burke & Burton, 2017, p. 9).
So,
we know what EA is, what it does or should do. However, why is
EA not effective in every organization? And why is it perceived by many,
including decision makers that I have interacted with, as cumbersome,
slow, and counterproductive? That is perhaps a direct result of the
traditional EA vs. the Outcome-Driven EA dilemma.
An Outcome-Driven EA allows us to directly address the business outcomes of
highest priority to the enterprise by aligning deliverables to the business
direction, and vision, and the highest value added deliverables. In contrast,
the traditional EA is too focused on collecting the current state architecture,
which generates large amounts of objects and relationships that do not have a
direct linkage to business outcomes, which wastes time and resources. The Outcome-Driven EA follows a methodology that simplifies it's development by
creating a stage plan that exclusively targets the delivery of stakeholder
value. Lastly, measurable outcomes are relevant; we should seek observable
change in key business performance metrics within a defined time-frame (Bernard, 2012, Chapter 4).
How
does this get enforced? At the center of the Outcome-Driven EA is the
architect, rather than documenting the current state endlessly, and “filling
out” the traditional framework, they should focus on developing the EA by
targeting a limited set of outcomes and framing deliverables that are directly
linked to business outcomes and key business disruptions. The architect’s focus should be exclusively on the deliverables required to
address the target business outcomes, which can be achieved by effectively
executing the stage plan through the re-focused EA delivery life-cycle (Burke
& Burton, 2017).
However, the
traditional EA is not without merit, and components of it must be leveraged. The
current view of the architecture is important since it provides a set of
baseline artifacts that can be used for planning and decision making, as a
reference. The current view of the enterprise helps clearly show associations,
dependencies and performance gaps in the enterprise’s business requirements and
current capabilities. We can also observe which resources are being used in
which LOB (line of business) to support the achievement of their strategic goals (Bernard, 2012,
Chapters 1, 3, 7). There is great value in capturing the current operating
environment because resources may not be aligned to the strategic goals and
business services that the enterprise wishes to target, furthermore,
significant duplication in functions and tools may exist. Even a traditional framework will be able to help map how to close gaps
between the current and future state by utilizing the information from the
current view, like having the blue prints to a home. Additionally, in
documenting the current view of the enterprise, performance gaps that were not
visible before may emerge (Allega & Burton, 2018).
That
being said, organizations should forego the traditional EA approach given the
issues mentioned. Additionally, with the traditional approach, the architect’s
focus is on completing the framework and “filling everything out”, leaving
little room for innovation. Instead, organizations should streamline EA
development and focus on deliverables that directly address the highest
priority business outcomes (Burke & Burton, 2017). The best way to
accomplish this is to integrate agile practices with your outcome-driven EA, by
doing so leaders will embrace innovation and take advantage of digital
technology by using the design capability of EA in order to harness the creativity and
talent already in their organization, to help create optimal solutions. An
agile EA will also drive digital innovation by using design thinking created by
lean techniques (Blosch, Burton & Walker, 2017). Agile focuses on rapid
testing of market opportunities, experience and engagement, as well as experimentation led by disruptive innovation and collaboration across partner ecosystems; it also
focuses on outcomes and sees failures as an opportunity to learn. Lastly, from
a technology perspective, this EA will use reusable components and solution-driven
techniques (Blosch, Osmond & Norton, 2016). In short, the Agile, Outcome-Driven EA, will enable the enterprise to truly embrace the digital era
and survive major disruptions, where traditional EA may not be up to the
challenge and be seen as an impediment, as we discussed earlier.
The above guidance is solid, however, we must note that the
impact of agile practices in your EA won't be as great without having an
outcome driven EA that seeks to support the business strategy and objectives
that are mapped to the main business disruptions that your organization is
facing (Burke & Burton, 2017), this means you have to know what those are. The key is to focus
on producing signature-ready deliverables that drive business change; using
Agile is great but efforts must be focused on high value deliverables that are
mapped to business objectives. Agile can speed up delivery on items but the
focus should remain on deliverables that address the highest-priority business
outcomes that help address key disruptions and concerns of key stakeholders. To this end, agile practices should be combined
with a design capability that helps drive digital innovation which can maximize
the creativity and talent within the organization to help create optimal
solutions (Blosch, Burton & Walker, 2017). If the aforementioned is not accomplished by using the EA, or rather, if the EA does not facilitate the accomplishment of said strategic goals and helps address business disruption, then the business will find ways to "address" those concerns by working around the EA, and the vicious cycle of shadow IT, duplication of systems, convoluted processes, lack of governance, etc. will inevitably ensue.
References
Allega, P.,
Burton, B. (2018). Massively Disruptive Events Require a Nonlinear Approach to
Enterprise Architecture. Gartner. February.
Bernard, S. A.
(2012). An introduction to enterprise architecture. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7.
AuthorHouse.
Blosch, M.,
Burton, B., Walker, M. (2017). Build the Design Capability of Your EA Practice
to Drive Digital Innovation. Gartner. February.
Blosch, M.,
Osmond, N., Norton, D. (2016). Enterprise Architects Combine Design Thinking,
Lean Startup and Agile to Drive Digital Innovation. Gartner. February.
Brand, S., Smith,
M. (2018). EA Business-Value Metrics You Must Have Today. Gartner. May.
Burke, B.,
Burton, B. (2017). Stage Planning a Business-Outcome-Driven Enterprise
Architecture. Gartner. p. 9. March.
