Opening Thoughts: Business and IT Transformation

Welcome to the second issue of Architecture & Governance Magazine. I’d like to thank everyone for your supportive response to the premier issue. Particular thanks go to those of you who offered suggestions on topics for future articles. Your feedback is an important part of our editorial planning process. Please keep your suggestions coming!

In our second issue, we explore the concept of “Business and IT Transformation.” That simple phrase describes the single, driving imperative of every organization — to transform toward its business vision through strategy and execution.

While the phrase is simple, installing the IT Governance competencies needed to establish vision, identify strategy and systemically pursue that strategy is challenging. With vision a moving target, this is not a one-time exercise. In Embrace Enterprise Transformation as a Core Concept we describe the dimensions of the challenge. Each organization must develop processes, analytics and supporting infrastructure to facilitate the transformation process.

As a critical component of IT Governance, Portfolio Management helps rationalize and manage trade-offs. In an excerpt from his book IT Portfolio Management Step-by- Step, Robert Handler describes the roles required of the modern CIO. He offers insight on change management, governance and lifecycle management as critical parts of the portfolio management process.

Describing the enterprise architecture within the enterprise context, Jonas Lamis offers The Coming Architecture-Driven Enterprise. In it, he explains that an effective IT organization cannot function in a vacuum. EA processes help provide an end-to-end view to understand the relationships that exist across all the moving parts of the enterprise. As a critical part of IT Governance, the EA process helps you see the target and manage to it.

These and other contributions are part of our ongoing commitment to bring leading IT Governance concepts to our readers. You are invited to send me a quick email with your questions/comments on this issue, as well as thoughts for future issue topics, at editor@troux.com.

by George Paras, Editor, Architecture & Governance