Practical principles of implementation of enterprise architecture

Hear the views of stakeholders

Enterprise architects build relationships in which stakeholders candidly express their desires and concerns about the architecture of the enterprise as a whole, as well as specific enterprise architecture initiatives.

Rationale

Unexpressed or unresolved desires and concerns of stakeholders can lead to incomplete or incorrect requirements for architecture, results reviews, or implementations.

Implied

Enterprise architects develop relationships of mutual trust with architecture stakeholders at all organizational levels and support them through regular communication and commitments fulfilled. Enterprise architects also receive feedback on their relationship with stakeholders. For example, they ask their manager or trusted colleague to ask the stakeholder about how their collaborative work is progressing.

Effective sponsorship

Enterprise architects identify and educate leaders of organizations that are best suited to support the development of architecture capabilities and the progress of initiatives.

Rationale

Even the most well-grounded and carefully planned corporate responsibility initiatives are unlikely to succeed unless the people who have the greatest impact on organizational culture and priorities communicate their values and priorities.

Implied

Enterprise architects identify the individuals and organizations on which performance depends, and consider who influences the culture and priorities of the business. Architects educate these influencers on the value and priority of each respective opportunity and initiative, and ask for their active support.

Required results

Standardized architectural results are needed to plan and deliver solutions.

Rationale

If some decision initiatives are implemented without the involvement of the enterprise architecture, the likelihood of their success and the ability of the organization to respond to changes will be reduced. Without systematic architectural work, it is impossible to know all the consequences of planned decisions, and subsequent decision planning actions will be more complex and risky due to the lack of accurate and relevant architectural models.

Implied

Enterprise architects incorporate mandatory and standardized architectural solutions into reference points in the system planning and development lifecycle, ensuring that architecture work is an integral part of business case development, as well as the development and implementation processes of various solutions.

Keep up with the times

Work on corporate architecture keeps pace with enterprise architecture solution initiatives.

Rationale

If enterprise architects slow down implementation of solution development initiatives, the enterprise suffers from delays, and stakeholders often find ways to bypass or ignore the enterprise architects.

Implied

Enterprise architects negotiate with stakeholders to define the scope of their practice based on business priorities, as well as available resources and expertise. Within this scope, they limit their efforts to pragmatic constraints that support decision initiatives consistent with business and technology strategy.

Enterprise architecture, solution architecture, and solution development are complementary disciplines with clear boundaries. The community of solution architects creates standardized artifacts that enterprise architects consider and solution developers implement. Enterprise architecture frameworks are integrated so that results remain relevant as new requirements emerge, and development teams gain experience with new technologies.

Integration

The enterprise architecture is integrated with other business-critical management frameworks.

Rationale

Enterprise architecture overlaps other framework-based enterprise disciplines, such as agile software development, project management, cybersecurity, service management, and quality assurance. If overlapping areas are not fully explored and resolved, the resulting confusion reduces the effectiveness of all disciplines. On the other hand, well-integrated disciplines promote mutual support for efficiency. For example, architecture templates for decision architecture review results may be tailored to meet the needs of cybersecurity, service management, and quality assurance reviews, which may be conducted concurrently or in conjunction with enterprise architecture reviews.

Implied

Enterprise architects collaborate with experts and leaders in other disciplines to explicitly integrate frameworks: Integration points across frameworks are documented, reported and regularly audited. Enterprise architects work across disciplines to streamline management processes through multifaceted manuals and verification processes.

Continuously improve

Enterprise architects are continually improving the contents, standards and processes of the architecture repository.

Rationale

Organizations, business environments, and technologies are constantly changing, and without continual improvement in capabilities, architects lose their effectiveness and relevance.

Implied

Enterprise architects conduct regular cycles of reviewing critical corporate views, such as application and infrastructure portfolios. They regularly solicit feedback from key stakeholders and apply it to improve their practices. Enterprise architects measure the effectiveness of their practices through surveys and stakeholder interviews, and objective statistical metrics.

Spreading success

Enterprise architects contribute to the success of people, projects and organizations through active collaboration.


 Rationale

The practice of enterprise architecture that clearly contributes to the success of others is bound to receive more support than that which discourages and denies, regardless of the reasons given.

Implied

Enterprise architects generously share their time, experience, and empathy to contribute to the success of each individual, team, and initiative with which they interact. They guide solution architects, project managers, and business analysts. They collaborate to solve problems. before Formal checks to ensure that these encounters are pre-flight checks: critical, but almost always routine due to careful preparation.

Capture and transfer of value

Enterprise architects capture and convey the value they create.

Rationale

The practice of enterprise architecture is often overlooked when new solutions or major upgrades are introduced. Often, praise goes primarily to the development teams, as well as the people and leaders of the initiatives that lead them. This exposes the practice of enterprise architecture to underfunding or bypassing, especially during episodes of organizational stress, so it is in the interest of architecture practitioners and the organizations they serve to systematically capture and communicate the value of enterprise architecture.

Implied

Enterprise architects collect both statistics and stories that reflect the scope, quality and impact of their work. They create compelling content that informs stakeholders about changes in business and technology. Enterprise architects regularly communicate with stakeholders about the value of enterprise architecture through information blocks, presentations, websites and face-to-face communication.