Friday, February 03, 2006
Marketing Enterprise Architecture
Sometimes enterprise architects need to think about not just business/IT alignment or even technical issues but about how to communicate (aka market) the notion of enterprise architecture. Curious if anyone in the blogosphere can expand upon my own thoughts on this topic...
The ability to manage perception at times is more important than managing reality. Sometimes folks don't really want to think in terms of logical approaches and stated fact and instead want to be sold to. The notion of selling enterprise architecture of course should have already happened within IT itself as instilling a service mentality and customer focus is useful to the overarching goal.
One of my own faults is that I am passionate about technology. Likewise, I am equally passionate about business. The problem is that in terms of communication I tend not to connect them (I do in thinking though). It's become a truism that enterprise architecture must speak about IT's processes and possibilities in the language of business. Many of the better enterprise architects within our profession suffer from the same curse. We approach things from a point of diligence and integrity and the notion of marketing is diametrically opposed in a variety of ways to this practice. In order to change this perspective, we as a profession may need to think of marketing as the next killer app...
Maybe the enterprise architecture roadmap shouldn't really transform anything meaningful except the marketing message. Maybe it should consider the following:
This reminds me of the fact that I really have to get back to writing and finishing up the manuscript for an upcoming book entitled: Agile Enterprise Architecture. If anyone has insights as to whether I should spend time researching marketing aspects in order to make the book more compelling, please do not hesitate to leave a comment. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks I will continue to share thoughts on this important subject.
I do have one favor to ask of the blogosphere. For all you folks that blog on enterprise architecture, it would be greatly appreciated if you could make your next blog entry on the practice of marketing enterprise architecture. We have ignored this topic for far too long...
| | View blog reactionsThe ability to manage perception at times is more important than managing reality. Sometimes folks don't really want to think in terms of logical approaches and stated fact and instead want to be sold to. The notion of selling enterprise architecture of course should have already happened within IT itself as instilling a service mentality and customer focus is useful to the overarching goal.
One of my own faults is that I am passionate about technology. Likewise, I am equally passionate about business. The problem is that in terms of communication I tend not to connect them (I do in thinking though). It's become a truism that enterprise architecture must speak about IT's processes and possibilities in the language of business. Many of the better enterprise architects within our profession suffer from the same curse. We approach things from a point of diligence and integrity and the notion of marketing is diametrically opposed in a variety of ways to this practice. In order to change this perspective, we as a profession may need to think of marketing as the next killer app...
Maybe the enterprise architecture roadmap shouldn't really transform anything meaningful except the marketing message. Maybe it should consider the following:
- Creating an IT marketing strategy and action plans
- Building an internal "brand" for your services
- Understanding your user organizations in new ways that create value (of course do this at the expense of ROI and TCO)
- Creating a marketing culture in your IT organization (I wonder how this fits into the Agile Manifesto
This reminds me of the fact that I really have to get back to writing and finishing up the manuscript for an upcoming book entitled: Agile Enterprise Architecture. If anyone has insights as to whether I should spend time researching marketing aspects in order to make the book more compelling, please do not hesitate to leave a comment. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks I will continue to share thoughts on this important subject.
I do have one favor to ask of the blogosphere. For all you folks that blog on enterprise architecture, it would be greatly appreciated if you could make your next blog entry on the practice of marketing enterprise architecture. We have ignored this topic for far too long...
