Here is an interesting list of 10 obstacles to the enterprise architecture from a colleague and friend, Andy Wasser, Associate Dean, Carnegie Mellon University School of Information Systems Management:
- Inability to obtain necessary resources (funds, personnel, time)
- Business partner alienation
- Internal IT conflicts and turf issues (no centralized authority)
- Lack of credibility of the EA team
- Inexperience with enterprise architecture planning or inexperience with the organization
- Entrenched IT team [operational focus versus strategic]
- Focus on EAP methodologies and tools [rather than on outputs and outcomes]
- Uncertain payback and ROI
- Disharmony between sharing data vs. protecting data
This is a good list for the chief enterprise architect to work with and develop strategies for addressing these. If I may, here are some thoughts on overcoming them:
1-4,7,9: Obtain Senior management commitment/support, resources, and business/IT partnership by articulating a powerful vision for the EA; identify the benefits (and mandates); preparing an EA program assessment, including lessons learned and what you need to do to make things “right”; developing an EA program plan with milestones that shows you have a clear way ahead. Providing program metrics of how you intend to evaluate and demonstrate progress and value for the business/IT.
5,6,8: Build credibility for EA planning, governance, and organizational awareness by hiring the best and the brightest and train, train, train; getting out of the ivory tower and working hand-in-hand in concert with business partners; building information products and governance services that are useful and usable to the organization (no shelfware!); using a three-tier metamodel (profiles, models, and inventories) to provide information in multiple levels of details that makes it valuable and actionable from everyone from the analyst to the chief executive officer; looking for opportunities (those that value EA and want to participate) and build incrementally (“one success at a time”).
10: Harmonize information sharing and security by developing an information governance board (that includes the chief information security officer) to vet information sharing and security issues; establishing data stewards to manage day-to-day issues including metadata development, information exchange package descriptions, discovery, accessibility, and security; creating a culture that values and promotes information sharing, but also protects information from inappropriate access and modification.
