The Pressing Need for Appropriate Organization

Now consider an IT department that has a number of experienced enterprise architects, capable and motivated developers, and excellent tools and processes, including enterprise architecture support tools. Is this enough? Alas, no. Enterprise architecture also needs a human organization within which the architecture can thrive, grow, and be effective. Effectiveness is measured in how much application development projects find their work reduced.

Many IT departments are organized on a project (or product) basis. Aside from some basic common infrastructure, such as the hardware, operating system, and Database Management System (DBMS), each project decides everything else for itself. Many initiatives I've seen have been staffed and equipped in this way, only to founder on what is perhaps the most difficult part: human organization. A successful approach to this problem is to organize into two major areas. One area provides the development and run-time infrastructure for building and deploying enterprise applications, while the other produces enterprise applications. This latter organization is rigorous in pushing as many common aspects of technology, development, and enterprise architecture approach as possible to the former organization. This form of organization is radically different from most in the industry today.

Whatever organization is finally settled on, the important point is that we organize to support a particular endeavor. If the organization does not directly support and enable that endeavor, then failures are, sadly, to be expected. Applying enterprise architecture such that application development projects are successful requires thought to be given to human organization.

This book addresses organization as it relates to enterprise architecture.