Enterprise Architecture: A Blueprint for Alignment

Enterprise architecture, of course, isn't a new idea that's unique to BTM; many companies already use it today to improve standardization, speed up development, lower the cost of implementing systems, improve quality, and generally govern IT in the enterprise. But BTM is somewhat unique in that it positions enterprise architecture as a blueprint for aligning business and technology.

In general, enterprise architecture is a holistic, end-to-end design that encompasses business architecture (which includes both a big-picture design of the business and the processes that support this design) and technology architecture (which includes the applications that automate business processes, and the underlying systems that support these applications). It's important to note that this definition draws a distinction between how BTM views enterprise architecture and other interpretations of the term :

- Enterprise Architecture Isn't Just Technology: Some people assume that enterprise architecture describes only IT assets. By ignoring business architecture altogether, this misconception encourages companies to develop a road map that innovates IT ”but with no direct connection to business and process.

- Business Architecture Isn't Just Processes: Others make the mistake of interpreting business architecture to mean just the business processes that the company performs . This ignores the big-picture view of the business, and makes it difficult for decision- makers to determine not just what processes exist, but also why these processes are executed the way that they are.

BTM requires a definition for enterprise architecture that is more complete than either of these two misconceptions. To solve the business/technology disconnect, companies need to consider a complete, end-to-end road map that helps them make better decisions about where and how to put IT to work. This road map, pictured in Fig. 4.3, includes both business and technology architectures, and diagrams specifically how each architecture type fits together.

Figure 4.3. Enterprise architecture includes both business and technology architectures

Like an architectural blueprint, enterprise architecture serves as a reference point during later implementation phases, when team members refer back to it to verify important decisions, update the design, and generally determine what they need to do to accomplish the project. But, also like an architectural blueprint, the primary value that enterprise architecture adds isn't just as a reference point for project management; it also helps to prototype solutions during the design stage by identifying how the enterprise is designed today, where the opportunities are for the project to innovate that design, how things will have to change to take advantage of that innovation, and what the final design of the enterprise will look like once the project is implemented.

This helps the project team to evaluate options, make trade-offs, and balance competing agendas . Consider Honorio Padron's example in Ch. 1, where a misunderstanding about the importance of customizing a new financial system almost led to a barrage of unnecessary costs. In this particular case, developing a blueprint of enterprise architecture in the design stage would have revealed the differences between the company's current processes and those supported out of the box, helped to calculate the cost of modifying the software, catalogued the strategic objectives for the project, and provided a platform to mediate between the importance of making changes and keeping costs down.

Enterprise Architecture and Service Providers

"One of the things that we have suffered from for a number years ”and I am sure that this is characteristic of large corporate IT organizations ”is that although we have utilized many of the leading consultancies and system integrators, we have actually gained very little in terms of architectural intellectual capital for many projects.

The intellectual capital that these engagements generate is captured in simple documentation form: it may be written documents, it may be diagrammatic, but it is certainly not aligned and not interlinked. So you might have Visio, PowerPoint, or Excel documents that make up the main artifacts for the project. Each document is disconnected, and varies in the structure and detail in which it is defined. So if you've done one project with Accenture and another with PWC Consulting, actually putting those two pieces of an overall enterprise architecture together is a whole new piece of work, basically.

By promoting interlinked models to design enterprise architecture, BTM gives organizations like ours the mechanism we need to work with consulting organizations and actually take the intellectual capital they produce and integrate it into our overall enterprise architecture."

” Kevin Poulter, head of business integration, British American Tobacco; co-founder, Ontology.org