EA helps to establish the guidance and authority on changes needed to conduct and support the strategy decisions and strategic goals of the enterprise to go from current state to future desired state. Changes typically involve the business processes, information applications, data and infrastructure. In addition, EA can induce some organizational and leadership changes. These would be coordinated organizational change management efforts that are meant to introduce or initiate the EA program in the enterprise. Most articles and papers focus on this one way direction of induced changes from EA to the org. But what about the other way around? What happens when there is a forced organizational change from outside of the EA program as a result of management restructuring or new senior management?
This would be one situation when changes might be forced from outside the EA playbook and could effect the ongoing EA migration plans. For example, if a new CIO or CDA joins the organization, it is typical for them to apply re-orgs and introduce changes both on managerial and projects levels. This will affect prioritization of projects, momentum and moral, and most importantly the EA established migration plans and established procedures. It would defintely help to have the enterprise with an EA program mature enough to overcome these unusual and less than typical situations. In enterprises of business silos and straddled technology stages of EA maturity, these changes will be most abrupt and expected since there is leeway and change authority for the new senior management to induce their own new decisions and fingerprints on desired success and achievements (in hopes for the good of the enterprise). In enterprises with optimized core and business modularity stages of EA maturity, the changes can be softened and even governed to a certain degree since the maturity of the EA program can serve as a protecting shield. This I believe is a valuable benefit that comes with the increased stages of EA maturity, if not more, just as the likes of increased IT responsiveness, improved risk management, management satisfaction, and enhanced strategic business outcomes.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic and if you can share some real world stories from experience on how senior management changes has effected (or not) existing EA initiatives and programs.
References:
Ross, J. W., Weill, P., & Robertson, D. (2006). Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.
Ziad,
ReplyDeleteChanging of the guards, so to speak, can truly bring concerns to the organization. It can work both ways. For those who need change, the new guards are welcome heroes; and for those who want to stick to status quo, the new guys will likely be seen as potential threats. I've been in scenarios where the changing of the guards, literally have people huddled in the middle of hallways, some crying holding pink slips because of the changes. But these are extreme cases.
I'd like to believe that you're right -- that there could be an EA program so strong that it can indeed serve as a shield to protect all the good practices that have been established. But I think the reality is that EA needs to constantly be evangelizing for buy-in -- mores, when a re-sell is needed for the new leadership. An enlightened leadership will see the right things, and the buy-in will perhaps be easy. Otherwise, the strength of the EA program as well as the EA leadership will be tested as they convince the new leadership with the value of EA, and how it aligns with their new approach and/or objectives.
My first post speaks of leadership, with additional notes in the comments that you might find useful. In that story, it was clear to us that we would have had less chances of success if a different leadership was at the helm.
Thanks again for sharing your insights.
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