Enterprisey thoughts – John Gøtze
Enterprise Architecture
Bob Sutor in First Life, Copenhagen
15 years ago
Bob Sutor is in Copenhagen, and will give a public lecture at the IT University at 5pm today, Wednesday. He’ll talk about what’s going on with open standards and why it’s important, also to IT students. I’ve reserved the big lecture hall (Aud 1), and everyone is welcome to join us.
I’m certain that Bob will talk about the situation around document formats, where a lot is happening. Just covering the past couple of days’ events around the standards is a talk in itself: It’s clear now (!) that many standards bodies point to contradictions around Ecma Office Open XML and its submission to ISO, so the fast-track for Microsoft’s Office 2007 format becoming a standard is slowed down (at least, if not stopped?). In other news, two more US states gives more momentum to OpenDocument, and ODF passes yet another maturity signpost as ODF 1.1 is now an OASIS Standard.
Over at my Danmark 2.0 blog, I have suggested that the newly formed S-142/U-34 Danish Standards mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 34 spend their time on making ODF a Danish Standard. That would be kind of ironic with all those Microsoft Gold Partners in the group, I know, but none the less, I’m deadly serious about the proposal!
Version2: New Media for IT Professionals
05 years ago
On Monday, Danish media house Ingeniøren A/S will launch the first phase of Version2, a new biweekly magazine and online media for IT professionals in Denmark. I’m proud to say that I’m part of the team behind Version2.
The magazine and website will launch in November, but we will start the river of news via Ingeniørens site next week, where Tania and I are covering the JAOO-conference.
The “real” Version2 opening in November will be our attempt at practising “Media 2.0″/”News 2.0″ or whatever – lots of good blogs, wikis, and all that.
2006 International Enterprise Architecture Survey
05 years ago
Peter Engelund Christiansen and I are pleased to announce a new report and website: EASurvey.org: International Enterprise Architecture Survey – Trends in Governmental Enterprise Architecture on a National Level.
The report presents key findings from an international survey about governmental EA on a national/federal level conducted earlier this year. 16 countries participated in the survey: Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nothern Ireland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and USA.
The survey documents trends in governmental EA and focuses on eight areas:
- EA motivation
- Achieved goals and barriers
- EA measurement
- EA process
- EA framework
- EA tool
- EA governance
- Existing EA assets
The key findings are:
EA on a national level is emerging fast
93.3% of the participating governments are already having – or planning to have within the next two years – a national EA program. Only one government does not have any future plans incorporating a national EA program.
Limited realisation of EA goals
54% of the governments with national EA programs have experienced the achievement of EA goals.
The lack of skilled staff is considered as the greatest barrier against the achievement of EA goals
55% of the governments report “lack of skilled staff” as the greatest barrier against the achievement of EA goals.
Less than half of the governments are measuring EA program performance
Accordingly, less that one half of the governments are using key performance indicators.
Less than one fifth of the governments are calculating the ratio EA benefits to cost
18% of the governments, Japan and Taiwan, are calculating the total expenditures in EA, the total amount gained from EA and the ratio EA benefits to costs.
Less than one fifth of the governments have mandated their EA programs via legislation
18% of the governments, USA and Korea, have national EA programs that are mandated by legislation.
Less than one third of the governments know whether their publicized EA processes are used
72% of the participating governments have publicized guidelines describing an EA process. 29% of those governments do not know whether the guidelines are used or not.
We conclude with some calls to action:
- Define clear and measurable EA goals
- Do not uncritically buy the vendors ‘Ten steps to successful EA’ and expect the world to change in any advantageous direction
- Measure EA performance to ensure progress and ultimately EA success
- Calculate EA expenses-/earnings to enable communication in a monetary terminology; it becomes necessary
- Do not make the mistakes of the past
- Do not isolate an EA team and expect them to generate value-adding EA
The survey is endorsed by the Association of Enterprise Architects (a|EA), but a|EA does not necessarily agree with our calls to action.
The bulk of the work was done by Peter in his Master of IT thesis project, which explains the survey in excruciating levels of detail, and which is as clear an A+ as I’ve ever seen and supervised. I helped connecting Peter to the survey I started two years ago, and introduced him to relevant respondents around the world. After the exams, we have worked together on quality assurance and recommendations, but Peter should really get all the credit.
So, check www.easurvey.org and let us know what you think.
Successful enterprise architecture
06 years ago
Vibeke Trolle Hansen has published her Master of IT thesis, Enterprise Architecture – how to establish and sustain a successful EA (3MB PDF).
Abstract
Enterprise architecture aims to establish business and IT alignment. EA is often applied to ensure a more central business driven IT portfolio, and make the organisation more agile in managing change. Having analysed the EA discipline including the EA definition, EA frameworks, governance, change management and EA maturity and business value measures from a theoretical perspective, I aim at defining a set of guidelines that will inspire organisations in practice to create a successful EA in a structured manner.After I have defined the set of guidelines, I apply them on two cases, SKAT and ATP. The case analyses show that the organisations have established many of the relevant processes necessary to implement and sustain a business driven IT portfolio, but also that both organisations still have a long way to go to fully reach their objectives. SKAT has a very strong project model that already takes the new IT architectures into account and ensure compliance with their IT modernisation project. The main obstacle, however, is that SKAT does not fully appreciate the value EA can generate for them, and even though they are working in the right direction, the approach seems ad hoc. SKAT claims that they are not interested in establishing an EA although this is partly what they are doing. To me this implies lack of structures, which the EA discipline may provide when implementing and sustaining a business driven IT portfolio. ATP, on the other hand, is deliberately conducting an EA. They have thoroughly performed many of the initial EA investigations and are ready to seize the challenge in implementing their EA in the organisation. My main obstacle in this analysis is, however, that ATP ought to put more focus on EA governance as opposed to mainly focussing on IT governance at the top level in their EA. This could ensure more coherent governance structures of the entire framework.
The theoretical framework and best practise conclusions, thus, lead me to define a set of guidelines that proved very useful in my case analyses. The guidelines consist of four stages:
1. EA foundation stage
2. EA approach stage
3. EA governance and management stage
4. EA maturity and measurement stageThe guidelines should be useful in bridging the gap between theory and practise within the EA field, and may, hopefully, assist organisations in creating and sustaining a successful EA.
I recommend everyone interested in EA to read Vibeke’s thesis. It’s very well written, it’s thorough and it’s an excellent analysis of two major Danish EA cases. Vibeke was offered a job in one of the cases, ATP, and now work for them.
