Enterprise architecture (EA) has been one of the most common research requests the CIO Executive Council staff has fielded this year from member CIOs. Many of the questions concern the EA group itself -- how to create it, structure it and staff it. EA groups generally function as standards setters, review boards and proactive visionaries. Council members offered these four tips to ensure that an EA team will pay dividends for CIOs.

1. Respond to a real business need. For Rapken, acquisitions and extreme growth necessitated the creation of an EA group. "We grew from US$2 billion to $9 billion in three years through acquisition. We had a complex environment, a bigger portfolio of applications, and we needed to focus on simplification," says Rapken.

Mergers and acquisitions also play a role in the need for EA teams. "After the merger with Texaco, we moved from operating in country-by-country silos to being a globally integrated company. An EA group is a key ingredient to making this transition successful," says Louis Ehrlich, VP of services and strategy and CIO of Global Downstream at Chevron.

Christy Ridout, CIO at the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, helped create an EA strategy at the state level in 2003. Confusion was rampant among the state's agencies about what services should be provided centrally and what the agencies should pursue. Ridout and her colleagues thought an EA program would help provide a structured framework to answer these questions.

2. Sponsorship is key. Since agency CIOs staff statewide EA initiatives with their own budgets and architects, Ridout had to get their buy-in. She encouraged them to think about what made sense statewide rather than simply for their own agency.