What is an Enterprise Architecture Team?
What is an Enterprise Architecture Team?
What is the Structure of an Enterprise Architecture Team?
- Organization scale impact on EA Team Structure
- Enterprise Architecture Use Case impact on EA Team Structure
- Who does an Enterprise Architecture Team Work For?
- Successful Structure of an Enterprise Architecture Team
What is the Best Size for an EA Team?
How Does the EA Team work with the Architecture Review Board?
What is the Enterprise Architecture Capability?
What Roles Does an EA Team Require?
What Skills Does an EA Team Require?
Why Does Your EA Team Need an Optimized Enterprise Architecture Framework?
What is an Enterprise Architecture Team?
What is an enterprise architecture team? An EA Team are responsible for helping guide effective change. They do this by developing an enterprise architecture that shows the organizational improvements your stakeholders want.
Surveys from the Association of Enterprise Architects, the Corporate Executive Board, Forrester, and others have consistently provided a diverse range of positive and negative impressions.
There are instances of strong EA teams with long lives and teams with cycles of continuous initiation and shutting-down. The key message is every successful EA Teams is a aligned with its organization's context and enterprise architecture use case.
Characteristics of a Strong EA Teams
Successful EA Teams are engaged and help guide effective change. The most effective EA Teams have:
- focus on their enterprise architecture use case
- specialist staff covering several architecture domains
- effective engagement with the decision makers of your organization.
- effective engagement with your implementation and agile development teams
- an optimized enterprise architecture framework
- a dynamic architecture review board
- processes to make use of
- dynamic work management and awareness of key business cycles
- the ability to continually improve
- the right skills
The Leader's Guide to Enterprise Architecture Teams goes into detail how to establish and develop an EA capability.
The Enterprise Architecture Capability Reference Architecture provides a comprehensive reference architecture for a enterprise architecture capability.
Common Attributes of Struggling EA Teams
Struggling EA Teams are very different. They tend to have a cycle of re-start, shut-down, and re-start. Struggling EA Teams often:
- are not aligned to their organizations decision-making and implementation processes
- appearing after portfolio and project decision
- attempt to take decisions and set priority
- are heavily focused on theoretical IT-oriented issues
- do not have an optimized enterprise architecture framework
- gravitate to implementation detail
- do not make use of:
- have created the team without reference to their enterprise architecture use case
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What is the Structure of an Enterprise Architecture Team?
Experience shows that there is no one right EA team. There is no best structure. Successful teams fit their organization and are structured to deliver their enterprise architecture use case.
Your EA Team structure will be based on your:
- Organization scale
- Enterprise Architecture Use Cases
Organization scale impact on EA Team Structure
A global fortune 50 giant and a specialist business service company might compete in the specialist's market. However they are very different in scale. Most importantly they are very different in structure.
Larger more specialized organizations require more specialized EA Team structures.
The basic model of a centralized EA Team fails in complex digital enterprises. Different parts of a complex digital organization may have different enterprise architecture use cases.
Enterprise Architecture Use Case impact on EA Team Structure
At different organizations, EA Teams are expected to support different use cases. There are four standard use cases:
- Enterprise Architecture to support Strategy
- Enterprise Architecture to support Portfolio
- Enterprise Architecture to support Project
- Enterprise Architecture to support Solution Delivery
Each of the use cases will require a different structure.
Who does an Enterprise Architecture Team Work For?
Most EA Teams are housed in the IT organization. However, the right reporting structure will be driven by focus of the EA Team.
As a starting point, the Leader's Guide identifies:
- Function-Centric
- IT-Centric
- Strategy-Centric
Function-Centric EA teams will report to different business function. This will often require matrix reporting with a 'solid-line' and 'dotted-line' reporting structure.
The 'solid-line' can be aligned to major consumers of enterprise architecture services. Major consumers will be dynamic and driving, such as digital products.
As an extreme, the architecture team's operating model will be coordinated or replicated. Here, there will be several architecture Teams aligned to different functions. This structure will be common where there are strong regional separations.
IT-Centric EA teams will report to the IT-function. The reports go directly to the CIO or CTO. The Leader's Guide Figure 7 on page 34, provides a few IT-centric reporting structures.
Strategy-Centric EA teams will report into business operations. If they support a Strategy function in the organization, they will be focused on the Strategy or Portfolio use case. If they support an Operations function. they are most likely to be focused on the Portfolio use case.
Successful Structure of an Enterprise Architecture Team
There are four approaches to designing the structure of your enterprise architecture team. These approaches are based on a standard operating model reference architecture. These operating models are a starting point for designing the structure of your EA Team:
- Consolidated Enterprise Architecture Team
- Replicated Enterprise Architecture Team
- Collaborative Enterprise Architecture Team
- Distributed Enterprise Architecture Teams
Selection of the best operating model for an EA Team is driven by one question:
to what extent does your organization need to partition the development of its enterprise architecture?
Partitioning is indicated when:
-
- there is a coordinated or diversified business operating model
- there is a high level of regional control and operations
Consolidated Enterprise Architecture Team
Consolidation is “standardized, integrated processes”
Single EA Team work with a common method , EA repository, and an optimized EA framework
Ensures common business strategy, current state, priorities, and stakeholders are served.
Consolidated EA Teams offer common approaches to a single set of stakeholders. There will be a central oversite to consistent method, consistent decision and a ensure re-usable EA repository.
Consolidated Enterprise Architecture Teams are over-used. We see them even when the business operation model and structure are not unified or replicated.
When there is not strong alignment between the EA Team operating model and the business operating model, the EA Team often works as Enterprise Architecture-as-a-Service.
When delivering enterprise architecture-as-a-service, external teams in the organization submit a request for the EA team to work on.
While Enterprise Architecture-as-a-Service is often used as a start-up model, it is very It is very difficult for a consolidated EA Team to shift priorities and objective. Failing to align with objective and priority leads to failure and re-boot.
Replicated Enterprise Architecture Team
Replication is “standardized independence”
Separate EA Teams work with a common method, optimized EA framework, and separate EA repository.
Ensures common business strategy with different current state, priorities, and stakeholders are served.
Replicated EA Teams offer common approaches to distinct sets of stakeholders. There will be a central oversite to consistent method, consistent decision and a ensure re-usable EA repository.
Replicated Enterprise Architecture Teams are under-utilized. We see them most in organizations with strong regional decision making and during acquisition integration. They do not automatically apply to replicated business operating models. Replicated business units do not require their own EA Team.
Collaborative Enterprise Architecture Teams
Collaborative is “seamless access to shared data”
Separate EA Teams work with a different method, but a common EA repository. Separate EA teams would likely have different architecture domain focus and may have different use cases. Collaborative EA teams would have extensions to a shared optimized EA framework.
Ensures different business priorities, and stakeholders are served.
Distributed EA Teams offer different approaches to distinct sets of stakeholders. There will be central oversite to ensure re-usable EA repository.
Collaborative Enterprise Architecture Teams are very rare.
Distributed Enterprise Architecture Teams
Distributed is “independence with shared services”
Separate EA Teams work with a high degree of autonomy. Likely require segregated EA repositories and may require separate optimized EA frameworks.
Ensures different business strategy, priorities, and stakeholders are served.
Distributed EA Teams offer different approaches to distinct sets of stakeholders. There will not be a central oversite or ARB.
Distributed Enterprise Architecture Teams are fairly rare.
The Unification model describes a centralized organizational design. The company uses standardized processes and shared data to lower costs and improve reliability and predictability. The EA Team needs to create an end-to-end view of operations and a single face to the customer. Delta Air Lines’ standardized global business is an example of Unification.
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What is the Best Size of an Enterprise Architecture Team?
A global Fortune 50 giant and a specialist business service company might compete in the same market. However, they are very different in scale. The largest EA Team we worked with exceeded 2,500 staff. The smallest was a single individual. The most effective all had fewer than 40 people.
Yes, the most effective were always fewer than 40. Regardless of their organization's size. Yes, even for a global giant.
The reason for the size is what enterprise architecture is used for. It helps business leaders guide effective change. You don't need hundreds of people to advise an organization's change leaders. There are not enough change leaders.
Inevitably, large EA Teams lose focus on their enterprise architecture use case. Large EA teams drift from architecture to implementation and operation. Large EA teams dabble in multiple use cases.
Frankly, every large team we worked with had many people with the job-title architect who were not fulfilling the role of architect - enterprise architect, security architect, business architect, application architect, data architect, or infrastructure architect.
We build lean, efficient teams. We leave operational functions and technical specialists out of the architecture team.
How Does the EA Team work with the Architecture Review Board?
The five goals for a successful ARB outline the relationship between the EA team and the Architecture Review Board.
The five goals are:
- Ensure the enterprise architecture team is focused on your enterprise architecture use case
- Ensure the target architecture addresses your organizational shortfalls
- Ensuring the right decision-makers approved the target architecture using the target architecture checklist
- Ensuring implementation teams deliver the expected benefits and stayed within their constraints using the implementation governance checklist
- Ensure the architecture review process functions efficiently
In short, the ARB provides an oversight role and ensures the best practice process for architecture approval and implementation governance. The ARB has two engagements with the EA Team.
First, oversight. Ensuring the enterprise architecture team is aligned to and delivers on their use case.
Second, process. Making sure the architecture approval process and implementation governance process run smoothly. Supporting these processes, the ARB will use the target architecture governance checklist and the implementation governance checklist.
What is the Enterprise Architecture Capability?
The Enterprise Architecture Capability is the business capability for developing and maintaining an enterprise architecture. As well as using the architecture to govern improving your enterprise.
Your EA business capability map is developed for your EA use case. You will develop and assemble the Foundational Capabilities to support your Purpose Capabilities.
We use Enterprise Architecture Capability Reference Architecture and capability-based planning to develop an architecture roadmap for an EA Team.
What Roles Does an EA Team Require?
An Enterprise Architecture Team will need the roles supporting the enterprise architecture capability map. The capability map should be developed to realize the enterprise architecture use case.
General Business Roles
- EA Team Leader
- Leading EA Team
- Performance management
- EA Team professional development
- EA Team design
- EA team work management
- Human Resources
EA Use Case Roles
- Strategy
- Strategy Advisory
- Portfolio
- Portfolio Advisory
- Roadmap Development
- Roadmap Implementation Governance
- Project & Solution Delivery
- Procurement Advisory
- Implementation Governance
Foundational Roles
- Architect Roles
- Enterprise Architect
- Domain Architects
- Business Architect
- IT Architect
- Application Architect
- Data Architect
- Digital Product Architect
- Cloud Infrastructure Architect
- Integration Architect
- Security Architect
- Librarian Roles
- Enterprise Architecture Model Librarian
- Enterprise Architecture Work Product Librarian
- Enterprise Architecture Deliverable Librarian
- Enterprise Architecture Repository Librarian
- Governance Roles
- ARB Facilitator
- Technique
- Modelling & Analysis
- Knowledge Management
What Skills Does an EA Team Require??
Why Does Your EA Team Need an Optimized Enterprise Architecture Framework?
Conclusion
You have three paths to a better EA Team
