Is your Enterprise Architecture function chipped, cracked or broken? Probably.
When you are looking for a new role you get a very good insight into the challenges and problems a business is facing. With 17 years of experience in the industry I am very much tuned in to what people don’t say when they are explaining a business challenge. It’s in the body language and the choice of words that they use.
So, if you are listening carefully it will be clear that the business value of architecture is being questioned and there is a frustration with Enterprise Architecture (EA) from senior leadership especially in engineering and operations. It is perceived as an Ivory Tower and remember perception is their reality!
I don’t actually find that very surprising, because everyone is struggling with delivering successful architecture. That may seem like a bold statement but if you have any of the following initiatives or challenges in your organisation then your Enterprise Architecture function isn’t working as well as it could!
· Digital Transformation investment to jump start your IT service portfolio.
· Cyber-attacks and Malware breakouts.
· IT Service outages due to capacity, performance or resilience.
· Software license compliance issues.
· Legacy IT services with crippling support costs.
· Escalating and surprise running costs for your cloud deployments.
· Emergency unplanned IT upgrades of existing IT services.
· Single ERP, Cloud, AI or Mobility strategy (for the record not strategies…)
Your Architecture function is one of the most important in your company, if it gets the architecture wrong and it doesn’t align with the strategy and engage with both IT and the business it could sink your company! Not immediately but slowly…it’s more like a ‘creeping death’.
It is time that architecture moves from maintaining its theoretical documented future to an active front line position with stakeholders, it should be concerned with the short and long-term goals with robust measurements.
I will be posting more blogs in the next week with some practical steps to help you improve your architecture function and protect your business!
I haven't heard EA being referred to as ivory tower for at least 5 years so had assumed those practices had been retired. It is key that architecture is available, practical and relevant to the business context - yes the IT is important but not of itself for itself.
Senior Cloud Architect / PO
6 年Interesting
Lead Enterprise Architect at UK Parliament
6 年Completely agree that EA should be recognised as a business capability- it’s a standard view. Where EA sometimes struggles is with the trust and confidence of IT. A normal attitude is to focus on delivery, often at the expense of meeting the business expectations (and then sell it as taking an “Agile” approach). IT and business stakeholders get bored or interests move on. EA has an important role to maintain the vision (at least for as long as that stays the businesses vision!)
Voice-Over Professional, Data Modeler
6 年I have developed architecture at the enterprise level, but I'm a data architect and I work on project-level work when that is what is available. I've seen a lot, from companies that are deeply invested in Enterprise Architecture to those who don't appear to be aware of it, or think buying and implementing an ERP solution will do that on its own. If anything, I think the trend at many companies is away from a coherent enterprise architecture and an embrace of micromanagement and the bottom-line in the form of Agile Development. It is certainly possible to plan long-term in an Agile framework, but the paradigm conspires against it and the focus isn't even on the trees over the forest, but on the leaves. In recent projects in which I've been a part, I've done my best to raise awareness of those issues (critical path methodology to properly account for inter-project dependencies, etc.), but it runs counter to The Narrative and I get to watch avoidable train wrecks, or, like Cassandra, the fall of Troy, on a too regular basis.
Enterprise Architect - Strategy & Transformation
6 年There should be a last category ...non-existent