A&G Survey of EA and IT Transformation Practices Reveals Increased Utilization of EA

Architecture & Governance Magazine recently completed its annual reader survey focused on understanding how enterprise architecture concepts are helping drive business transformation initiatives across the enterprise.

Of the 289 IT and business professionals who took this year’s survey, the vast majority came from entities with 5,000 or more employees. While the numbers were broad, the answers were insightful.

Among the questions we asked . . .

Are you currently working on a major transformation project? If yes, which are you working on? Among the top three vote getters:

• 61 percent said they were working on a growth and innovation initiative
  
• 51 percent selected IT investment planning
  
• 49 percent chose cost management and reduction projects

The answers demonstrated that our readers are involved in multiple projects spanning both sides of the IT divide—reducing costs and growing the business. It also revealed a shift away from mostly cost management projects to investment planning and growth projects, taking more of an offense-oriented approach to IT.

Are you currently using EA to manage the planning and execution of your transformation projects? If yes, which? The four most popular answers:

• 57 percent said growth and innovation
  
• 44 percent selected cost management/reduction
  
• 42 percent chose investment planning
  
• 33 percent said risk management/compliance

The responses demonstrated an increase in the use of EA as a future-state process. EA is now driving the majority of IT-enabled growth and innovation. At the same time, EA is still being used as an internal tool as exemplified in its use with cost management.

How would you describe the “maturity” of your EA projects?

• 37 percent said they were just getting started in forming a team and identifying processes
  
• 35 percent selected the option that they were busy modeling EA artifacts
  
• 17 percent chose the option that they had moved past data collection and are using analytics for determining information attributes and relationships
  
• Only a scant 10 percent said that EA results are being used across the enterprise for strategic business alignment and/or planning

These responses demonstrated that while some organizations are in the information-gathering stage, many more have moved beyond that to broadly collecting information for their EA analysis or conducting the analysis itself. The bottom line is that there is a growing maturity in EA process over years past.

Who is driving the decision to involve the enterprise architecture team in supporting/driving large-scale transformation initiatives across your organization? The top three responses:

• 34 percent responded that it was the CIO
• 25 percent selected the enterprise architect
• 16 percent said the IT director

CIOs are increasingly driving the EA strategy across the enterprise, which reflects the previous responses regarding the major transformation projects, such as those involving growth and innovation as well as investment planning.

Where does the budget of your EA program reside? The top three responses:

• 35 percent said the CIO
• 26 percent offered that it was attached to a business initiative
• 24 percent said the budget resided within the EA team

EA budgets are clearly being controlled by the CIO. At the same time, they are increasingly having a business focus. The business is more involved than ever in EA funding and success. EA is no longer just a cost-mitigating expense.

Which of the following key metrics are used (or will be used) to define successful EA projects in your organization? The seven leading responses were:

• 52 percent said return on investment
  
• 42 percent selected business impact analysis
  
• 40 percent chose total cost of ownership
  
• 34 percent responded balanced scorecard
  
• 24 percent said time to market
  
• 24 percent selected demonstrable growth
  
• 13 percent chose six sigma

Enterprise architects define the metrics that matter. The three that scored the highest are those that are objective and measurable. As opposed to years past where the typical EA initiative was loosely defined and even more loosely measured, our respondents indicate that they now have to demonstrate measurable success to justify ongoing EA and transformation initiatives.

What are the top CIO-generated initiatives of your organization in 2007? The top six choices included:

• 65 percent said it was to standardize the IT people processes and technology
  
• 54 percent selected integration/SOA/corporate agility
  
• 49 percent chose rationalize the portfolio and get cost out
  
• 46 percent said it was to manage projects with more predictability
  
• 38 percent selected growth/innovation
  
• 32 percent chose improve operational risk management of IT

CIOs continue to focus on a broad set of initiatives that support both running and growing the business. They concentrate on risk and cost mitigation, but they also have growing attention focused on agility, growth, and innovation.

How well are you supporting your CIO today in: identifying opportunities to get costs out, planning of new projects such as SOA and BPM, and decision making for growth opportunities?

While the respondents gave themselves a slightly above-average score on the first question, they were far more optimistic about achieving the second two. This reflects the fact that the EA team is doing a better job of supporting CIOs as they embark on new projects.

How involved is the executive team in making decisions regarding EA?

• 72 percent said they were somewhat to very involved in those decisions

The involvement of the executive team in EA decision making is at an all-time high. This fact acknowledges the tremendous growth in responsibility that the EA team has taken in the last 12–24 months.

For the first time, A&G asked survey participants about their adoption of processes and tools to conduct current-state and future-state analyses for transformation planning.

Do you currently have an accurate way to track and map current-state landscape of your enterprise?

A majority of those surveyed said they lacked such a tool. Of those who answered in the affirmative, however, the majority believed the tool would remain accurate up to a year into the future. A little less than half believed the tool would remain accurate five years out. These answers and others to the survey questions reflect the emerging use of tools to track and analyze the current state of the IT and business environment, while the planning of the future state with such tools is a relatively understood process.

Some of the more interesting responses came when they were asked to identify projects that used EA concepts to drive success.

For example, one reader said his EPA client is using “the EA we’ve developed to ‘get to green’ from a Federal Office of Management and Budget perspective. Federal agencies are required to submit their EAs for assessment to the OMB as part of the President’s Management Agenda Scorecard process.”

Another reader pointed to two projects. The first involves “a next-generation system we are working on to transform the enterprise business processes for a large fund administration system managed by a nonprofit. The second one is for a large integration effort to bring more than 13 vendors into an integrated solution.”

And another said his team “is using a phased approach to create one single centralized credit service/cache. When we began, there were five individual credit applications/stores. At this time, we have created a centralized credit service/cache and have eliminated three of the stove-pipe credit stores/applications.”

As usual, we encourage you to send us your comments on this or any other article. Our e-mail address is editor@ArchitectureandGovernance.com.

Holt Hackney is the managing editor of Architecture & Governance Magazine.