Gartner has posed five questions that will help CIOs guarantee their enterprise architecture (EA) initiatives deliver real business value.
Many enterprise architects and CIOs will struggle to articulate the value of EA in today’s uncertain climate, Gartner has confirmed.
In a downturn, there is a natural tendency to accentuate the tactical, short-term initiatives, and EA arguably is inherently long-term.
The challenge for EA is to be able to balance the long-term goals against the pressing short-term needs of the business. There are intense commercial pressures right now to reduce costs at a time when capital expenditure is severely constrained. Operational efficiency has become an imperative, but agility and speed to market are equally as important.
Gartner argues that CIOs seem to intuitively realise that a business-driven enterprise architecture initiative will help identify cost optimisation opportunities and ensure a rational approach to investment.
Too often though, it says chief architects rely on the idea that the value proposition is well-understood in the enterprise.
Explicitly the analyst house recommends EA groups define a value proposition specific to the enterprise, and articulate it in business terms. They should redefine the value proposition as enterprise priorities change. They need emphasise the value of the process rather than the value of the deliverables. They have to use business-focused performance metrics to demonstrate value, and make sure effective governance is in place to ensure that EA guidance is realised.
The objective of EA is better alignment of business and IT organisations, and one aspect of the value it brings is in standardising and improving business processes at a time when most organisations are screaming out for business process efficiency.
Mike Turner, an Enterprise Architect at Capgemini, notes that the requirement for EA is proportional to the requirement for change. If organisations are freezing change budgets, then enterprise architecture demand will fall. Conversely, organisations that are increasing change spend to re-structure or invest ahead of recovery will see an increased demand for and seek more value from their EA group.
“There are things that EA can do to help respond to the downturn” Turner said. “Influence business silos to align with one another and change to make more efficient use of IT. Identify opportunities to make better use of existing assets within the organisation. Support an intensifying focus on information; better quality, better analysis, better distribution, better presentation.”
