Level: Introductory S. E Slack (sally@sslack.com), Lifestyle and Technology Writer, Freelance writer
06 Nov 2007 Enterprise architecture involves planning—for now and for
the future. Learn how your architecture design can benefit from a strong
understanding of IT/business alignment factors.
This series has explored various aspects of enterprise architecture. This
installment looks specifically at planning for growth, which is a critical area:
Without this type of planning, information and technology won't come together
properly to help an organization accomplish its business strategies. And because,
above all else, enterprise architecture should strive to provide business value,
it's critical to understand how you can make a difference starting right now.
Gartner Research defines enterprise architecture as "the process of
translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by
creating, communicating, and improving the key principles and models that describe
the enterprise's future state and enable its revolution." In that spirit, then,
enterprise architecture is a method for creating continuous Information Technology
(IT)/business alignment, among other things. As you read this article, keep that
concept in mind. In this article, I explore how you can build skills and
competencies in business strategy areas to help you create and continue that
IT/business alignment.
Skills and competencies
In the planning phases of an enterprise architecture design, there is less
emphasis on actual design skills and more emphasis on strategic
business skills. As you'll see in this section, aligning the enterprise
architecture properly to the business involves much more than ensuring that
processes are adequately handled.
Understand environmental
forces
As an enterprise architect, you produce a design that affects the entire
corporate environment around you. You probably have strong technical competencies,
or you wouldn't be in the position you're in. And, hopefully, you've got good
interpersonal skills so that you can work easily and effectively with the people
around you. But how strong is your business judgment? Do you have a strong
knowledge of your organization and its goals? Or do you just wait until a project
is assigned to you and try to muddle through it based on your own goals?
Here's an idea to keep the IT/business alignment at the forefront of your
efforts: Attend those "boring" business meetings that seem to cut into your day
and waste your time. Why? Because you'll learn a lot from the things people
say—and don't say.
Here's an example: Architect Joe is asked to attend a meeting that will cover
upcoming changes for the human resources (HR) department. Joe's busy, however,
creating a new enterprise architecture design. He decides he doesn't have time to
attend that meeting and continues to work on his architectural design. Architect
Bob, however, attends the meeting. In it, Bob discovers that the HR department is
moving to a new building. Fine—that's easy enough to deal with. But Bob also
discovers something else: HR is talking about placing exit interviews and
personnel shields online in the future. Because Bob was at the meeting, he: A)
understands long-term HR goals and B) can effectively guide HR by directing them
to vendors he already knows will be able to integrate such an online system easily
into the existing enterprise architecture.
It's easy to see which architect has a better understanding of current and future
HR business goals—and which one does not. Joe's design efforts won't have
the same kind of IT/business alignment that Bob's will, simply because Joe didn't
see the value in attending yet another meeting. Now, I won't pretend that every
meeting you attend is going to result in important information that can critically
affect your design. But it's a good bet that any meeting you don't attend
will have nuggets of information that could help you plan more effectively for the
future. We've all been in meetings where the main points are extremely boring, but
the side conversations have yielded fascinating tidbits that provide more details
about the business environment than any official statement ever could.
Build relationships
Speaking of side conversations, I've made an assumption that you have developed
business relationships in all areas of your organization. From secretaries and
facilities workers to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and all levels of
management, you must know the people within your organization. Each person has
something to contribute that you need—input on how the current architecture truly
works for them and what they would love to see in the future.
You can't easily build relationships across an organization, however, if you just
hang out in your office every day and interact only with people from your
department. You've got to get out and roam the "streets" of your organization to
accurately judge the effectiveness of the enterprise architecture. Some of the
most enlightening information can come from casual conversations with people who
have nothing to do with design or business decisions—the users of the
architecture. These are the folks who work day in and day out with that
all-important IT/business alignment: They are caught in the middle between the
two.
If you haven't built relationships with users or others outside your little
corner of the organization, make it a point right now to do so. You can start by
joining one of those community groups always so prevalent, especially in large
organizations. You know the kind—the holiday decorating team, the community
involvement team, that sort of thing. The next time your manager asks for
volunteers for an organizational group like that, put your hand in the air and
give it your best shot. You'll meet people you never even knew existed in your
organization. And the best part is, these people are social, so they love to talk
and give their input on anything you ask about. So, when you get to know them, you
can pick their brains about aspects of the enterprise architecture (don't talk in
high-tech jargon; keep the conversation simple!), and you'll discover a variety of
wants and needs that you never realized were out there.
If you truly can't join one of these little groups, make new friends at the lunch
counter or in the employees' lounge. It takes a bit of effort on your part to stick
out your hand and say hello, but you'll discover that people will find you
refreshingly delightful. In return, your interest in them and what they think will
spark more conversations and ideas than you ever dreamed possible. It's the worker
bees in particular—the folks on the lower rungs of the
organization—who often have the brightest thoughts. They aren't bogged
down with political correctness; they simply want their jobs to be easier and
faster. Who couldn't learn a lot from people who have no agenda and nothing to
lose by speaking their minds?
Navigate politics and
culture
You, on the other hand, may have a great deal to lose if you speak your mind
without reservation: Corporate politics can be deadly if not navigated correctly.
At higher levels in an organization, people have more to lose: If a budget is
blown, a bonus might be lost. If a process fails, jobs could be eliminated. If an
architectural design doesn't work, an entire department could be sent packing.
That's a lot of pressure!
While corporate politics might be the farthest thing from your mind as you work
on a design, it really should be considered at every step. You might create the
most fabulous, effective design in the world, but if your boss and the Chief
Information Officer (CIO) don't get along, it might never get off the ground.
Knowing that there are political obstacles in your way can save you a lot of time
and effort—and can help you create a design that can transcend those
politics.
So, how do you navigate political waters? Do you go over your boss's head
directly to the CIO to get your design approved so that the issues with your boss
aren't considered when the design is presented? Probably not. The CIO probably
doesn't like you, either, simply because of whom you work for. A better idea? Go
sideways. And get your boss to go sideways, too. Here's what I mean: If you know
that the CIO likes and respects Vasundhara, a different manager, then get your
design in front of Vasundhara and convince him to sell it to the CIO. It might
mean that Vasundhara and your boss go in together to meet with the CIO, which is
fine. The dislike the CIO has for your boss will be tempered by the liking he has
for Vasundhara.
It's sort of like sailing a ship into a narrow bay. Carefully consider your
options on either side, and then determine the right course to take to get your
ship safely to shore. Your new-found skills in relationship building can help
persuade your boss to bring a third party into the mix, too. Remind everyone that
success is the goal; getting there should be a team effort.
A trickier political scenario occurs when you simply don't know what the
behind-the-scenes issues are. If your designs are continually nit-picked and
turned down, it might seem as if it's you that the CIO doesn't like. Don't
jump to conclusions when things don't seem to be going your way. If you're not
getting specific details about what to change and why, chances are that
organizational politics are playing hard and fast where you can't see them. You
might need to do a little digging around to see what you can discover about the
people involved in the decisions—and again, that's where your
relationship-building skills will come in handy. One tip: If you have never made
friends with an executive's secretary or assistant, do it now. You'll learn more
about what's going on from a political perspective at your company from this
person than you'll ever discover from a room full of people who don't work with
that executive on a daily basis.
Tools and techniques
When you're talking about planning for growth in an enterprise architecture, the
tools and techniques involved typically fall into one of these categories:
identification of the architecture's purpose, identification of the business
questions that the architecture will address, and the establishment of business
priorities. Let's take a brief look at each here.
Discover your
architectural purpose
Other than a corporate directive, what's the point of changing or implementing
the enterprise architecture? Sometimes, a design change is requested that makes no
sense to you. In those cases, it's critical that you get to the bottom of the
purpose for the change. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot of time working on a design
that won't make anyone happy because it never truly has a defined purpose.
Without a purpose, then, a design can't be expected to meet current needs, let
alone future needs. If you're getting a lot of input from everywhere, try writing
down the reasons in a spreadsheet format. Compile the reasons until you determine
the most overwhelming reason for making changes. Even this simple technique can
help clarify the architectural purpose.
Frame the problem
You can best understand an architecture's purpose by understanding the business
goals behind requests for change. If HR wants to put exit interviews and other
information online, why? What problem do they think this will tackle? Are there
complaints about the current system, or do they just think it would be cool to put
everything online?
Asking questions about the business purpose points you in the right direction for
your design—and you can then point the organization in the right
direction. If putting HR information online won't be an adequate solution, you can
find the solution that will be. Sometimes, clients don't really understand the
underlying problem they're trying to address. It's your job to help them define
it, then create the right design to resolve it.
Using the right framework for your organization is key to facilitating the
implementation of your enterprise architecture when you clearly understand the
problems you face. See the Resources section for a link
to more information on how you can build your enterprise architecture using
communication and the right framework.
Clarify business
priorities
Here's where the skills and competencies mentioned earlier come into play. You
can effectively create an enterprise design only if you clearly understand the
priorities of the business. While it might be nice to get HR completely online, if
business priorities dictate that the Sales department be fully online by the end
of the year, then HR might not have any priority at all. Or, it might need to be
built into the design as a second phase.
The point is, be certain you know the priorities of the organization you're
designing for. If you miss the mark, your design misses the mark as well. Work
those relationships, navigate those politics, and keep digging until you're
confident that you haven't missed a single aspect of the IT/business alignment.
Milestones
The milestones you encounter when planning for growth are personal. Only you know
whether or not you have a good grasp of the business environment you work in, and
only you know whether or not politics is standing in the way of getting things
done. Create some deadlines for yourself to start moving in the direction you need
to go based on the skills and competencies you lack. Need to get out and meet more
people within the organization? Call HR or your public relations (PR) department
to find out which groups you can become a part of.
If political issues are more of a concern for you, then start right now by paying
attention to who gets things done in your organization—and who doesn't.
Build relationships with the people who accomplish things and watch how they do
it. Better yet, schedule a lunch with them to ask specific questions about how you
can better accomplish things on your own.
Go to meetings with a smile on your face, and actually pay attention—not
just to the main speaker but to the other conversations in the room. All these
items can be considered milestones, although they're certainly not of the
measurable variety.
Summary
Enterprise architecture should always strive to provide business value. Without
the right mix of information and technology, the best enterprise design won't
stand up to the test of time. Make a difference right now by understanding the
environment around you, learning to navigate the inevitable politics you'll run
into, and building relationships that will help you design to meet the needs of
everyone in the organization.
Resources Learn
Get products and technologies
- Download
IBM
product evaluation versions
and get your hands on application development tools and middleware products from
DB2®, Lotus®, Rational®, Tivoli®, and WebSphere®.
Discuss
About the author  | 
| | S. E. Slack is a freelance writer and author with more than 17 years of experience in business writing. She has also been an executive and business transformation communications consultant to IBM, Lenovo International, and State
Farm Insurance Companies. She is the author of Windows Vista: Home
Entertainment with Windows Media Center and Xbox 360, as well as numerous
other books. Contact S.E. Slack at sally@sslack.com
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