5 ways to achieve acceptance for Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)

Written by Simon Barth | March 16, 2016

If you are an Enterprise Architect – or taking over the role as part of your job - you might sometimes feel under-appreciated. You are part of numerous projects that are spreading yourself too thinly, you are struggling to keep up with answering requests for daily operations and are expected to solve the big challenges of those days, like transforming your company from a digital laggard to a digital leader.

And still, the value of your work might be frequently questioned. It is tough to convince managers that active Enterprise Architecture Management can save millions (reducing redundancies alone often has saving potentials from 15 – 20%). The value of managing the risk in Application landscapes often becomes only apparent when it is too late: Incidents that happen because of unsupported technology
components on average will cost companies around 600k EUR. And the biggest risk not even yet mentioned: How can a company ever create innovative, digital products if projects get delayed over and over again as the most basic information on the IT landscape is not available?

The good news is, that you don’t have to wait for a miracle that puts the Chief Enterprise Architect in the board room. No, even if you are the only Enterprise Architect in your company you can do a lot to gain more acceptance and support for Enterprise Architecture. Based on our work with many different organizations that have different degrees of maturity in Enterprise Architecture, we have identified five ways that actually work to embed Enterprise Architecture in the organization. Take them as inspiration for a start, adapt them to your environment and work from there on.

1) Speak in understandable and easy terms

Enterprise Architecture Management is not an easy to grasp concept for many people, whether they have an IT background or not. If you have been dealing with the topic for some time, you might be tempted to fall into jargon, like speaking of TOGAF ADMs or ArchiMate layers. Chances are high that neither your boss nor colleagues from other teams are proficient in these specialized concepts.

Different stakeholders need to get convinced of the value of Enterprise Architecture with different messages. The head of marketing will sit up and take notice when you speak of quicker times-to-market of digital products as a result of faster ramp-up of development projects. The head of IT infrastructure can be tempted by providing him with always up-to-date lifecycle information of IT components. And executive management will understand reduced cost, less risk and increased agility.

2) Help teams to solve real problems

People are typically not convinced by some gain in the future. They want a benefit today. And this is also the best way to win allies. This means to actually do work with teams and help them solve a problem. Workshops have shown to be a good format to realize quick initial results. You support the team with your overarching knowledge about the whole IT landscape and step into a consulting or coaching role. At the end of such a workshop, there should be a clear intermediate result. We have seen that Enterprise Architects support solving a stunning range of challenges:

Provide the CIO with an overview of the current state of the Portfolio. In which applications to invest? Which to divest?
Show the task force that executes the acquisition of a new company how the future IT landscape will look like, so that they can identify potential for synergies.
Generate an overview of all interfaces and dataflows for the IT transformation project team to allow them to assess the implications of the changes they plan.
Help the PMO to understand which projects are changing which applications? How does this fit with the strategy?
Help Provider Management to understand the implications of changing a provider. Who will be affected by a change in which way?
Provide Data Protection an overview of applications that handle critical employee or customer data.

Just to name a few examples, there are many more. You don’t need to provide all the answers to the problem that the various teams need to solve, but you should be able to provide them with a solid data basis and a fresh view on their challenges.

3) Have your data ready in great quality

Let’s face it, in order to achieve acceptance, you will need the help of your boss or even your boss’s boss. Executive management is often very data driven, but faces the challenge that in large companies data quality generally tends to be poor.

Surprise them with being the exception. With a modern Enterprise Architecture solution, like leanIX, you pull out reports regarding your application landscape with one click. leanIX supports superior data quality with mechanisms like completion targets for Fact Sheets, a quality management workflow, a modern user interface for easy data maintenance and smart automation capabilities. Automation is powerful in creating sustainable data quality: automated import of lifecycle information, automatic time-series data on fact sheets, out-of-the box integration to process management tools and many more.

Keeping your IT inventory up-to-date with the help of all stakeholders should be a prime concern in your work as an Enterprise Architect. If you struggle to keep your data accurately try to focus on an 80% solution. Everybody will prefer better data over more data.

4) Find allies to create an early coalition

Create an early coalition. Look at the stakeholders around you that are most affected. That might be a project leader struggling with complexity, an infrastructure expert not understanding business priorities, or a business leader making budget decisions. Support these stakeholders to create transparency and help them solve their problems as described above.

5) Gradually integrate Enterprise Architecture into your company processes

While it is a good start to initially focus on a soft approach to evangelize the idea of Enterprise Architecture, it helps over time to tie Enterprise Architecture into your company processes. We have seen clients do this in very intelligent ways. It often starts with using leanIX out-of-the box reports in regular meetings. Make it a habit to always have a look at a specific heatmap or any other report when discussing Enterprise Architecture related questions.

As a next step organizational responsibilities should be properly maintained. Who is responsible for an application from the business side? Who from the technical side? Did they capture all information?

Once these basic measures are in place, you can work to make Enterprise Architecture an inherent part of your companies. For example, companies have policies in place that tie the approval for a project to the fact that a project Fact Sheet is maintained in leanIX with relations to all affected Applications and IT Components. Or that for the approval of any IT spend the leanIX Fact Sheets need to be filled in first.

What are your experiences in gaining acceptance for Enterprise Architecture in your organization? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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