Aligning the Enterprise Architecture (EA) with the business strategy is a critical goal of every EA initiative. Many Enterprise Architecture teams can’t demonstrate the business relevance of their EA programs. As a result, they are either irrelevant to the business success or they fail to deliver a business value. To ensure that the business value is delivered and demonstrated in the organization, Gartner has proposed a selection of best practices for enterprise architects. In the following post I want to present them to you. I hope this will help you to align your Enterprise Architecture with your business strategy.

1: Engage internal and external stakeholders

A truly aligned architecture effort requires significant input from pretty much everybody in the enterprise and its ecosystem. Getting the buy-in from internal stakeholders (e.g. line management, business operations, IT operations, support functions) and external stakeholders (e.g. service providers, outsourcers) is a critical success factor for every EA initiative. This buy-in requires engagement, so reaching out to each of these constituencies is necessary.

Engaging with a wide range of stakeholders can provide insights into the strategic drivers of the enterprise – a better-informed EA team and a “360-degree” view of the business strategy are the results.

2: Never go in with a blank sheet of paper

As every stakeholder group has a different view of the required detail level, open-ended questions are not the best idea when engaging any of the stakeholders. Because most of them are not familiar with EA deliverables, open-ended questions can make them defensive. To engage the stakeholders at the appropriate level of detail and to structure the discussion, it’s more productive to present a straw model as a basis for refinement and further development.

3: Validate, socialize, then validate again

So, what are the steps that need to be taken to align the Enterprise Architecture with the business strategy?

• Examine the business strategy and environmental trends: understand the direction of and drivers for the architecture
• Articulate the requirements, principles and models that describe the future state and the evolution of the enterprise toward that future state.
• Document the current state to identify gaps with the future state.
• Define the steps that need to be taken to achieve the future state vision.
• Guide the implementation of that road map by exercising appropriate governance over the strategic initiatives of the enterprise that are charged with improving the business’s ability to operate.

This process is highly iterative and requires collaboration with the stakeholders at every step along the way. To successfully execute this process the EA team needs strong interpersonal and communication skills.

4: Go to the business strategy, if the business strategy is not coming to you

A lot of companies don’t have an explicit business strategy. However, this doesn’t mean there is no business strategy! In many cases the enterprise is a collection of business units with different business models and therefore different strategies. A big effort is required to articulate the business strategy of an enterprise with highly autonomous units, because the specific strategies of the different units must be considered and consolidated. When formulating an integrated business strategy, common strategic objectives must be established and differences in priorities or conflicting objectives must be noted as well.

5: A less formal approach for the Common Requirements Vision (CRV) process

If your EA team encounters difficulties to persuade the company that a structured CRV process is needed, apply a less formal approach. Adopt the CRV constructs, but presents them in a less formal manner. Simply ask some questions:

• How must the business change?
• What new types of information will be required?
• What new technology capabilities must be provided?
• What programs will support our strategic objectives?

The CRV components are still the same, but the less formal structure increases the chances of acceptance. The following figure provides an example of how an informal CRV might look.

Figure found at gartner.com

6: Use the EA to inform other strategic and governance initiatives in the enterprise

Most enterprises are running different strategic initiatives at the same time. These initiatives were typically started in different parts of the organization with different objectives and different decision rights. The Enterprise Architecture should provide specific guidance to all the strategic and governance initiatives of the enterprise. Take the requirements identified in the figure above:

In this example, the strategies include attracting high-net-worth customers with excellent online capabilities and deepening the relationship with those customers to achieve greater customer profitability. These strategies will drive substantial changes in the bank’s business, including the creation of a personal banker function and the associated account management processes. There will be a need for profitability information by customer and channel, which will be provided by a customer analytics initiative supported by data warehousing and business analytics technologies.

These requirements give specific guidance to the business process competency center, which will need to design the new processes and drive the organizational changes as well as to the business intelligence competency center, which will need to focus on providing customer profitability data to business management. Such information also provides guidance to the EA team, which needs to incorporate data warehousing and business analytics technology into the bank’s enterprise architecture. There will likely be a number of projects in the bank’s portfolio that support the customer analytics program. It is the job of the program and portfolio management functions to ensure that these projects deliver the business value that is envisioned.

The Enterprise Architecture guidance principle supports the evolution of the enterprise to the desired future state.