During the past couple years, we have begun working with clients where the efforts of IT-centric business and information architecture efforts have been sponsored and eventually taken over by representatives of senior leadership outside of the IT organization. While still a minority of the companies we deal with, it is a positive trend, driven by the need to transform the enterprise significantly. This is not representative of EA efforts that are tactically focused.
Over the past few years, we have begun to see more and more enterprises investing in Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) and, to a lesser extent, Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA). At first, like most Enterprise Architecture (EA) efforts, these were IT centric, both in terms of participation and perspective. However, as we have been suggesting for years, prepared IT Enterprise Architects took advantage of the interest of senior executive leadership by showing them their EBA and EIA work. Usually in combination with a focus on major strategic initiatives, the models created for EBA and EIA shed some light on the complexity and interrelationships of the major strategic initiatives. Senior leaders not only took notice, but embraced the usage of the planning concepts and artifacts long espoused by IT Chief Architects in the strategic planning context.