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.
Multiple CIOs also had to sponsor Chevron's EA strategy -- the corporate CIO sponsored the enterprise team while the functional CIOs, like Ehrlich, gave their enterprise-level support and focused on creating their own EA groups in addition to the central EA team.
3. One size doesn't fit all. There are many ways to organize an EA group, and CIOs can experiment with different models to find the best one.
Virtual teams. Helen Polatajko, CIO at CIBC Mellon, says the small size of her IT group (120 staff) is the main reason she kept her architects decentralized in a virtual EA team. "I have four architects -- applications, infrastructure, security and desktop -- who still report in to their lines of business. But to ensure that there's collaboration and to push the IT strategy forward, they come together to look at architecture at the enterprise level," explains Polatajko. There's no chief architect, although Polatajko and two other VPs from IT join in EA discussions to lend insight.
Brent Stahlheber, CIO at The Auto Club Group, has shifted from a centralized group to a virtual one. "What I was seeing when I had the centralized EA group was a disconnect between my architects and the business," he says. By placing the architects back into the application development and infrastructure support areas, Stahlheber anticipates that they will be better in tune with the business.
Federated model. John Bloom, chief architect for Chevron's corporate IT, and his team of 12 serve as an EA center of expertise for Chevron's lines of business and head up corporatewide architecture initiatives. Ehrlich has his own EA team of eight providing support for Global Downstream, and he doesn't hesitate to call upon Bloom's staff for guidance. This model has been in place for two years.
Hybrid of centralization and functional level. When he began in 2005, Rapken of YRC Worldwide opted for a hybrid model. It includes a centralized EA team of 20 to 30 who work with architects as well as people from the various operating companies. He chose one of his VPs to lead the new EA team. "I wanted to avoid the ivory tower syndrome where architects are viewed purely as picture-drawers without a clue when it comes to projects," says Rapken. With the centralized team working closely with the line architects, they can ensure that what they design gets built correctly.
4. Look outside IT. Participation and support from outside of IT is important for credibility and buy-in, as well as for maintaining alignment. "If the architecture team is pushing a specific philosophy, disregarding business value, business leaders will dismiss them, says Vince Kellen, VP of IS at DePaul University. The goal of the EA team should always be to add value to the business. Building strong relationships and teaching others about the importance of an enterprise approach goes a long way.
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John Bloom, chief architect for Chevron's corporate IT, shares a job description of what he is looking for in an enterprise architect. (For more on the enterprise architect position, see 'Wanted: Enterprise Architects.'
The enterprise architect is a member of the IT strategy, planning and organizational capability team, which leads the development of global IT strategy and enterprise architecture. The primary focus for this position will be business architecture, information architecture and applications portfolio, rather than technology architecture or application design patterns. This position reports to the manager of IT strategy.
Key job responsibilities:
-- Collaborate with business representatives to understand IT requirements generated by business strategies and operations.
-- Develop and implement the architecture for global IT solutions, with focus primarily on business architecture, information architecture.
-- Engage business and IT leaders to understand and document business strategies, key performance indicators and how they apply to IT asset investments(primarily applications and data leading to infrastructure).
-- Help the company use architecture to plan, describe and deliver business solutions.
-- Consult on IT solution development.
-- Lead or participate in architecture studies. Guide architecture reviews of IT solutions.
-- Facilitate the development and evolution of the architecture and governance processes. Facilitate the process for approving architecture standards.
-- Document and communicate the enterprise architecture.
Carrie Mathews is senior program manager at the CIO Executive Council.