ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

PRACTICAL EA INSIGHTS + PRACTICES
THE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FORUM '09
12 - 13 NOVEMBER 2009 PARK ROYAL HOTEL SINGAPORE
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Governance and Consistent Quick Wins Key to EA Success

Singapore, September 30, 2009 - Governance, the whole how-to aspect of implementing the EA programme and establishing quick and consistent wins in their EA programmes are critical factors that EA practitioners are faced with and need addressed in juggling their EA programmes, according to the latest findings from Flipside's PRACTICAL EA SURVEY : OPERATIONAL EA ISSUES '09.

This Survey which took place over the last two months was aimed at discovering the top three most critical issues faced by EA practitioners. With a heavy bent towards government EA practitioners, and the industries most involved in EA deployment including banking, finance, insurance and IT, the PRACTICAL EA SURVEY : OPERATIONAL EA ISSUES '09obtained the views, not of policy makers or C-suite but instead addressed the issues faced by those within the project and programme teams themselves including the technical and solution architects, business planners, domain leads and EA leads. The PRACTICAL EA SURVEY : OPERATIONAL EA ISSUES '09 obtained the views of practitioners in Singapore only.

The PRACTICAL EA SURVEY : OPERATIONAL EA ISSUES '09 - Key Findings

1. The difficulties of operationalising the EA programme
Practitioners were grappling with how to go about executing the EA in terms of their day to day work. This included things like how to get people to use the right templates when some of the key EA elements are process-driven and how to go about implementing new processes or practices without having to be entirely reliant on external consultants coming in.

2. Governance, a top three critical concern
Governance structures and processes were a consistent top issue. Different practitioners had different ideas about what governance entailed. Some focused on the fact that it meant getting things done a certain way and looking at the standardisation and alignment of different parties, their roles and processes. Others focused on the dilemma of whether governance here formed part of IT governance or vice versa. Compliance in a top-down organisational structure was also a key issue for some as was managing different stakeholders and the issues each brought to the table

3. The impact of legacy systems
EA's ability to be repackaged or re-used in light of extensibility, in light of the volume of legacy systems in place and the consolidation therewith was also a key concern for many.

4. The difficulty in obtaining timely and accurate international benchmarks
Some practitioners are concerned with getting timely and accurate information on the requisite standards. As one respondent argued, "....There is TOGAF and Magenta but what we want is more detail in terms of the standards...more industry recognised standards that we can pick up from. From a governance aspect of EA and in terms of the details of EA required, there aren't many people who are well-versed with this, at least from a technical architecture point of view...I want to find out what standards are out there, get some cross comparison going. Lots of it from a TA point of view, is open ended. How do we get a more detailed look. When it comes to standards, we don't have a reference because different people use different standards and its ultimately very silo-ed.
- Technical Architect, Ministry of Education, Singapore.

5. The imperative for quick wins and consistency of benefit
One of the other consistent pieces of feedback related to the urgent need to deliver results and quick wins. Some practitioners were not concerned about this as a team issue arguing that it was the nature of the programme as such and the length of time involved in turning around results. It required a systematic way of mapping things and whether or not, people had a strategy for establishing the quick wins. The progress it seemed was not so much centred on doing EA but on convincing others of its success.

6. Making it easy, approachable....effective
A respondent from a government department articulated the enormity of the issue of enabling the entire organisation to do the bits of EA that needed to get done when he said, "...its about looking at what is minimal effort but there's a need to practise things in a certain way. Things like how to make it easy for others to action this off and start doing EA, how to encourage them to do so, how to find out when it's not happening.....which is the first 20% that you should work on? You can't possibly tackle all 100% upfront".
Making EA easy to use, seems key to ensuring its longevity.

The PRACTICAL EA SURVEY : OPERATIONAL EA ISSUES '09 - Background

• conducted over a period of 2 months
• focused exclusively on practitioners within Singapore
• heavy bent on practitioners from the government sector and key corporate sectors, from which there has been consistent EA effort such as banking and finance, insurance, logistics, IT and consulting.
• respondents comprised those directly involved in the EA efforts in their organisation either as Programme leads or Domain leads or team members. Respondents hold a variety of positions in technical architecture, solution architecture, business architecture, SOA specialities, project manager or some policy managers.