It is understandable that EA is often mistakenly perceived with an IT aura and the misconception that EA team is technical-talent focused with little business understanding. After all, most of EA programs are of technical background and/or within technical institutes and require the architect to understand the underlying information technology and the latest trends in software, hardware, and emerging technologies.
With the above statements in mind, my argument for this week's blog is that we are actually at a time where the boundaries between EA and business are much grayer than one would expect. The early twenty first century trends in technology (internet, communications, mobile, etc...) have brought a flood of information and capabilities to all sorts of people around the globe. When I recently saw a photo circulating online of a banana street vendor with a laptop on his cart trading stocks (yes it's true! just google it), I can't say I was completely surprised since not six months ago I saw my late fifty years old aunt overseas using a smart phone and throwing some mobile app names at me while looking up health information on wikipedia. So for EA team members to understand the organization business, terms, and processes, challenges and trends trends is something quite feasible and attainable within relatively short time even if their backgrounds is technical. Business should see EA as a strategic asset that can be trained to work in tandem to accomplish the strategic goals of the organization and maintain the success of the business. For example, companies usually have methodologies to determine strategy and future goals. EA team should be trained and educated on these methodologies. Same for the business operation of the organization. EA should be expected to learn and understand the different lines of business and the way business operates. This is a reason why the COO should be comfortable being approached by the EA team and expect them to be trained and educated on the operating model(s). Corporate performance can be learned by EA so that the team understands financials and corporate budgeting process. This allows EA to know the important aspects of data and reporting that are needed for producing performance metrics and what is highly recognized as success within the organization including EA team performance metrics to be put on paper (for ex. in the EA Charter Program). It is also good for EA to be familiar with marketing and how it maximizes the efficiency of the organization business model by being the voice of the customer. EA team can learn and identify the marketing functions to be savvy about the activities and processes to examine evolution and check effectiveness. Corporate governance domain is another area that is on the far end of technical skills spectrum yet EA team can get involved to understand regulations and compliance and be familiar with terms such as SOC, Sarbanes-Oxely, HIPPA, etc... A trained EA in corporate governance can be leveraged to design a process that manages all compliance from a top-down enterprise perspective. Another business exercise is the continuous merger and acquisition (M&A) which is the catalyst for increasing size and business and growing success. EA team can be trained to understand economies of scale, customer demand, and globalization effects on business. EA can spread education and provide feedback on effectiveness and efficiency of processes.
As the EA team gets trained and acquire skills in these business topics, business can start to realize the importance of EA to be educated in such fields with the expectations that it does not require a background in business or to be a lengthy process before seeing return from EA team and feedback to increase efficiency and successfully meet the strategic goals and objective of the organization as a whole.
Reference: “An Enterprise Architect’s Guide to Working for the Business”, Deborah Weiss (Gartner).
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