Critical Success Factors for EA Effectiveness

There are some common critical success factors that EAdirections has recognized in highly effective EA programs.  Not all of these critical success factors are seen in every effective EA program; so each organization must determine which factors are hindering and which are enabling EA effectiveness.   Download Now: Critical Success Factors for EA Effectiveness Right-click … Read more

Communication Planning for Enterprise Architecture

Communication is a key to transforming an enterprise through strategic planning, enterprise architecture (EA) and enterprise portfolio management (EPfM). Critical to the success and effectiveness of communication is planning why, how, when, and with whom communication will take place. The answers to those questions are determined through communication planning. Download Now: Communication Planning for EA.pdf … Read more

A Question for Practicing EAs

Why are you doing enterprise architecture? If you don’t know the answer to this, how can you expect others to understand EA? This is a simple question, but we are looking for comments from your readers to help others (without their answer) come up with the answer that meets their situation.  While everyone probably has … Read more

EA Tips – Style AND Substance

For an EA practice to be effective EA leaders must pay attention to both the “style” of how their team operates and the “substance” of the work they produce. While that guidance isn’t new, in practice I often find that many leaders don’t have the balance quite right. It is worth revisiting as a general … Read more

EA Tips – Substance OVER Structure

If you read my post on “Style AND Substance” I stated that an EA team shouldn’t spend disproportionate energy on content creation without also paying attention to the many softer, stylistic elements associated with leadership and influence. One without the other and the team will fail. In this “EA Tips” post on “substance vs. structure” … Read more

Federated EA in Larger vs. Smaller Enterprises

George and I are often asked “How is EA different between smaller and larger organizations?” There are a number of differences (amount of available resources, degree of complexity, flatness of the organization structure, number of elements in the application portfolio, etc.) that affect the approach, effectiveness, readiness and deliverables of EA.  But one that I think … Read more

Why No Business with EA?

So there I am sitting on a panel at the Troux Worldwide Conference a couple of weeks ago, answering interesting questions with some interesting co-panelists, when a thought struck me.  “After decades of positioning EA as a discipline for business-IT alignment, why aren’t EA programs more in tune with(driven by, owned by, participation from) the … Read more

Location, Location, Location – Where Should an EA Team Report?

At the recent Troux Worldwide Conference in Austin I moderated two panels, one on Top Performing EA Teams and the other on EA Leadership. We had many questions submitted by audience members and were unable to answer them all. In the next few weeks Tim and I will be offering our perspectives on some of … Read more