There once was a time when Enterprise Architecture was the domain of the anointed few who sat in their ivory tower and tossed technology wisdom over the wall. If the users had their own ideas, the architecture police arrived to prevent unapproved designs. This triggered religious debates over technology, IT infighting, and generally brought projects to a standstill. The outcome was negative on the value scale and led to marginalized, or worse, terminated EA functions. Does that sound familiar?

EAIG Member Booz Allen Hamilton Promotes the Modernization of Federal Agencies’ Information Technology In Support Of Business Transformation.  In recent months, Federal agencies raced to meet OMB’s May 31, 2005, deadline for achieving “green” ratings on Enterprise Architecture (EA) maturity as part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) assessment. OMB had established a target for all Federal agencies to achieve a Level 3 or higher (out of a possible 5) on its EA Assessment Framework by that date.

Good IT governance is a required ingredient for any organization or company to succeed in the 21st century. It provides the mechanism by which the executive team can capture the appropriate information and then leverage that information to plan, manage and verify decision making, which accomplishes the act of transforming the business.

Without it, a company stumbles over itself and becomes grossly inefficient as it strives to maintain its position as an industry leader or keep up with the competition.

Enterprise Architecture and Standards (EA&S) provide shared situational awareness to the entire organization’s operating model and enable the PMT and functional review teams to manage by exception. Traditional IT practitioners will equate the term architecture with a representation of hardware and software. Enterprise architecture, however, includes the technical architecture as well as the process and organizational views.

Today’s Enterprise Architecture (EA) programs often “hit a wall” when attempting to demonstrate their value to the business. While EA teams may be effective at launching a program and perhaps creating initial deliverables, other stakeholder communities within IT and the business often do not directly appreciate the value of EA work.

Stakeholders Rely on EA Solutions to Leverage ‘Space Situation Awareness’ Data.  An effective national defense strategy demands dominance in air, on land, and at sea. To adequately defend these arenas also requires superiority in space. The key to space superiority is Space Situation Awareness (SSA), a complete understanding of environmental and man-made events in space.

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THE CHALLENGE BEFORE US.  Every year, healthy and visionary businesses use information technology (IT) as a strategic weapon. Historically, the language of IT management involved day-to-day operations and the moving parts of IT systems. Today, IT executives are increasingly expected to present their organizations in the context of the business—aligning IT initiatives to business priorities and strategies. Business leadership insists on ”hard-wiring” IT spend, performance, and future plans to business value.

Oversees Successful Implementation of EA.  A company’s embrace of Enterprise Architecture is rarely a gradual progression, where its IT executives spend years studying the value of EA before dipping their toes in the water with a series of pilots.

Rather, there is usually a protagonist that puts a match to the fuel, as was the case in 2001 at Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., a Time Warner Company.