Enterprise Architecture “Three Wishes” Yields Insight into the State of the EA Discipline
“If confronted with an EA genie, my three wishes would be:” That question garnered hundreds of free-form responses and was one of the most revealing questions in the March A&G magazine reader survey. Such open-ended questions often yield interesting results and A&G readers did not disappoint. Answers demonstrated that while some members of the EA community have some sense of frustration and, perhaps, resignation, others expressed their humor and a sense of pride at the state of the EA discipline. Overall, the responses send the message that EA is hard work and that, almost universally, respondents believe that a primary challenge is to demonstrate value by producing results. To achieve this objective, their wishes included the search for ways to overcome obstacles and inhibitors to their success. These included raising executive awareness, obtaining active support from business and IT leaders alike, and the implementation of critical capabilities including governance mechanisms, accurate current state information, process discipline, modeling expertise, and tools to support their work.
In addition to the open-ended “genie” question, the survey focused specifically on discovering the true role of EA within our readers’ organizations. Several questions explored the relationship between EA, common IT focus areas and IT Governance, with answers revealing that practitioners find all of these processes overlapping and closely aligned. Other questions examined the degree of sponsorship and support by C-level executives. For these, readers indicate executive involvement as strong and growing. The final set of questions focused on results, inquiring about value perceptions including risk management, ability to perform gap analysis, and the overall ability of EA to serve the enterprise. This final grouping demonstrated the largest opportunity for improvement.
EA Foundation Supports Critical IT Processes
Of the hundreds of respondents from government and Fortune 1000 enterprises that participated, 80 percent see Enterprise Architecture as a necessary foundation for strategic planning. Readers were asked to draw linkages between EA information and critical management concerns including; daily operations (36%), project management (56%), financial management (29%) and strategic planning (80%). In their answers, respondents embraced the notion that EA information serves a purpose beyond tactical project design activities alone. In fact, the responses demonstrate an overall appreciation for the role EA plays across the tactical to strategic management spectrum. Other responses in the free-form reply section suggested a role for EA supporting change management, performance management, and establishing service offerings.
A similar question explored the relationship between the concept of IT Governance and those same management concerns. Perhaps reflecting the market association between the term IT Governance and Project Management, survey respondents found a strong linkage between the two, at 63 percent. Strategic Planning also scored high, at 56 percent, though not as strongly as the 80 percent association identified between EA and Strategic Planning.
These results suggest that the concepts of EA, ITG, Strategic Planning, Project and Financial Management appear to be closely related in the minds, if not the practices, of A&G readers. With an overlap in key business areas such as strategic planning and project management, the EA practitioner can serve as a critical missing link between IT and the business.
A final question explored overlaps between EA and various functional areas including; the Strategy function (74%), IT Operations (48%), Infrastructure (69%) and Application Development (64%). While perhaps premature to pronounce the “EA Ivory Tower” dead, it is clear that A&G readers have embraced the idea that it is valuable to engage broadly across the IT organization.
EA Programs on the Executive Agenda
Executives are already taking notice and, while challenges remain, a shift is underway. The data shows that 60 percent of respondents see C-level executives and the Board becoming more involved in EA initiatives during the next 12 months. The role of the executive is changing as well. While 49 percent of executives made the decision to invest in an EA program, nearly 25 percent of C-level executives defined the overarching strategy for the EA program and more than 20 percent recommended an EA approach.
In a surprise result, 36 percent responded that their C-level executives issued a mandate that the organization develop an EA. This is nearly twice the number of government-affiliated respondents to the survey, whose EA programs typically are mandated. This demonstrates that executive EA mandates have indeed spread to the Fortune 1000, indicating a strong show of faith in the potential value of EA.
The EA Value Questions
Unfortunately, while many respondents share faith in the intrinsic value of EA, most cannot prove it. More than 80 percent of respondents do not have a quantifiable way to determine the value of their current EA program. In fact, open-ended commentary revealed that “this is one of the most pressing issues today.” Another respondent said that, “companies would love to find [a way to assign value]” and “need to find one— fast.”
Based on the inability to quantify the value of EA, it comes as no surprise that fewer than 23 percent of respondents are willing to stake their jobs or reputations on their understanding of current IT assets and risks. Fewer than 12 percent of respondents say that their current EA solution supports the full scope of their initiatives and nearly 68 percent would like a tool or product that can help reduce risk and provide a practical process to bridge the current state of their IT organization with the desired future state. One respondent quipped, “a crystal ball would suffice” but more often the response was, “is there such a thing?”
While the promise of an Enterprise Architecture program is gaining acceptance at every level in an organization, the roadmap to success remains illusive for many.
Responses to the Genie
No question on the survey was more revealing of respondents’ thoughts and perspectives than the “three wishes” question. Of the questions permitting free-form responses, this question had the largest response and produced nearly 450 wishes. Clearly, survey respondents had a lot on their minds, and the responses were both informative and entertaining.
The wishes heard most often were those that reflected enterprise architects’ overwhelming desire to make a difference in their organizations. To be effective, many were looking for “EA completely embedded within the business;” “IT Governance that mandates IT purchases for EA standards;” and, “to make EA a direct, explicit part of governance so strategy fully aligns with and supports business strategy.”
However, these are just a few of a very large and diverse list. In general, reader wishes were grouped into several broad categories that reflect the complexity behind the role of enterprise architect. They include wishes for; better communications, governance that is more effective, useful models, more money, better processes, a jump-start on SOA, incremental staff, stakeholder support, more time, better tools, and wishes for value.
The wishes speak for themselves. Below is a representative sample from the survey, grouped into the above categories:
Better Communications:
- A single, agreed-to definition of EA
- Give me the wisdom and the ability to effectively communicate with upper management (and members of the organization) to obtain their understanding and unfailing support of EA.
- Improve communication between IT/Architecture and end-user community.
- Change EA name to something more aligned to the business
Effective Governance:
- Integration of EA Governance into daily operations
- Governance by mandate
- Full IT Governance that mandates all IT purchases must fit EA standards
- Commitment to execute on EA-produced actionable items
Useful Models:
- What is the ultimate generic industry model? (business architecture)
More Money:
- A multi-year budget for EA activities that was developed as a result of strategic planning, not cost cutting
- Enterprise budget for Enterprise Architecture
Better Processes:
- EA Easy button!!
- Fairy dust to ensure that the EA remains evergreen
- Integrated Portfolio, Governance, EA Repository
- Make EA (true EA, not the IT pretender) a direct and explicit part of governance so strategy, business design and outcome management fully align with and support the explicit vision and strategy
SOA:
- Proponents of EA/SOA in the marketplace focused more time and energy on helping the average manager (and above) understand the economic benefits and increasing returns of EA/SOA initiatives, using management/business vocabularies
- Simple, one-click migration from an EA into an SOA
- SOA roadmap and/or checklist
Incremental Staff:
- Find new EA talent to hire
- More staff (and in particular, good development analysts)
Stakeholder Support:
- Awareness of Data as an asset at the board level
- Business Process awareness at the C-Level
- Embracing IT Governance at the CEO Level
- Give my business leaders the forethought to involve architecture at the thought /planning stage (so we become an enabler rather than being perceived as a barrier)
- Have a seat at the executive table
More Time:
- Time commitment to do this right
Better Tools:
- Give me a repository to save all the info in, to version it all and to print the EA docs from
- Complete our current architecture and store in a CMDB/EA Tool
- Ease of traceability and analysis between architectural artifacts for financial, project and strategic analysis
- A tool that provides me the means to develop executable architecture at a low enough level to that it is useful to my customer, my testers, and to me
- Easy to use repository tools integrated with business architecture (process, data, location organization, laws & regulations, projects), applications and infrastructure that can manage current, next target and ideal state views
- Tools, tools, tools (maybe just one)
Value:
- Better ways to quantify risk, value of effort and effect
- Eliminate silo thinking, see the big picture
- Provide a bullet proof business case for EA that uses current real and historical data from this enterprise rather than forecasting potential benefits or playing the "trust me" and I will show you in two years game.
- Emphasize the visionary attribute of EA in everyday problems/analysis/solutions.
- Grant instant understanding of all EA issues and benefits to the entire organization
Methodology
Architecture & Governance fielded the online survey sponsored by Troux Technologies between March 10 and March 17, 2006 among a sample of 2,400 qualified EA and IT Governance practitioners. Respondent demographics closely mirrored the baseline readership profiles established by the September 2005 A & G survey. Sixty-five percent selected “enterprise architect,” an executive role, or an IT strategy/planning role. Project managers comprised 10 percent while 24 percent responded as “other”, which is inclusive of general architecture roles and consultants.
When asked to identify their organizational profile, 30 percent identified themselves from Fortune 1000 firms and 22 percent from government. Also standing out was a group of readers selecting “Global 2000” and “Small/Medium Business,” accounting for nearly 23 percent. This is consistent with recent analyst research suggesting that the EA and ITG disciplines are gaining traction in that segment. The remaining responses represent consultants and others professionally engaged in EA and ITG activities.
Conclusion
No response sums up the sentiments of the readers responding to the “Three Wishes” question better than one simple list, supplied by a respondent looking for the Genie’s help to be highly effective in his/her role as an enterprise architect. Here are the wishes:
- Tell me my current state
- Tell me my future state
- Get me from 1 to 2
Can it get much clearer than that?
by George S. Paras, Editor-in-Chief
