Post 8: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy

I am frequently looking for simple ways to explain Enterprise Architecture (EA) to stakeholders inside and outside of IT who have some preconceived notion that EA should be to pigeonholed with IT modeling. Awhile back I read the title Enterprise Architecture as Strategy (J. Ross, P. Weill, and D. Robertson) which provides a pragmatic and powerful description of what they coined the “foundation for execution” which is composed of three critical concepts:  Operating Model, Enterprise Architecture, and IT Engagement Approach. These can be briefly summarized as follows:

1. Operating model:  the necessary level of business process standardization and integration required in an organizational planning unit.
2. Enterprise Architecture:  is the organizing logic for business processes and Information Technology (IT) components, which reflect the planning unit’s operating model.
3. IT engagement model:  is the system of governance mechanisms that serve to align the strategic objectives of the firm with those of IT.

This is all well established and illustrated in the following figure:

I found a favorable review of the book from B. Gils, who himself happens to be an well established architect and thought leader from EA tool supplier BizzDesign. Check out more from their running blog here on the BizzDesign site.

The one issue Gils mentions with the referenced book is focused mainly on IT. I didn’t have this objection myself nor did I draw this conclusion. I think the book spends a fair degree of time establishing the importance of understanding the core business processes and corporate strategies of the underlying motivation for IT to begin with. He also suggest that it misses the point about understanding the importance of strategy, e.g. competitive strategy. I think this part is okay as well considering that there’s enough material from Porter on defining strategy and each of us has to understand what it means to our own organizations and projects. Trying to spend too much time defining what strategy is or should be to a firm would lose the focus on the authors’ intent to define the Foundation for Execution.

References:

Enterprise Architecture as Strategy. (2006, J. Ross, P. Weill, and D. Robertson). http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Architecture-Strategy-Foundation-Execution/dp/1591398398

Strategic Architecture Blog (2008, B. Gills). http://strategic-architecture.blogspot.com/2008/11/enterprise-architecture-as-strategy.html