Wednesday 26 September 2012

Selling EA



An Enterprise Architect (EA) provides a blueprint that shows how the organization is structured and how business strategies and IT infrastructure inter-relate. EA also includes the people in the organization and how people interact with IT. Due to the importance of EA, the need for a good EA is the thing that every organization would like to have.
Another major difference between a Business Architect and a Business Analyst is that the Business Architect is a role on the demand side and the Business Analyst is on the supply side.
The Business Architect identifies the future demand for changes to the enterprise business model and associated business operating model and plans the change initiatives on the business part of the enterprise architecture roadmap.
The Business Analyst works in the here and now on how to satisfy the current business requirements for a single change project, where the project realises part of the supply schedule whereas the EA roadmap represents the future demand schedule of strategic changes.
The demand /supply distinction is clearer if the Business Analyst works in the IS/IT division since IS/IT  often represents itself as a business (‘IT as a business’)”.
 (http://ingenia.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/demand-and-supply/)
If I were a CIO of a company, I will convince my manager to support an EA initiative by some ways. Firstly, I will try to let him understand the value intangible benefits that EA brings by some examples. Of course, when I talk about that, I put EA with the business model or business processes. Secondly, I should compare the successes of 2 companies, one applies the EA well and the other has poor EA; as a result, the first is more successful with more profits. In terms of profits, for me, the most effective way to convince a CEO of the value of EA is to suggest a change from excellent EA that modifies the total amount of income. The change can be either a cost savings or a new source of revenue. I will get their attention when I focus on obvious benefit. Once you have their attention, the rest is up to you. Generally , the key is how EA market itself.
Nokia Siemens Networks has applied a good architecture, so they have been successful. For more information, please see the article from this link.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Software for IM



The issues that caused loses in IT investment:
Firstly, a complexity of business processes a flawed business model may be the main problem (Rettig 2007, pp. 21-22). The business processes get more complicated, the software need to be updated to adapt them. However, in some cases, it cannot meet the need of companies. Besides, business models can suffer common flaws such as poorly defined target market, wrong marketing strategies, disorganized distribution, etc. Enterprise software is applied for these models, so it tends to bring to business ineffective results.
Secondly, the cost for ERP projects has been high. It's not just the cost of ERP systems, implementation, which are expensive, but the added fee for consultants needed to install and run the software. The IT department has invested a lot of money for them (Rettig 2007, pp. 23).
Thirdly, there is an inherent nature of software itself while the data is changed frequently (Rettig 2007, pp. 24).
Could Enterprise Architecture (EA) have helped?
According to Rettig:
- Companies can focus on service-oriented architecture (SOA).  Updating and changing the legacy system by creating cross-system business processes can help enterprises be successful in applying software.
These processes combine IT systems in the way to be easy to update systems or correct problems. However, before making SOA become a frame of systems, companies should consider some main issues such as robust protocols for accessing the Applications, high-quality integrated data stores, a sound methodology for managing the overall process. In other words, it is necessary to streamline and simplify business processes of Enterprise systems.
- Companies would prepare business modules for their core processes, so then they would be able to update these processes easily, snapping out and in functional pieces of code from enterprise system suitably.
- IT engineers can upgrade enterprise software basing on adding layers of code superimposed on the existing layers. Therefore, in order to correct errors technicians need to deal with the layers of enterprise applications below the modular business processes.
- However, Rettig noticed that there are no easy fixes, so careful analysis, simplicity and efficiency should be focus on, and business staff  needs to be educated to use software.
EA is not IT-focused, but business-driven and comprehensive. The future-state vision helps coordinate the analysis of—and develop a plan to harmonize—required changes in business functions and processes, information and data provisioning, technology capabilities and application solutions. An effective EA program will help align IT investments with long-term strategy, reduce risk, deliver higher-quality information and engineer adaptive solutions and technical services
Enterprise architecture solutions can:
  • Help management analyze, plan and execute change faster and with better insight.
  • Get IT and business stakeholders collaborating for better alignment around requirements.
  • Create enterprise blueprints as a roadmap for exploiting IT architectural building blocks and achieving business transformation.
  • Attain improved compliance and more predictable project outcomes.
  • Improve IT contribution to business returns with improved integrity and agility.
(http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/itsolutions/enterprisearchitecture/)

Reference:
Rettig, C 2007, ‘The trouble with enterprise software’, MITSloan, Fall 2007, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 21-27.
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/itsolutions/enterprisearchitecture/

This is the other links about IT project failure for reference:

Wednesday 12 September 2012

My first thought about Enterprise Architecture




Before taking the Applied Enterprise Architecture course, I wondered that what it is about and I felt confused to take it or not. After the first class, I found it is interesting and helpful to take this course.
In term of concept, Enterprise Architecture (EA) is about “The analysis and documentation of an enterprise in its current and future states from an integrated strategy, business, and technology perspective”, Scott Bernard. In other way to understand, this course will make learner know clearly the factors that make up an enterprise and how they connect together to get a success enterprise. In more details, I realize that EA is an arranged framework of well understood processes used to manage and align information system assets of an enterprise or organization with people and organization, processes and technology used to meet strategic business goals. Enterprise architecture is also the integration of business architecture and IT architecture.
Now I can find out the answer of a question that is why some firms fail while others achieve superior execution and are able to build on what they do well to achieve both agility and profitability. It is amazing that the answer is constructing the right enterprise architecture.
From my point of view, the term enterprise can be used and applied not only for companies, enterprise, business or corporation but also for different organs such as public or private organizations that include people, information, technology, business of the whole complicated, socio-technical system.
In overall, EA is the combination of strategy, business and technology because strategic resources are important; business gets the best result due to enterprise-wide solutions, good technology and human resources.
I hope I will effectively apply EA to improve our organizational results in the future.