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.