How to Build an Enterprise Architecture Team

Overview of How to Build an Effective EA Team

Building an effective EA team involves developing the characteristics of strong EA Teams. This means you need to ensure that your EA team:

• is focused on your enterprise architecture use case
• covers all necessary architecture domains
• has effective engagement prior to decision with the decision makers of your organization.
• has effective engagement to guide your implementation and agile development teams
• uses an optimized enterprise architecture framework
• has access to a dynamic architecture review board
• makes use of:
  • analytic architecture models that answer your questions and decision criteria
  • reference architectures that speed up your work and improve analytic quality
  • viewpoint library that supports analysis of candidate architectures according to your stakeholder's concerns
  • architecture alternatives and trade-off
• employs dynamic work management and delivers ahead of key business cycles
• is a learning organization
• employs the right skills

Several key considerations inform the development of your EA Capability Roadmap.

First, know your history. A step improvement from good-to-great differs from a re-boot. You need to know what you can use to build off and what you need to abandon.

Second, know your enterprise. Follow the definition of the enterprise used in the Leader's Guide is tied to the boundary of your architecture. You need to know the expected scope.

Third, know your enterprise architecture use case. We use a simple analogy - the recipe for the best filet mignon is not useful for a fast-food restaurant. You need to deliver support for the type of improvements your stakeholders want help with.

Once you know where you are going, use capability-based planning. There are three paths forward:

First path, engage experts. Get the support of an organization that can help deliver to your enterprise and use case. This path has the highest probability of quick success. We have a set of packaged services to help.

The second path is to train your team. This path is most applicable to a successful team that needs predictable improvements. When you know the predictable improvement, you can engage in the training you need. Be aware that irrelevant training is irrelevant to your improvement.

The third path is to Do-it-Yourself. You follow the end-to-end approach an expert would follow, leveraging available guidance and tools. This is the most common path. EA Team Leaders usually selected because of the cost of engaging experts. We know the cost of engaging our consulting team to help you. We have packaged a set of DIY tools to help build your EA Team.