My Enterprise Architecture elevator pitch

Reading Time: 2 minutes

There’s always some debate on the value of enterprise architecture, and particularly whether it deserves any real focus on it.

I have definitely been in the pro-EA camp, having been in the role for 10 years.

With anything you wish to sell, it’s handy to have an “Elevator Pitch” ready.
For those unfamiliar, an elevator pitch is a short, enticing dialogue you have ready in the event that you share an elevator with an influential executive [see my tweet below on Elevator Pitches].

EA Elevator Pitch

Enterprise architecture is a strategy that directs investment across business and technology changes to help design the enterprise that best delivers value.

 A well-defined enterprise architecture helps you to make better decisions through understanding the company’s goals, operations, information, application and technology assets as a set of logical portfolios.

 This is important because strategies only succeed where there’s an alignment and relationship between the assets that support it.

 Enterprise architecture as a strategy can save you money through standardising and optimising what’s currently available.

 But enterprise architecture’s real value-add is enabling success by design – not by chance, experience, so-called best practice, or gut feel.

Addendum:

I wrote this pitch in around 2009. Even with more experience, I still have the same thoughts around EA benefits.

My views have changed though on the appropriate focus to place upon EA, and the future of it.

I can even relate to some in the Enterprise Architecture is dead movement (and here).

To be clear, it’s not dead. All enterprises will continue to have an architecture.

The way to design it appropriately is just increasingly becoming more pragmatic and led by communities on the ground, rather than towers of ivory in theoretical clouds.

EA lost a lot of ground building itself into a so-called specialisation or discipline through academic exercises. Part of the solution is to demonstrate value, and for us all to get our hands dirty.

#entarch to business speak translator

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I had quite a positive meeting with someone from the business regarding enterprise architecture (EA) . It’s an interesting engagement, which we’ve yet to do in any other part of the business. To put it mildly, the area is terribly unhappy with their IT support. I’d suggest their issues are mostly with delivery and communication, program management, application portfolio management, technology modernisation, and business automation in general. This is why I am absolutely certain an EA view and strategy will provide massive benefits. The entire enterprise is so EA immature though, broaching the discipline with the business carries some risk. This wasn’t a major concern for me. It’s clear from the size of the above issues and the major stakeholder’s passion and urgency to fix them, that they “get” it.

To prevent any bad first impressions of EA, I carefully spoke to their needs. I stayed well-clear of our usual enterprise architecture mother-tongue/pseudo speak. (I feel describing enterprise architecture in any real detail intimidates even some IT folks who are more comfortable on the software side.) I was out of practice in business discussions, but the outcome was OK.

I thought it’d be interesting to take the time to record some of the key concepts I remember avoiding, and publish the business-friendly versions which worked. And it’s helpful to consider some more this “enterprise architecture to business speak translator”. Anyone is welcome to contribute their own. I’ve been to presentations some time ago which covered IT to business communication more generally. And there are probably stacks of posts on this topic which I’ll maybe reference later.

Enterprise architecture concept Business description
Meta model Big clear picture to describe everything we need to understand.  Ordinarily this is not something I’d recommend sharing anyway, but this was a special case.
Conceptual to logical to physical Going from the big picture of what you need, down to the level of detail where we know what we’ll put in place
As-is picture View of what’s there today
Business architecture Everything we need to know about how the operation is organised, and how it runs
Data entities Information
Association matrix Mapping
Business to IT alignment Implementing the right supportive technology that business processes require.  (The meaning changes slightly, but was correct in that instance.)
Tactical solutions What we can do in the short-term to help
Standardisation
Thanks Chris
Increase profit by reducing waste

Technology can be misleading

Reading Time: < 1 minute

While I’m in Dubai and my family are in Tasmania my four year old son and I have been using Skype to communicate with each other – until their visas are sorted and they can come and join me.

Last night, while chatting away with them, my brother Corey was online also, so I started a three way conference between me in Dubai, my son in Tasmania, and my brother in Brisbane.  We were only able to talk, the video didn’t work with three people.

It was interesting right at the start when my brother asked Myles how he was going.  Myles paused a little, then asked, “Corey, are you in Dubai?”