Architecture & Governance 2005 Survey Findings
A&G Magazine recently completed its first reader survey, and we thank everyone for their rapid and informative responses. Based on your feedback, we were able to gather meaningful intelligence that will help us make the editorial content in A&G more relevant to you, the Reader.
If the successful response to this survey is any indication, it also makes us wonder if occasional surveys might be useful research vehicles to gather and share reader perspectives on topics of interest. We are, of course, sensitive to the time constraints of our readers and will do our best to avoid “over-surveying.” Stay tuned on this topic. If you have opinions on this, positive or negative, or suggestions for survey topics, please forward a note to editor@architectureandgovernance.com with your thoughts.
This survey included the usual questions to identify reader demographics as well as additional questions to learn what is on the mind of A&G readers. As a quick summary, the answers suggest that A&G readers generally understand and embrace the EA and ITG disciplines and are actively engaged in increasing their own skills, improving execution, and getting results. Improving their organizations’ maturity appears to drive most readers, with a smaller, but still significant, subset struggling with launching or gaining support for their programs.
Who Reads A&G?
First and perhaps most important, the reader demographic questions confirmed that the magazine is indeed reaching active practitioners and other parties interested in enterprise architecture and IT Governance. Fully 75 percent selected “enterprise architect,” an executive role, or an IT strategy/planning role. An additional 10 percent are from related architecture roles. This critical mass further validates that the results of secondary questions are representative of the target audience.
When asked to identify their organizational profiles, 32 percent identified themselves as from Fortune 1000 firms and 20 percent from government. Also standing out was a group of readers selecting “Global 2000” and “Small/Medium Business,” accounting for nearly 20 percent. This is consistent with recent analyst research suggesting that the EA and ITG disciplines are gaining traction in those segments. The remaining responses represent consultants and others professionally engaged in EA and ITG activities.
EA and ITG Challenges and Top Issues
While traditional demographic results confirm the identity of A&G readers, the responses to the “EA & IT Challenges” and “Top Issues” questions were the most enlightening. One surprising finding was the 50 percent response rate identifying “cultural acceptance of EA or IT Governance” as the top challenge. While this was the largest single item chosen by readers, what is remarkable is how much that percentage has decreased. As recently as 3 years ago, cultural non-acceptance was identified as an issue for more than 70 percent of the respondents in most surveys. Though it would be dangerous to read too much into this improvement, in comparison to historical results, this response suggests that EA and ITG concepts are becoming mainstream, or at least as mainstream as they have ever been.
The second largest grouping of challenges, averaging 42 percent of respondents, concerned “taking EA/ITG to the next level, applying EA/ITG to real-world activities” and “communicating EA/ITG results.” These results reveal that a significant subset of readers have embraced these disciplines and have made some progress, or at least have established a foothold. EA/ITG programs often “hit a wall” at some point in their evolution as they discover that they need to have a broader and deeper impact on processes, infrastructure and projects. Comments from presenters and case studies at EA Conferences, such as the Enterprise Architectures Conference, support this observation and the general trend that practitioners today are seeking, and executives that initially sponsored EA and ITG activities are demanding, quantifiable results from these programs. They need to “Make EA and ITG Real” by “applying” the concepts to real-world problems. The need by practitioners for improvement reflects, if nothing else, their desire to continue to pursue EA/ITG and their belief that it can make a difference in the management of their organizations.
Finally, 24 percent of respondents identified challenges with learning to effectively launch, justify, gain the required executive sponsor, and build a plan for EA/ITG. Much of the freeform comments from readers focused on this area, with many seeking advice and recommendations on tips and techniques to overcome startup difficulties. While 24 percent is still a significant subset of readers, it is also a reduction from recent years. The fact that 76 percent did NOT identify this as an issue supports the conclusion that EA/ITG practitioners believe these disciplines must be implemented as ongoing programs. A majority appear to have managed to establish those programs, albeit not at the maturity level many would like, based on their other survey responses.
Overall, the survey findings from this section bode well for the EA/ITG disciplines, with significant improvement over previously published surveys. This author does freely note that those other surveys did not involve the same sample audience as this A&G survey.
Reader Interests
In the “Rate Your Interest” section of the survey, readers were asked to rate their interest in various EA/ITG and IT Management topics on a scale from 1 (low) to 7 (high). See Figure 1 for a reproduction of the topic list from the survey. Three significant findings are apparent from this section.
- EA/ITG practitioners are interested in everything! Nearly 90 percent of the responses across all questions identified an interest level of 4 (average) or higher, with more than 65 percent rating their interest level as a 6 or 7 (highest). These results suggest that readers believe that very few areas of IT are beyond the scope of the EA/ITG disciplines, including strategic alignment and IT strategy, various asset management concerns, project and portfolio management and most IT business processes.
- The three topics on EA Best Practices, EA Modeling, and IT/Business Strategic Alignment ranked very high, with 80 percent choosing an interest level of 6 or 7. These results are consistent with the prior observation that readers are interested in “making EA/ITG real,” improving their own skills and improving results.
- A few categories had more widely distributed response profiles, with 25 percent choosing interest levels of 1 (low) to 3, suggesting some slight ambivalence on the part of the responding population. Note that even in these cases, 75 percent of the respondents chose 4 (average) or above. These categories included IT Financial Management, Business Continuity Planning, Service Delivery and Management, and Application Development and Delivery. This is an interesting anomaly given the consistency across the rest of the survey about the need to “make EA/ITG real” and the fact that these processes and analytics are perceived by many (75 percent) to be important for EA/ITG. One possible explanation is that these respondents represent the previously identified 24 percent who had not yet successfully launched an EA/ITG program and thus had not yet recognized the value of linking with these internal processes.
Conclusion
EA/ITG programs are alive and growing within the A&G reader community. While this is not a surprise given that this is, after all, A&G Magazine, it is nonetheless positive to note that most readers are focused on the need to improve their skills, the quality of their programs, and to have impact. Furthermore, results from the matrix of “reader interest” questions demonstrate the breadth of issues on the minds of readers, reflecting the true strategic scope and operational breadth of the EA & ITG disciplines.
by George Paras, the editor of Architecture & Governance Magazine. Paras is a former Meta Group analyst and is currently the Vice President of Strategy for Troux Technologies, Inc.
