Monday, February 09, 2009
Enterprise Architecture: It's 2009 and the business still doesn't understand IT...
Sometimes, I believe that IT is more aligned (in terms of delivery capability, innovation and speed to market) than it is given credit for. The real lack of alignment may be the disconnect between IT and business in that the financial aspect of a solution isn't always completely understood...
Financial aspects of solutions can be very complex as a design may be seem to be the most robust and cost-effective solution in a "snapshot of time" leveraging basic reviews of infrastructure, recurring maintenance and strategic architecture alignment. The financial and vendor relationship management view may not be the top pick of practitioners of enterprise architecture.
We would like to believe that suboptimal decisions to compromise architecture will have financial rewards. The challenge is to see how decisions are made through eyes other than your own. Sure, us IT types believe that business people speak like idiots. The same thing can be said about IT. The complexity of the business and finance roles until one fully engages in their process will be misleading as they are thoughtful once you peel back the layers.
Rather than always bashing process, there is merit in doing research, reaching out to leaders who don't understand enterprise architecture and having the ability to ask dumb questions. One way to tell if you have both a quality process and competent leadership is to have the opportunity to inquire and a channel of communication to improve (aka a process to improve the process)...
| | View blog reactionsFinancial aspects of solutions can be very complex as a design may be seem to be the most robust and cost-effective solution in a "snapshot of time" leveraging basic reviews of infrastructure, recurring maintenance and strategic architecture alignment. The financial and vendor relationship management view may not be the top pick of practitioners of enterprise architecture.
We would like to believe that suboptimal decisions to compromise architecture will have financial rewards. The challenge is to see how decisions are made through eyes other than your own. Sure, us IT types believe that business people speak like idiots. The same thing can be said about IT. The complexity of the business and finance roles until one fully engages in their process will be misleading as they are thoughtful once you peel back the layers.
Rather than always bashing process, there is merit in doing research, reaching out to leaders who don't understand enterprise architecture and having the ability to ask dumb questions. One way to tell if you have both a quality process and competent leadership is to have the opportunity to inquire and a channel of communication to improve (aka a process to improve the process)...
