Redsen consulting vison of AE

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2. Four main parts in our presentation
1. an overview off the various contexts that call for an enterprise architecture initiative.
2. The three main types of capabilities that the EA function needs to develop .
3. some key success factors to focus on, in order to deliver business value.
4. the domains where redsen intends to support its clients.
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3. let us start by defining enterprise architecture
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4. A quite common definition…
It is about providing….
...
The focus is on a top‐down approach to manage the Information System changes, from an
as‐is state to a to‐be state.
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5. A more specific definition.
This value proposition given here is aligned to our service offering.
Enterprise architecture is at the same time a means and an outcome to deliver.
...
The know‐how refers to our support in order to adapt and implement our enterprise
architecture practices in your environment.
The shared vision depicts our expertise to deliver the various artefacts of your enterprise
architecture.
we are able support our clients in one or more phases of their implementation roadmap.
An important concept here is the business capability. This concept is developed further in
our presentation.
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6. The left column identifies the main contexts that call for action through an enterprise
architecture.
These are :…
In the right part are the the main challenges to tackle during the EA program
implementation.
These are :…
The priorities issues in the right column depend on the organization drivers for the ea.
You should be able to identify the main drivers and their related issues.
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7. WE describe here the main use cases for the Enterprise Architecture practices.
One can implement one or several enterprise architecture practices with the following
goals in mind.
1. Understand the current state and anticipate the future business changes.
2. Develop a tool to sustain the major decisions regarding the evolutions of the
information system.
3. Plan the evolutions through practices that sustain the definition phase of the it
projects.
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8. Enterprise architecture provides knowledge on how the company operates.
For this challenge the focus is set on
• The as‐is state (how the company operates)
• The risks and may be the opportunities that are related to the actual configuration of
the Information System.
Outcomes can feed a repository of artefacts describing the IS main characteristics.
Outcomes are reused in the second use case “preparing the decision”.
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9. Here enterprise architecture positions itself as a key planning and change management
tool
And we aim to use practices in order to create and shared big pictures between the main
stakeholders (businesses and it).
The focus is set on the description of the articulation of capabilities (people, processes,
technologies) that the company must leverage in order to carry out its missions.
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10. This third use case is about projects alignment with the following goals in mind:
• share the operational needs and
• find out the optimal target architecture.
The definition of the overall solution encompass a set of complementary initiatives (IT and
non IT) in order to address the business case.
Together the business requirements and the roadmap will govern the implementation of
the IT related initiatives.
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11. Here are some (but not all) key succes factors to deliver the right enterprise architecture
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12. Making Requirements Management the glue of Enterprise Architecture.
Depending on how you will manage them, they will lead to some opportunities or to
some major risks.
Note that togaf says the same. It settles the requirements at the core of the ADM.
When we say “requirement management” we think “business requirement management”.
We as EA architects have to pay attention to business Requirements as they are the
reference point for all discussions with the business.
Still today, studies show that requirements management remain a main issue to deal with
during IT projects.
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13. We’ve just seen that success or failure of IT projects depends above all on our capacity to
handle properly the business requirements.
And all is decided during upstream phases (vision phase in togaf).
Too often, requirements management during upstream phases is not correctly implemented.
either it does not exist and detailed requirements are specified later in a silo approach.
or requirements are elicited with but artefacts or deliverables that are not at the right level and
whose usefulness is questionable.
Companies must invest in continuous mode, in order to maintain a wide, concise, and
reusable vision of the needs and the solutions to implement.
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14. This is the key point which alone justifies the deployment of an EA framework
We must keep in mind that there are :
• One business project that is solution agnostic
• but a solution that can be comprised of several complementary it projects.
Without a framework, corporate IT is missing this point and delivers local but redundant
solutions with problems we know about.
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15. Business capability is a core concept for elicitation, and communication between the
business and IT.
• BC Is the key reference point for Business/IT discussions.
• BC facilitates impact analysis and priority management.
• BC facilitates the definition and the monitoring of action plans.
Note that business capabilities are supported by information technologies but also by the
organization (the people) and by the business processes.
Here are some of the questions that business capabilities help to fix.
The first set of questions allows to define what must be done? what are the business
capabilities that the organization must develop or reinforce.
The next questions identify where to move forward, what is the level of performance of a
business capability and what are the improvement initiatives to start.
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16. A question that we need to ask to ourselves is the following.
The answer is obviously No !
…
The Enterprise Architect team must work tightly with the investment portfolio team in
order to identify and select the appropriate initiatives, and the IT implementation team to
deliver a good solution regarding the business use case.
So it is more valuable to document how the architect contributes to the solution
implementation process than to document process of the Enterprise Architecture
implementation.
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17. To finish, we advise to handle the contractualization aspect by means of two
complementary documents.
The first document aligns the various stakeholders upon the needs and the intended
solution to deploy.
The second document gives a deeper insight upon he business requirements (functional
and non‐functional) to fulfill, when implementing the IT solution.This is the contract
defining the scope and the implementation path of the solution.
It must be written to be understood and validated by the project sponsor.
It set up the Business part of the Request For Proposal.
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19. As mentioned in the beginning of our presentation we can act at two levels :
• Adapt and implement our EA practices
• Deliver some parts of your Enterprise Architecture.
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20. Here are the main activities that support the implementation plan for your Enterprise
Architecture practices.
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21. A pragmatic approach, inspired by togaf, the enterprise architecture standard :
• Take account or formulate the strategic assumptions.
• Qualify the need in order to assess the level of risks related to the demand and
regarding the Information System architecture.
• Make the business case and define de overall solution (organization, process, IT).
• Contractualise the requirements.
• Define the target architecture and the the business roadmap.
• Assist and rule the IT initiatives.
• Identify risks and opportunities of the various business capabilities through an overall
appraisal.
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