Enterprise Architecture is a living thing.
High mature enterprises are on the journey to pursue
business agility in order to adapt to the accelerated changes and hyper-competition or complexity as well. Can
Ideally, an enterprise's architecture must be a living, breathing thing to be effective.
There will always be a balance to be struck between the valuable lessons of
tradition and the dynamism of innovation; EA must be a full and ongoing
participant in that dynamic tension. But in reality, Enterprise Architecture
continues to be somehow decoupled from business motion. It's a management
problem, that can't embrace it in a continuous way.
The enterprise's
architecture should inform and guide important strategic and tactical business
decisions the enterprise makes. Success in EA would mean "continuous
collaboration" of all stakeholders involved in a seamless way. One out
of sync will prove detrimental. A major
goal of EA is to be so intimately involved as a full partner in formulating the
strategy and goals of the enterprise that the CxOs would feel uncomfortable
making any serious decision without EA's full involvement. If the Enterprise
Architect isn't a full partner with CxOs in evolving the enterprise's
architecture, he/she isn't doing his/her job.
EA not only should be
dynamic, but it also needs to be forward-looking and outside-in. Scope of EA needs to be at the
"Ecosystem" level as opposed to the Enterprise
EA constitutes a
framework for IT development and evolution. Any framework has predefined
constraints. These constraints have been put in taking into account business
environment conditions at the time of framework definition. However, business
needs evolve and their dynamism has been increasing exponentially. To stay in
synch, EA also needs to evolve at the same pace or stay ahead of the curve. The
challenges that EA faces in maintaining itself in synch with dynamic business
requirements are the amount of technical complexity in its architecture, and
also the varying age of applications within the enterprise.
EA must be dynamic and drive influence on business: The majority of EA practices are not mature enough to fulfill its purpose yet,
the tools and methods used are largely static models and culture largely
driven by IT. This is changing though and people are beginning to take a
business-driven view and using dynamic analysis tools to inform and assess
business strategy and policy design. EA needs to expand its scope to cover the
holistic social-ecological-technical system view; an Enterprise Architect should
actually, drive the influence of the business dynamics by providing insight and options
to the business decision-makers.
A dynamic EA enables
business transformation with holistic planning and execution.
Metaphorically, think of EA as a square of plywood balanced on top of an
exercise ball. To move forward, you have to have all four corners 'off the
ground' at the same time. To change direction each corner must be capable of
changing its 'attitude' without breaking, touching the ground or falling off
the ball. Once a corner has 'learned' new behavior and finds that behavior to
be collectively advantageous, the change will become latched and permanent, at
least until the next bump in the road comes along.
The characteristics of a dynamic EA is forward-looking, agile, flexible and outside-in, in order to drive the influence on building the high-mature digital organizations
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