While reading the
Gartner research paper "Q&A: Why EA Needs an Enterprise Context,"
a concern implementing this process across
different companies/organizations. To start, I do not disagree with any of the
process and believe it provides some of the best academic information on the topic.
However, I feel there are two factors that confound implementing this
process: 1) organizational maturity, and 2) business motivators.
This Gartner paper presents a process for establishing the "enterprise
context" of an organization or business entity, meaning:
"The enterprise
context is the process of:
- Identifying internal and external environmental
trends
- Articulating the business strategy
- Identifying requirements
- Creating principles
- Developing anchor models of the business"
The six-step process is a key initial process once the EA program is in place and contain straight-forward steps with logical flow. What gave me pause is
the fact that my experience tells me these six steps will vary widely in terms of time and resources required based on the level of organization
maturity. As a basis of experiential support, two current efforts come to mind which differ significantly in terms of IT and organization maturity.
The first organization is
a government organization that has a defined EA framework and hundreds (if not thousands) of IT
resources and programs. Some resources are in “steady state,” an unchanging “as-is”
environment, while some resources are in transition, with that transition being
managed through funded programs of different resource sizes and time horizons. Obviously, this organization is mature with a lot of moving part. However it's EA program is still new, and the complexity of getting a handle on this context will
be tremendous.
The second organization
is a new, for-profit entity, a fledgling enterprise with minimal resources and three primary IT programs, two still in their initiation stage. This organization is very immature with few
moving parts. The EA context is minimal, excepting the need to understand external, competitive forces to gain insight on where more mature competitors are in terms of resources
and past/on-going programs (current products).
The process set in the article
can work for both. However, the time
horizon for completing the information will greatly differ, and that is the
issue: will the more mature organization have the patience to wait through the
process? My experience tells me that
mature organizations are less patient because they are trying to balance
operational crises while also trying to handle the “distraction” of strategic
planning. The younger company is willing
to go through the process because they see it makes sense and they have fewer resources (which makes it faster). They also see tangible early
value faster, meaning each discovery has a
much greater ROI for this organization. Whereas the more
established organization, an analogy I heard is, “So, you are asking me to help
plan for a new roof while the kitchen and living room are on fire?”
This issue leads to the question: how do we (as EA
practitioners) handle the need to support the operational requirements of a
business leader while also trying to coax them to be more strategic? It is easy to write an article saying, “Business
leaders need to think and act more strategically.” It’s disingenuous to do so without providing proven tools to help balance managing operational crises during the effort to plan the long-term environment, including getting a richer understanding of their enterprise
context. I am hoping to find out what current research and EA experts have found regarding this issue.
