New EA Book, “Coherency Management”, is Now Available

“Coherency Management – Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance” is a new EA book from co-editors Gary Doucet, John Goetz, Palla Saha and Scott Bernard.    It includes a chapter, contributed by Larry DeBoever, George Paras and Tim Westbrock at EAdirections, entitled “A Pragmatic Approach to Enlisting the Support of CEOs for Enterprise Architecture”.  This chapter covers everything from assessing a leadership team’s attitides and perspectives, to executive messaging, alignment approaches. and specific recommendations on how to engage the CEO and other executive leaders.

With submissions from over 30 authors and co-authors, the book reinforces the idea that EA is being practiced in an ever-increasing variety of circumstances – from the tactical to the strategic, from the technical to the political, and with governance that ranges from sell to tell.  One key message is that  EA must be viewed as an Enterprise Design and Management approach, adopted to building better enterprises, rather than a IT Design and Management approach limited to building better systems.

It is available directly from the publisher, AuthorHouse, or from your favorite bookseller.

 

A new EA book containing a contribution by EAdirections

EA for Everybody!

EA has always been a polarizing phenomenon and remains so today.  The diversity of opinions on exactly what EA is and how to approach it continues.  While there are many variations, two opposing camps dominate.  

• The architecture-driven camp focuses on creation of the various “architectures” (solution, application, technical, project, business, SOA, Cloud, etc.), usually as implemented in projects. 
• The enterprise-coordinated camp focuses on the “enterprise” with emphasis on strategic alignment, transformation roadmaps, and other holistic portfolio perspectives. 

The best EA programs include both approaches, with the enterprise-coordinated perspective providing context for the various “architectures”.  That way it ensures that efforts to “get things done” (i.e. projects) are implemented with all of the larger and longer-term goals in mind; to consistently manage complexity, improve integration, increase agility, balance cost and risk, or achieve whatever future-oriented, holistic objectives the leadership team deems important.  Too often, though, one camp dominates to the exclusion of the other, causing an imbalance.  The divide between the architecture-driven and enterprise-coordinated camps should not exist, yet it does!  Several factors conspire to amplify the divide, not the least of which is the economy.

(Follow this link to read more on the economy and other issues that influence your EA approach, plus suggested remedies, in the full article.)

I have rarely found an organization that couldn’t benefit from EA – from very small to very large, in every industry, in the private and public sectors and in not-for-profits.  Everybody can do it, adopting the “core concepts” of EA in order to enhance decision-making to include an enterprise perspective.  Implement just enough mechanisms to create processes and deliverables that align strategy with implementation across the continuum from the short to the long term, always sensitive to the balancing act described above.  Drive your program with an enterprise-coordinated approach.  You don’t need to call it “EA”, nor do you need to completely implement any particular framework or methodology.  Good, or even just “better”, will come over time.

Directions: A solid EA leader always adjusts his/her approach with the times, with sensitivity to the biases and needs of their enterprise.  Make sure you are focused, delivering value and addressing the needs of leadership.  Don’t get caught up in perfectionism, avoid the extremes, and take a balance approach.  And don’t forget to be leaders yourselves – provide enterprise perspective and context so that decisions are consistent with both short term needs and longer term visions.  If you make your EA program more transparent and actionable, while focusing on the right balance, you will make a difference for your enterprise.

EA Doctrine Echoes Cornerstone

The Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession (CAEAP) is presenting a document entitled “Enterprise Architecture Doctrine” at their Summit event in late June. As members of CAEAP, we have received a preview version.  This represents CAEAP’s position on the values and principles of the practice and profession of EA. 

We are happy to see that many of the values and principles that we advocate in our approach to EA, as published in Cornerstone, are a part of CAEAP’s doctrine.  Long believers in principles-based EA, the notion of providing a set of foundation values and principles for all EA’s to follow is very encouraging. 

We believe that the efforts of organizations like CAEAP in standardizing and formalizing aspects of the practice and profession of EA can only help increase the value that EA can contribute to an organization. We see countless organizations that struggle with the basic notions of EA due to a lack of common understanding, definitions, methods, models and activities associated with EA. Hopefully the values, principles and approach to EA from Cornerstone and CAEAP’s Doctrine can become the foundation for EA in most organizations.