EA Governance
Enterprise Architecture includes 2 parts :
• It describes how an Enterprise Operates to create products, manufacture them, sell them and deliver related Services: Actors (Persons and Computers grouped inside an Organization) execute Operation Actions (Processes, Activities and Functions) with required Informations (Product, Client, Contract).
• It also describes how the Enterprise Transforms itself: other Actors (Deciders, Business Analysts, Developers, Architects) execute Transformation Actions (decision making, project management, Training, Deployment, Maintenance) with required Informations (Strategy, requirements, planning, components, Delivered Model).
Most of Enterprise strategic decisions involve Enterprise Architecture: Agility and time to market, productivity, capacity to better understand the Customer and extend its services, reduction of useless complexity, Synergies between Companies of the same Group… all require Transformations in Organization, Processes, Master Data management, human resource management, Information Systems, technologies and methodologies.
But this is a difficult path which requires long-term vision, courage and energy. Sharing and Reuse are part of this vision; they are difficult to implement and accept, but their benefits enhance Agility and profitability.
As Machiavelli wrote in « The Prince » in 1500: “The person who decides to change a System must know that people who benefited from the old system will be against him, and the people who will benefit from the new system will not help him”. When you Transform a system, you are alone. You cannot afford to take bad decisions, thus you must establish good EA Governance rules.
Governance is the art of making important decisions which means preparing decisions, communicating about decisions, following up decisions and checking results.
This is not an easy task: so we explain the 10 main Enterprise concerns and try to give some answers:
1. How to align Business Strategy and EA Governance?
2. How to make comprehensive decisions which include Organization, Processes, IT and HR?
3. How to explain EA to executives?
4. How to ensure consistency and save time when many decisions have to be taken?
5. How to execute Enterprise Synergy?
6. How to define the right level of Synergy in a Company or a Group?
7. How to increase Agility?
8. How to check results of decisions?
9. How to protect long-term decisions from current decisions?
10. How to increase innovations?
Among the most important proposed answers which will be developed inside this document:
• Separate Operation Teams and Transformation teams
• Centralize Business Architects and IT Architects into a unique Architecture team.
• Reuse the same Enterprise Representation for all stakeholders
• Promote innovations and support risks
We then describe Main decisions Processes and their relations with Committees. It all starts with decision on Target Model aligned with Enterprise strategy and global Road Map. Then we group Solution Project decisions and Architecture Project Decisions into 2 different main Processes. And we describe the roles of the 3 main Decision Committees.
As large Groups of Companies are the most difficult to Govern, we give some complementary elements to help EA Group Governance.
Finally, we list some answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
Most of the concepts developped on this website are further developped in our white papers. You can download any white paper freely. Please do not re-use without explicit permission.
Contact
Please contact us at contact@ceisar.com if you would like to know more about the CEISAR and our work. We welcome any feed-back and contribution to our research.
All publications
Click here to View a full list of our current publications and downloads.