Appoint a champion to lead IT to changes

Setting a company-wide strategy for standards, technologies and suppliers can deliver a leaner, meaner business, if you put someone in command.Many enterprise architecture (EA) efforts fail for lack of commitment and an understanding from senior management, enterprise architects and other EA participants. One of the keys to success is finding an effective EA champion.Meta Group discusses one consistent theme with many of its clients – frustration at the lack of understanding and commitment to an EA. Senior IT and business management are uncertain what an EA is so are not sure what to expect or, worse, their expectations are not realistic.

Equally, architects are not always sure what role they should play and try to balance between the strategic, enterprise-wide role and the tactical, project-centred role. Similarly, those supporting the effort are not sure what they should do.

Many successful organisations have prospered from the efforts of an individual who has taken on the responsibility for championing the EA cause. The champion should be a senior-level executive, not lower than someone who reports directly to a chief officer. Although this role would normally be a chief information officer it could be a chief financial officer or a chief operating officer with some level of responsibility for the IT function.

The role of EA champion is more effective when it is filled by someone who is not identified as having “ownership” of the EA team, process or deliverables. The most important attributes are credibility and respect within the organisation.

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Using EA to Move to a Dynamic Business and IT Strategy

Since July 2005, the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC), as a department within the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), embarked on a process of Enterprise Architecture capability development, supported by Business Connexion.

Since then the Enterprise Architecture capability has been established (process, framework, policy, toolset / knowledgebase, skills transfer etc.) and demonstrated in the delivery of a wide range of baselines and deliverables. The Business Architecture baseline is used to, amongst other purposes, eliminate business process duplication, to develop internal policies and to align services within Service Level Agreements. The logical and physical ICT architectures are used, apart from the mentioned plan and portfolio, to research and develop standards, to drive current system assessments etc.

The role players responsible for this development were Derek Korff as Chief Architect (BCX) and Terrence Lachenicht as Manager ICT Planning & Architecture (GSSC).

You can read more on the article at:

http://www.opengroup.org/events/q107b/korff.htm

ICT and IS strategy development & planning determines the requirements of the future state IT ensuring close alignment to the business strategy.

Many businesses today are experiencing continually increasing information systems costs. In addition to costs, businesses are fi­nding their information systems and technology portfolio to be a bottleneck to business improvements and growth. 

Our client; a large and complex public sector organisation has recently come to be through the merger of 6 distinct organisational units each with disparate ICT environments. They approached us with a brief to setup an ICT/IS strategy and compliance function centric within a shared services environment. The major part of the assignment was to develop a portfolio of strategy products within each area of the ICT/IS capability. The development of the ICT/IS strategy products ensured that the IT suppliers could understand and follow the organisation’s IT policies, standards and direction. 

You can read more on this case study at :

http://www.enterprisearchitects.eu/casestudy1.pdf