Enterprise architecture maturity models are the best way to expand your EA function and prepare your organization for business transformation. Find out how modeling your EA can make you more agile.
Enterprise architecture (EA) maturity models benchmark your EA practice. They also offer you a route to long-term success.
Once you've discovered what level of maturity your EA practice is at, you can also look at what you need to do to progress to higher levels in the model. Why, however, does that matter so much?
Well, in a turbulent market, the key to success is agility. A mature EA practice is vital for managing business transformation whenever it's needed.
To start your journey to EA maturity, try our Assessment tool:
Once you have your assessment, however, let's look at how you can use it to drive long-term success for your business.
The TOGAF EA Maturity Model
The standard enterprise architecture (EA) maturity model is The Open Group Architecture Forum (TOGAF) Architecture Maturity Model. It assesses an organization under nine categories:
- Architecture process
- Architecture development
- Business linkage
- Senior management involvement
- Operating unit participation
- Architecture communication
- IT security
- Architecture governance
- IT investment and acquisition strategy
The TOGAF model will then rate your EA practice under one of five categories:
- Informal - EA is just a vision
- Developing - EA is in progress
- Defined - EA is a completed project
- Managed - EA is an ongoing function
- Measured - EA is continuously improving
To find out more about the TOGAF model, read our previous article:
READ: Enterprise Architecture Maturity - 5 Steps To Grown-Up EA
If you're not at stage five yet, then looking at the steps above gives you a target to aim for. Remember, jumping straight to stage five may not be feasible in the short-term.
Your goal should be to gradually progress through the stages until you reach stage five. Then you'll be ready to support whatever business transformation your organization needs to undergo.
What, however, does EA maturity look like for you?
What Is Enterprise Architecture Maturity?
Enterprise architecture (EA) maturity is a state whereby your enterprise architecture function is continually re-inventing and optimizing itself in order to better support your business transformations. Your EA is not just a one-off initiative that's accomplished a business transformation, it's a continuous process.
To do that, your EA practice needs to measure its investment against its success. Reporting needs to be in place to confirm you're charting the right course and offering real value to your business.
This will include proper governance to ensure your entire organization is aligned on EA best practice. You'll also need to be taking feedback from all stakeholders and making steps towards continual improvement.
This is vital for winning stakeholders over to your EA process. In addition, there's an educational element, whereby all stakeholders come to fully understand the value of EA for your business.
This level of EA maturity is essentially the win-condition for your enterprise architecture team, and what we're all working towards. How do you get there, though?
The LeanIX EAM For EA Maturity
Enterprise architecture maturity modeling is not only part of what we offer at LeanIX, our LeanIX EAM is also the pathway to increasing your rating. They say knowledge is power and knowledge is exactly what the EAM can offer.
LeanIX EAM offers you a real-time overview of your IT landscape and business capabilities. It tracks information against each of your applications to make enterprise architecture (EA) research instantaneous.
This data can also be visualized within LeanIX EAM, and you can formulate a target state and a roadmap to get there. Once you've completed your business transformation, the data will be preserved so you can track and measure your success in future.
You can then use LeanIX EAM to create dashboards with specific views of data sets tailored to stakeholders. This can evidence and serve to explain points you make to stakeholders, helping you to win them over.
With reporting in place and stakeholders on-side, you'll be well on the way to EA maturity, no matter what stage you're starting from. Let's look more closely, however, at why that matters.
EA Maturity For Business Transformation
Enterprise architecture maturity models illustrate the strength of your EA function within your business. Why does that matter, though?
The kind of deep understanding of your IT landscape that you can get from a mature EA function combined with LeanIX EAM empowers you to manage any change. Whatever business transformation your organization is undergoing, you'll be able to ensure that your IT landscape changes with it.
Any business transformation will be reliant upon understanding how your IT landscape will be impacted by the change. Otherwise, your transformation could lead to outages and loss of service, and in extreme cases, your entire transformation may have to be rolled back.
In the past, this might have been expensive and frustrating. Now, however, it could have dire consequences for your organization.
The pace of change isn't slowing down, and the market and economy is becoming increasingly turbulent. The only way for a business to survive is to be prepared to change and adapt to whatever it needs to become.
Rather than a one-off business transformation, you now need to adopt a culture of continuous transformation. Adapting your IT landscape to a constantly changing business environment requires the highest level of EA maturity that you can only achieve with LeanIX EAM.
Taking The First Step Toward EA Maturity
Enterprise architecture (EA) maturity modeling is the first step on any journey to optimize your EA function and support continuous business transformation. To begin your assessment and then start your journey toward EA maturity with LeanIX, visit our EA Maturity page:
