New2EA Kickoff - Presentation Slides

Agenda

The New2EA Working Group is open to Itana Community Group members who are interesting in launching or relaunching an architecture practice (enterprise, business, technical) as well as those already running mature practices. 

Our first call will be on the topic of “What is EA at my institution?” where we will share our understanding of Enterprise Architecture in the context of our institutions. We hope you will join what will be a lively and open discussion as we launch this bi-weekly series.

Proposed future topics include:

Attendees

Announcements - Itana News, Working Group Report out

Topic Title

  1. Introductions
  2. What does EA mean at your specific institution.
    1. Tom, Notre Dame: Working with colleagues to reshape what EA may look like. Doing research with Itana, EAMM-edu, Gartner, and Togaf. Did the maturity model.
    2. Serge, Princeton: At Princeton it is all about standards. This is a practical bottom-line focus. It is about architecture in the way that architects specify stairs and walls and windows.
    3. Mary, U. of Illinois: We don't have a practice yet. Hoping to align to strategic partner as opposed to a regulatory body.
    4. Louis, Yale: Technology Architecture Committee Governance, Standards Committee, and opportunistically strategic work with business 
    5. Chris, Michigan: Doing this for a decade. Migrated from more technical to strategic. Much less on specific technical solutions.
    6. Tom, Notre Dame: Looked to Michigan as a more mature practice. Interest in moving more towards business models. And something Serge said, we are interested in making sure this is not a theory-based group but how they are applied in a practice.
    7. Piet, UW: Evolving over many years towards strategic partners. Has moved towards a consulting role to important initiatives across the environment. This is neither technical nor business but helping to foster change.
  3. What is or was the motivation for starting EA?
    1. Susan, Townsend?: A framework to help us think about alignment. Help us think about standards. Help how we communicate and collaborate around the campus. A lot of our experience is technical and through a siloed approach. Can we find areas of alignment and ways to work together.
    2. Piet: Something that doesn't get mentioned a lot is that in the early stages it can be just a matter of resources being available who are not tied to a particular line or service who are just there to consult on work being done.
    3. Louis: Started with a CTO as a consultant. Grew into a few resources looking across all the departments. Matured to an EA practice.
    4. Serge: Started out trying to deliver secure, scalable, actual great IT services and systems. He introduced the term architecture.
    5. Jacob: Delivering value is a big driver.
    6. Tom: Really focusing on breaking down barriers of strong silos.
    7. Piet: Good to have dedicated resources to do that.
    8. Tom: Yes. What should that really look like. We tend to be a little more tactical and less strategic.
    9. Piet: It is a long game.
  4. Is there any challenge in particular that folks think EA can resolve?
    1. Piet: What about overcoming barriers between IT and the business.
    2. Tom: Do more to link to the business needs. IT counsels and governance initiatives. Knowing that we are positioned to meet these challenges. The business piece of this is a bit of a hole. We could close some of the gaps around that.
  5. What type of EA are you considering?
    1. Jacob: More like the city planning metaphor. A deep view of what we could do.
    2. Chris: We aim at the city planning. Also a bit schizophrenic. We'll jump into specific gaps as needed.
    3. Ashish, UCSD: More like city planning and jumping in with specific skills.
  6. Are you learning, implementing, and/or improving EA?
    1. Tom: Definitely learning. As we look at position moves of resources we are figuring out how to sketch out a straw man as we move forward. Looking to Itana, Togaf, and Gartner
    2. Louis: Togaf a good framework, especially the Architecture Design Methodology, but politically Togaf won't fit in our organization.
    3. Chris: We had a similar view regarding the Gartner inputs.
    4. Susan: These models are so far beyond where we are in our organization. Probably the thing that we are honing in or are a couple of themes.
    5. Serge: We looked at Archimate. Too complex. How can a more enterprise perspective be helpful.
    6. Piet: Thinking about force multiplier of getting more people to think architecturally. Notices we are starting to intersect with other practices, PMO, Service Management, Organizational Development, Change Management, Business Relationship Management, etc. Might be worth learning from all of these areas.
  7. New2EA Upcoming
    1. 4/10 How did existing EA practices get started, a panel discussion.
    2. Developing a scope on a page.
    3. Communicating to leadership.
    4. Capabilities, resources, and assets.
    5. Maturity assessment.
  8. What was left unsaid?
    1. How do we get people more onboard.
    2. Brendan Bellina, UCLA: EA programs seem to be fairly fragile. After a departure of architect or key executive they might collapse. What are the characteristics that allow that to happen.
    3. Would love to talk about EA being fragile. After 8 years we are still flopping around.
    4. We don't have a practice. Good hear what everyone else is doing.
    5. Fragility is a big deal.
    6. Thank you. This couldn't be more timely.