Thursday, September 25, 2008

Enterprise Architecture for IT

The term Enterprise Architect was coined by John Zachman, who developed the Zachman framework for enterprise architecture. Most enterprise architecture teams have developed from within the IT community due to the framework being developed from an IT perspective. This has lead most enterprise architecture teams to do Enterprise Architecture for IT.

The main purpose of Enterprise Architecture for IT is to enable the IT organization to better deliver services to the business. The focus is on analyzing the business strategy and requirements and enabling IT to deliver on them. This has lead to the development of the term IT Architecture, which is a more accurate description of the focus of the enterprise architecture team. It is very important to understand the difference between the focus of the two architecture efforts. In my previous blog I described what an Enterprise Architect should focus on, and will now contrast that with an IT Architect.

An IT architecture focuses on the IT organization and enabling them to support the business, not focusing on the operations of the business, or projects, but rather enabling the IT organization to be ready for business. This is done by analyzing the strategy, understanding the industry and markets and having a documented reality of the business. The gaps between these elements are translated into IT solutions that must be implemented to enable the strategy of the business. In some instances the EA team is accountable for the development and execution of the IT strategy within the company.

IT architecture is therefore a function that the IT department needs in order to satisfy the long term requirements, or strategy of business. It is the entity within the IT department that grants the CIOs a chair at the board meetings, discussing business strategies. IT architecture is the vehicle through which the IT organization becomes more flexible, predictable and value adding to the organization. It is however not the business enabler, optimizer and thought leader that will truly make it a valued partner.

There are a lot of synergies between both the Enterprise Architects and the IT Architects. Both uses similar methodologies, techniques and tools to do their daily jobs. Both analyze strategy by looking at the business from an IT point of view, document the business in a meta-model and design future states. However, EAs do this to improve the business as a whole, not just the business of IT. Enterprise Architects has a mandate to design organizational structures, assist in business strategy formulation and propose process changes in other departments. IT architects are limited to the IT organization.

There is nothing wrong with being an Enterprise Architect for IT. It reflects on the current reality in most companies, on the reality of EA today. In a few years time the Enterprise Architecture that lives in IT will move to the larger organization in more companies, changing the understanding, and development, of EA to become a value adding partner to the organization.

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