Enterprise Architects (EAs) from around the world were invited to Basel, Switzerland to take part in this year's EA Connect Days. The event offered local networking opportunities and information exchanges for all attendees on the subject of IT architecture.
Our host this time was the assurance company Helvetia. The location was the ideal place not only for interesting and diversified presentations but also for an informal exchange among the representatives while having a nice snack and an Apero. Representatives of 12 companies from the regions Basel and Zurich were interested in Enterprise Architecture, some of them already had made experience with EA.
EAM Workbench as the basis for cooperation
Mr Mirco Mueller from Helvetia Versicherung started with the topic EAM Workbench. Helvetia is an assurance company for all types of industries and has more than 2.7 millions of clients all over Europe. Distributed knowledge demands the interaction of different tools to guarantee a successful Enterprise Architecture Management.
The EAM Workbench is the basis of information for architecture knowledge, it facilitates the cooperation and supports a controllable approach to architecture.
The Workbench is made of 5 main components: one method, leanIX for the strategic architecture management, Sparx Enterprise Architect for the modelling, Confluence WIKI for IT publications and documentation, requirement management and workflow with JIRA.
Added value by enterprise architecture
Mr Bally from Valion AG is a consultant specialised at the interface between business and IT presented effective facts for building up value of enterprise architecture. Pragmatism is given priority to dogmatism. In a best-of-breed attempt the right conclusions have to be drawn for different architecture levels (business, information and technology architecture).
The role of IT as a partner of business is very important for the success. Moreover the interaction of different tools has to be well-balanced (see also EAM Workbench). The whole project of the Management of enterprise architecture has to be understood as a permanent task and not only as a single one reached by bracing existing management processes.
3 cornerstones for collaborative EAM
Juha Mylläri, VP IT Architecture at RUAG, a Swiss industrial company, demonstrated 3 important cornerstones which are necessary to understand EAM as a common task sustained by everybody.
- Addressing management risks due to unsolved architecture themes
- Consideration of urgent business themes
- Strengthening of the same understanding in a federated architecture community
The corresponding tasks among other things are the regular reporting about the changes of the management risks in the management board, showing added value of EAM to the business by supporting important IT projects and paying attention to the comprehensibility of the used models. RUAG at the moment manages with a Business Domain Model of 12 domains what makes it much easier even for the business partners to orientate and understand it.
Cornerstone 3 was reached by different measures but the easy and comprehensive use of leanIX by various groups of people surely helps vitally embedding EAM in the company. Actually, on the basis of the open leanIX API a separate iPhone app will be developed.
Next Generation EAM
Finally, Ms Inge Hanschke presented EAM of the next generation. Ms Hanschke has many years of experience as a consultant, she published several books and “invented” an EAM Open-Source tool. She presented various aspects of successful EAM referring also to her actual book “Lean IT – Management – easy and effective”. But the main theme was how to create real value for relevant stakeholders. She demonstrated 4 steps how to reach this goal
- Stakeholder analysis
- Identify views demanded by the stakeholder
- Comparison with the reality
- Embedding into the organization
All these steps were presented using real tasks and real results. The theoretical concept was put into praxis and presented in a comprehensible way.
Exchanging practical experience
This day with the lively discussions, interesting questions and information regarding EAM showed how helpful it is to get the opportunity to learn from other experts. It is not enough using recommended frameworks to solve real problems in introducing and embedding EAM into companies. All participants found it very positive to listen to suggestions and solutions, to discuss immediately with other experts and to expand its own personal and local network. More EA Connect Days will soon follow. Please, let us know if we could awaken your interest.
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