At the recent Troux Worldwide Conference I spoke on the panel with three other Enterprise Architecture industry experts. We discussed or sometimes debated the industry state. One area of particular dialog was around if EA’s truly had a seat at the “business” decision making table some said yes, some said no.
I reluctantly said EA’s do not…yet. The current state of EA is that for the most part we aspire to be at the CEO decision making table. This is where the business decisions happen. While we should be apart of we should not only be at the hosted CIO table. Remember, the role of the CIO is evolving from pure IT to a role more driven from the business but it still has the IT stigma. They are trying to up-level the conversation to business driven thinking. This is a very positive trend. EA’s must ensure they are at the table in which the CIO sits, not the one that is hosted primarily in IT.
However, the CIO table is an essential first step. EA’s can lead the business driven decision making through IT to help up-level the entire organization in conjunction with the CIO. Who else is better armed to do so. The folks at Troux see this happening more and more through their surveys. See below:
According to a similar survey conducted by Troux, 77% of chief architects and/or head of enterprise architects already have a seat at the CIO leadership table, and 60% of CIOs and/or head of EA are heading an IT Strategy Management Program. Does this mean that EA is fulfilling its promise of bridging the gap between IT and the business? - Troux 2011
When I said EA’s are not there yet I was very deliberate. We are seeing trends in the industry that show the business is investing more and more into Enterprise Architecture in the form time and dollars to get the EA’s involved where traditionally they were not (Infosys EA Survey 2011).
Now the folks at Troux recognize these factors in the industry as well. I have to commend them on there willingness to facilitate this conversation. It’s an important one for our industry to have.
See there blog post below:
At the recent Troux Worldwide Conference there was plenty of talk among attendees and speakers about whether EA has a place at the “leadership table”. Some proclaimed that EA was still not seated at the table, while others lamented that EA has a seat at the table but has not yet been invited to actually enjoy the meal. Troux was listening and decided to host a follow-on, in-depth discussion next Wednesday, May 25th, at the “EA & CIO’s: State of the Union” webinar, 10:00 am CST. Moderated by Bill Laberis, from CIO Magazine, the webinar features Frank Malta, executive director and chief architect at pharmaceutical powerhouse Merck, and Bill Cason, CTO at Troux. Bill Laberis will kick-off the discussion by sharing the latest data from CIO Magazine’s annual “State of the CIO” survey. According to that survey, nearly 70% of CIOs today are focused on developing IT strategies to accelerate business goals. This reinforces the notion that EA has moved beyond the ‘alignment’ phase to the ‘let’s achieve business results’ phase of maturation. This means focusing on business process innovation, fostering agility, and driving transformation throughout the enterprise. According to a similar survey conducted by Troux, 77% of chief architects and/or head of enterprise architects already have a seat at the CIO leadership table, and 60% of CIOs and/or head of EA are heading an IT Strategy Management Program. Does this mean that EA is fulfilling its promise of bridging the gap between IT and the business? Frank will then describe how, using Troux, Merck built an “Enterprise Business Capability Model” that provides a detailed visual map of business capability strategically aligned with IT resources. The model uses a five-layer approach to trace business process and capabilities to solutions and technologies and provides a complete view of portfolio investment, technology and associated business cases. With this information, Merck business and IT executives can now discuss about business processes, systems and resources in business terms based on facts, rather than guesswork. Bill Cason will then talk about the external forces driving EA toward a more classic Business Technology Management (BTM) approach which addresses the unification of business and IT decision making across the enterprise. The webinar will also address issues such as moving the lens of EA from a technology focus to a business focus, how to make EA “consumable” and specific techniques for getting to results quickly, a must have for CIOs and their leadership team The panel will then turn to listener questions. Join the discussion next Wednesday with your own questions. Registration is still open here
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