ALIGNING ARCHITECTURE WITH BUSINESS GOALS

by Michael Rosen, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at an Enterprise Architecture conference in the US state of California. Most of the presentations related to some aspect of enterprise architecture, be it a specific architectural framework, how to sell architecture within the organization, or how to be a good architect. As you can guess, from the approximately 20 different presentations, about 20 different definitions of enterprise architecture were espoused. But although there were many differences, they all seemed to at least have a common goal.

When distilled down to the essence, the goal of enterprise architecture is to create alignment between an enterprise's IT systems and its business strategy and goals. In other words, an effective EA program should result, over time, in IT systems that enable the organization to meet its business goals. Of course, there are many different business goals, just as there are many different approaches to achieving this architectural alignment. For example, an enterprise architecture that is focused on the rationalization and streamlining of processes will be different from one focused on meeting agility and flexibility goals, which will be different again from one that is focused on meeting cost containment goals.

One common approach to EA is to create an enterprise inventory of things. The schema (i.e., what things are being kept track of in the inventory) is defined by an architectural framework. The well- known Zachman Framework, for example, divides the enterprise into interrogative concerns (who, what, when, where, how, why) and stakeholders (owner, builder, designer, etc.). The basics behind this approach are that the first step toward alignment is to know what you have today, both in terms of IT systems and in terms of business processes. Then, based on the goals, you can specify the enterprise processes that are required to meet those goals. Finally, you use the architectural framework to help define the systems required to get from the current "as-is" state to the desired target "to-be" state.

An important aspect of using the framework is that you can identify common requirements and thus reduce the duplication of processes and systems across the enterprise. This approach to EA focuses on the business goal of rationalization and streamlining of processes.

Another approach to EA is to divide the set of enterprise domains into subarchitectures that address those domains. A typical categorization includes business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, and technology architecture.

The business architecture defines the set of concepts, processes, and services that comprise the enterprise's value chain and operations.

The data architecture describes the information required to support those processes and business concepts, and how that data is stored, collated, and integrated.

The application architecture describes how individual applications are built such that they reduce duplication, utilize common infrastructure, maximize sharing, and support independent construction of applications, but at the same time enable integration of those independent applications.

The technology architecture describes a shared infrastructure that provides the required qualities of service across the enterprise (reliability, throughput, security, etc).

Finally, in addition to the details of each constituent architecture, the enterprise architecture describes how the different architectures fit together. This approach to EA focuses on achieving enterprise agility and flexibility.

A more traditional approach to EA focuses on the technical infrastructure. EA defines the common infrastructure, which is responsible for providing a proven, enterprise-scale solution to quality-of-service requirements. But, just as important, it also strives to reduce complexity by limiting the number of different systems and platforms that have to be supported. This has a two-fold effect: first to reduce operations and maintenance costs, and second, to increase buying power through quantity. This approach to EA helps to achieve cost control goals.

All organizations are different, and most organizations have some mixture of all of these (and many other) business goals. There is no one "right" way to approach enterprise architecture, but rather, the architectural approach taken should reflect the relative importance of the business goals and ultimately meet the goal of EA -- to align the IT systems of the enterprise so that they enable the achievement of business strategy and goals. As you work with your EA counterparts, don't get overly concerned about what approach they are taking, but do insist that both you and they understand how the approach meets the enterprise goals.

-- Michael Rosen, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium