EAdirections Blog

FAQ – Where should the EA Team report?

For an organization practicing IT-EA (IT Architecture, not True-EA) the ideal reporting location is directly to the CIO as part of the Office of the CIO. In that structure, the EA function has the widest view of all of the activities of IT and is not narrowly associated with any development or operational group. Additionally,… Read more »

FAQ – How many people should be on an EA Team?

There are many ways to instantiate an EA Team: virtual approaches, centralized teams, with and without solutions architects, etc. Regardless of the real-world constraints, the range of possible structures does not change the main objective of the team, the roles they play, and the work that must get done. Since there are so many variations,… Read more »

FAQ – What is “True-EA”?

True Enterprise Architecture (True-EA) is quite simply architecting the enterprise.  The overwhelming majority of EA efforts that we have come in contact with over the last two decades have, in fact, been IT Enterprise Architecture (IT-EA) efforts.  They have been led and operated by IT professionals working within the CIO/CTO’s organization, with a focus on… Read more »

FAQ – What EA Metrics should we collect and report?

Choosing appropriate metrics to measure EA is challenging.  We find that most practitioners, and their management, want to see “absolute” metrics, a measure yielding some sort of generally accepted min/max in the form of a quantity or percentage (e.g. 70% of all projects are reviewed). Instead, we believe metrics are used primarily to tune an… Read more »

FAQ – Do organizations really practice “True-EA”?

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… Read more »

FAQ – Is there really a need for an EA Charter?

The need for an EA charter is debated somewhat due to either the perceived nature of the charter document as a tactical project document or the amount of time that is required to do more than a cursory job of creating an organizational document. Our experience has been that not only is there value in… Read more »

FAQ – Should the EA Team also be the EA Police?

In a word, no. There are always exceptions, of course, but it is in the best interests of the organization, and of the EA Team, that the EA Team be free to make objective future state recommendations in the context of a longer-term horizon.  The organization’s leadership team should then approve those recommendations through an… Read more »

Talking to Business Executives about EA

Simply telling a business audience all the wonderful things that EA will do for you is not enough. Light bulbs go on only when you have a chance to show them what it means to them. So, don’t try to “sell” an audience on the academic virtues of EA. Show them. Use relationships among component parts and expose mappings that they always thought existed, but never quite had a chance to see before. Read more »