EA Challenges - based on EA Excellence winners

This looks at some common challenges identified in: http://m.infoworld.com/d/enterprise-architecture/the-2011-enterprise-architecture-awards-173372?page=0,0

My summary of common challenges:

• building strong collaboration with business owners and IT to enable change scenarios to be explored – so reports and visualizations (suited to the various audiences) directly generated from the portal are key.
• adopting approaches – so senior management commitment was required to make the necessary process, role and cultural changes.
• unifying the architects: into a single, cohesive community using a common repository
• data quality and management - enabling any authorized user to update information, and as they go about their usual work, without need for training or modelling. So you can avoid collection, and survey exercises or bottlenecks through a modelling function/tool.

General

To be effective change agents, enterprise architects must possess a deep understanding of business process, and grasp both the potential and the practical limits of new technology solutions. Despite their crucial role and unique combination of skills, enterprise architects seldom get the recognition they deserve.

Bayer Healthcare

The biggest challenge was data input and management. In the past, data had been collected using surveys sent to various regions, which were difficult to reconcile and keep current.

Of particular importance was building strong collaboration tools, so business owners and IT could more easily share and discuss change scenarios. To facilitate this, reports and visualizations can be generated directly from the portal.

Singapore Ministry of Education
Because EA is a relatively new discipline, significant senior management commitment was required to make the necessary process, role and cultural changes.

USAA
The most difficult challenge has been helping the organization, particularly its business partners, to recognize the value of the approach. "Few organizations are ready to accept a unified architecture. It's a long road to educate the players and it needs to be done through grassroots efforts, finding champions and showing success through pilot projects that deliver value."

Another challenge has been unifying the architects themselves into a single, cohesive community and creating a metamodel and deliverables that all disciplines can agree to and benefit from. USAA is building a common repository, which will have joint ownership across disciplines and its own governance team made up of representatives from the architecture community.