Modern Enterprise Architecture (EA)is a discipline that provides the framework for digital transformation to guide delivery of solutions using the latest technologies. The ability to succeed in the competitive business atmosphere of today requires agility, efficiency and flexibility to meet the demands of the market. There has been a shift in focus over the past decade in EA from strategy delivery/execution to design of strategies to enable and accelerate modernization.
Establishing EA practice starts by base lining of the current state of the organization with core business processes and technology assets followed by evaluation of their alignment with business goals. Top management buy-in, culture and mindset of the organization along with willingness to commit funding are critical factors in the eventual success of the EA practice. Depending on the scope of digital transformational goals, the effort will lead to multiple roadmaps for different verticals/LOBs and shared services for the window of a few quarters. The main challenge is to translate the quantitative business metrics to technology strategies, a core responsibility of EA,by assigning business features to specific components. This forms the crux of architecture at multiple levels starting from EA at the top level. Articulation of specification of the business features and capabilities independent of vendor specific solutions using generic technology components is the key to proper architecture.It is important to have separate IT Delivery and PMO teams to take the ownership of realizing roadmap targets in collaboration with EA practice.
Figure 1 shows the scope of EA in key areas of responsibilities and relationships to other essential practices typical of financial industry. The areas can be mapped to EA frameworks such as TOGAF although they may seem more abstract than needed. The diagram is self-explanatory but the key points are elaborated below.
Business Process : Modeling core business processes that benefit and bring the most value to a company in alignment with the business goals is critical. Recent advancements in modeling and AI-based reverse engineering process extraction tools and techniques are paving the way for more efficient and faster visualization of this fundamental EA activity. Process optimization, improvement and automation need to be at the center of any transformational initiative as they form the core intellectual property of an organization. This is of great value especially in any M&A situation in today’s ever-changing business environment.
Reference Architecture : Reference Architecture lays out the different tiers of technology components such as channel applications (e.g., web, mobile, IVR), the core backend business capability providers (e.g., customer information, origination, servicing, payments) and integration tier that facilitates between those tiers to make reuse possible. APIs are the key enablers of the business capabilities that play a pivotal role whether implemented as SOA coarse-grained services or microservices for real time integration. It is imperative to have some clarity of vision on the culture of the future organization to decide on a ‘buy-vs-build’ approach. For example, a preferred ‘best-of-breed’ solution will be quite different from vendor solution driven ‘buy’ approach in terms of talent acquisition and development.
Technology Stack and Resolution Planning : It is important for EA to establish a baseline Technical Reference Model (TRM) of assets with an optimal set of appropriate standards and policies. Resolution planning often is the first step in optimizing capital and operational expenses and it is imperative to have a configuration management (CMDB) system to record and track all assets. For example, it is essential to use such a tool as a basis for something like security landscape assessment to frame roadmaps.
"Process optimization and automation need to be at the center of any transformational initiative as they form the core intellectual property of an organization"
EA Roadmaps : The EA roadmaps typically indicate architecturally significant areas where improvements are sought in the reference architecture and high level timeframes from current state to future states. Critical business processes that need improvement form the backbone of roadmaps on the common substrate of the target reference architecture. Measurable business goals in combination with all the technology roadmaps should drive technology investments leading to program formulation and execution of projects. At the end of each cycle of roadmap realization, progress needs to be tracked and roadmaps appropriately updated.
Governance and Standards : EA practice needs to drive the governance aspects of delivery/execution such as framing SDLC workflows, architectural/design/code review standards or cloud migration plan including management of technical debt. Use of architectural and design patterns at multiple levels are crucial concrete deliverables expected of EA with POCs to prove and certify any new technology to reduce operational risks early on in SDLC. It is critical for PMO and Delivery teams to be governed by workflow gates in SDLC, framed in collaboration with EA. Modern developments of virtualization and containers along with scalable agile best practices using CI/CD components of PaaS are pivotal to faster release cycles.
EA practice is expected to go both in breadth and depth in communicating with business, solution architecture and delivery teams as a catalyst to make the office of the CIO successful. This pandemic with its unique challenges of remote work and automation underscored the crucial role EA.
