Building an Enterprise Architecture Service Catalog

If you are building an Enterprise Architecture practice in your organization one of the most valuable deliverables you can use to communicate the services you provide is an Enterprise Architecture Catalog of services.

This is the best way to educate your stakeholders on how you can help them. Enterprise Architecture can be viewed as an internal consultancy to help your executives get the vision for the enterprise to get from an idea to an actionable plan which can realistically be operationalize over time.

I like to separate the Enterprise Architecture services into three distinct offerings:

• Technology Advisory Services - Technology Advisory Services works to align business and IT strategies/ architectures, optimize IT performance/value and optimize IT costs in order to?manage risk and achieve desired business results.
• Business Strategy Services - Business Strategy Services partners with the business to assist with strategic business planning, road mapping, goals, objectives and tactic development, maturity assessments, resource management planning and business capability alignment.
• Process Optimization and Digital Transformation Services - Enterprise Architecture partners with business leaders to provide guidance for business process optimization utilizing Lean Six Sigma methodology and assists business leaders to modernize legacy solutions and processes in order to meet business objectives.

It is important to create a distinction between these areas as Transformation Services tend to disrupt current state enterprise architecture practices, standards and principles. You may need a way to create exceptions to these standards as you are building out your transformation which may include fail fast, proof of concept efforts which do not align to typical day to day operations.

It is important to note that you may not be capable of providing all of these services out of the gate but listen to your business and their needs. If you are hearing that any of these artifacts will be of use, build them! Also, when communicating this catalog, make sure you include examples of the artifacts, it really helps leaders to visualize the deliverable you are producing. Over time, your catalog will mature and you will be able to leverage these artifacts to avoid "re-inventing the wheel" every time. Always remember to leverage your EA community, one of us has built these deliverables and would be happy to share examples, just reach out and ask!

Technology Advisory Services Catalog

Below are the proposed deliverable types for Technology Advisory Services Enterprise Architecture can deliver:

Enterprise Architecture assistance with RFQ's, RFI's and RFP's: If you current procurement processes do not have EA engaged already. Would recommend some outreach that EA is involved in all technology acquisition processes.

Infrastructure, Application & Data Architecture: Enterprise Architecture will sometimes assist in building IT, Application and Data Architecture. Many of these roles maybe federated or centralized across the organization. When needed, Enterprise Architects may lead or support construction of these artifacts. In the TOGAF graphic below shows the artifacts developed for Business, Information Systems (Applications & Data) and Infrastructure Technology.

Project Concept and Charter Diagrams: Every project concept or charter should have a supporting diagrams for the current state and desired end state. If possible include transition diagrams should the project require intermittent stages of the architecture to be delivered over time.

Non Functional Requirements: Every organization should have a set baseline non functional requirements for all technology projects. These non-functional requirements should be directly tied to your Enterprise Architecture Principles. For more information on developing standard non functional requirements for your enterprise, see my blog titled: Optimizing the Non Functional Requirements Process.

Gap Analysis Services: These are services where you maybe comparing things like feature, function or requirements against multiple solutions being considered for the enterprise.

Reference Architectures: Develop and maintaining your organizations reference architecture. A reference architecture provides a template solution for an architecture for a particular domain or for the enterprise as a whole. It also provides a common vocabulary with which to discuss implementations, often with the aim to stress commonality. These generally are housed and maintained inside your Enterprise Architecture repository and help with mapping to your technology components and standards you have for your enterprise.

Technology Guidelines & Standards: Enterprise Architecture is accountable for building, managing and governing standards for the enterprise. New and changing standards should be following the Architecture Review Board process. As for guidelines, in some cases a more prescriptive guide is needed to help teams adhere to standards. For example Monitoring and Logging Guidelines or User Interface/User Experience Guidelines.

Technology Whitepapers: From time to time, enterprise architects will partner with domain experts to build whitepapers which can be shared with internal and external stakeholders. For example, Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Smart Grid or ServiceNow: The best thing to happen to IT Service Management.

3rd Party Analysts Research: Enterprise Architecture should have direct access into your 3rd party analyst organizations such as Gartner or Forrester. This is a great service to facilitate for stakeholders! You can help your stakeholders determine target technology companies or best practices to address the challenges they are trying to solve for. I have also found this information useful to help with RFP processes including identifying requirements and business case details such as benefits, risks, and implementation approaches.

Technology Roadmaps: Develop of technology roadmaps which would include application or infrastructure roadmaps, technical health roadmaps or project roadmaps impacting technology domains or business areas.

Business Strategy Services

Enterprise Architecture Principles: As mentioned above, Enterprise Architecture principles are the foundation that ties your organizational strategy to how technology decisions are made in the enterprise that directly support the strategy. For more information on establishing Enterprise Architecture principles see my blog, Developing Enterprise Architecture Principles which align to Strategy.

Strategic Business Planning: Every year the senior business leaders come together to develop their annual or multi year strategic plan. Enterprise Architecture should have a seat at this table and help in the development of the artifacts needed to achieve the plan to include roadmaps, enterprise architecture principles, Strategy on a Page (SoaP) and capability heat maps.

Strategy on a Page (SoaP): A strategy on a page is?a one-page summary that visually displays the organization's strategy. A strategy on a page is also known as a one page strategy or strategy on one page. Effective SoaPs are often the preferred tool for communicating a strategy throughout the organization and to stakeholders.

Strategic Roadmaps: These roadmaps are viewpoints which can be driven by product, enterprise projects or capability roadmaps depicting overtime what change is expected by the enterprise.

Operating and Desktop Procedures Development and Review: I may have just blown your mind with this one right? Helping stakeholders with their operational and desktop procedures is a fantastic way to dig into a functions process and the potential inefficiency in that process and the technology that is used to support the processes.

Portfolio Roadmaps: These are specific roadmaps tied to a core function of your business. These roadmaps would include all major operational and capital projects impacting that portfolio of your business.

Maturity Assessments: These can be done manually or the enterprise could use 3rd party analyst models to measure maturity. For IT, I highly recommend Gartner IT Score Maturity Model. For the business, I prefer the iSixSigma maturity model.

Business Capability Roadmaps: Capability roadmaps?outlines an organization plans to enable or improve capabilities over a period of time. Rather than tracking specific projects or initiatives, capability roadmaps articulate the initiatives or projects of an organization plans to be capable of in a given time period. These roadmaps can also be developed as heat maps which demonstrate where an enterprise has gaps servicing certain capabilities for the organization.

Stakeholder Maps: Stakeholder maps can be used to?analyze and understand who is involved in a project or organization, and how these people, organizations and aspects are connected. Most projects are influenced by a large number of different stakeholders.

Governance Facilitation and Charter Development: As organizations mature so does their governance processes. When there is opportunity to optimize or establish governance, it is highly recommended to engage with Enterprise Architecture to help lead this change. For more information, see my blog, Aligning Strategy, Architecture, Process Management and Governance.

Process Optimization and Digital Transformation Services

Architecture Vision: Architecture Vision?describes how the new capability will meet the business goals and strategic objectives and address the stakeholder concerns when implemented. Architecture visions can be used for specific project as well in combination with your concept or charter diagrams. It is recommended that any transformation effort that a complete architecture vision be provided. For more information on Architecture Vision see this following article from TOGAF, Phase A: Architecture Vision

Business Process Workflows: Business process workflows can be used to help with describing the change that will occur with a new engagement or transformation effort. These workflows should depict current and future state workflows from the transformation.

Organizational Transformation Planning: With any transformation effort, it is expected that there maybe changes which need to be made to the organization in terms of possible re-organizations or the addition of new service functions. This planning should include timing and detailed transition planning to support the change.

Digital Strategy Planning: When implementing digital transformation it is usually required to have a supporting digital plan. These artifacts are used to communicate the change to your board, shareholders, employees or external stakeholders. Without an effective digital strategy, you run the risk of failing even before you begin. Old school digital strategies are just not as effective today as they once were, our world has changed completely. For more information, see McKinsey Digital, The new digital edge: Rethinking strategy for the post pandemic era and A roadmap for a digital transformation.

You maybe thinking, there is no way my current Enterprise Architecture team can support the scope of this catalog. Remember, catalogs are not a fix state. Start small and grow over time. As you deliver these work products and drive value, organizations will typically want to continue to invest in maturing the Enterprise Architecture practice. A mature Enterprise Architecture practice can save an organization millions in consulting fees. When this is done well, you will have your own internal consultancy partnered together to drive strategic change in your company.

Remember, publish these services on your service management request dashboards like ServiceNow, your internal intranets like SharePoint/Teams and share them often with your stakeholders!

As always, feedback welcome! If you are offering additional services in your enterprise architecture practice, please send and I will add to our catalog!