A critical goal of every EA program is to increase the alignment of enterprise activities and investments with the business strategy, yet many EA teams struggle to achieve and demonstrate this level of business relevance. As a result, EA efforts either fail to deliver significant business value or are perceived as irrelevant to business success by the stakeholders. In the current economic climate, either of these conditions will likely be fatal to the EA initiative and/or to the members of the EA team. To help enterprise architects avoid these results, Gartner has collected a selection of best practices designed to ensure that business value is both delivered and demonstrated.
Gartner recently published '6 Best Practices for Aligning Enterprise Architecture With the Business Strategy' :
Key Findings
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A truly aligned architecture effort requires significant input from all the stakeholders in the enterprise. Successful EA programs engage all the stakeholders—not just senior business leadership.
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Interpersonal and facilitation skills are most critical to the success of the EA initiative.
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It is not permissible to forgo the business strategy analysis altogether just because a common requirements vision (CRV) cannot be delivered. The strategy analysis is the foundation of the EA effort, so some approach that captures the essence of the strategies and ties them to the EA concepts must be used.
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By using the EA guidance as the unifying principle, we ensure that the strategic and governance initiatives of the enterprise do not collide with one another, but rather cooperate to support the evolution of the enterprise to the desired future state.
Recommendations
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Ensure that all the stakeholders are engaged.
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Ensure that all stakeholders are approached with a straw model.
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Spend the majority of your time validating and socializing.
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Do not expect the business strategy to be delivered to you—be prepared to discover it.
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In less-mature enterprises, take a less formal approach to the development of the CRV.
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Use your EA process to inform other strategic and governance initiatives in the enterprise.alysis
Click the link below to see the Knowledge Gene on this which is an interpretation of these six principles plus some pragmatic ideas that I've tried myself with some success. Using the Knowledge Gene, I've tried to make the material easier to absorb and execute.
Do you agree with this model? Can you help extend it?
I'd be delighted to add to and change this Knowledge Gene based on comments you might want to make. It's my hope that together we can produce the most useful best practice model ever on this that will benefit many.
"6 Best Practices for Aligning Enterprise Architecture with Business Strategy" (Gartner) - coded by I Rainton
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