Architecture As Strategy
Architecture As Strategy:
Should anyone care about business and IT architecture? After all despite the fact that many people are talking about architecture, it seems that very few companies are really architecture focused. Even though we often claim organizations are architecture focused, very few companies have clear understandings of "As-Is" architecture capabilities, let alone understandings of what their "Vision Architecture capabilities" need to be and clear migration plans of how to get from here to there. This all makes being an enterprise architect a tough business to be in. The discipline required to be a truly "operating model" and architecture driven business just doesn't seem to be there.
However there is cause for some optimism. Architecture is now being recognized as being strategic to enterprise success. This trend towards architecture as a mission critical function is best exemplified by the "Architecture as Strategy" movement that has been pioneered by leading information systems academics at MIT.
Architecture as a strategy has been studied extensively at MIT. The results of this study is available at CISR.MIT.EDU. The upshot of the MIT analysis indicates that architecture driven companies consistently out perform their competitors. Business executives who understand the competitive advantages of the business architectures and It architecture are able to execute more effectively in the marketplace.
MIT Center for Information System Research CISR defines enterprise architecture as “the organizing logic for business process and IT capabilities reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model.” We view architecture as a strategic, rather than technical, exercise. A firm’s architecture describes a shared vision of how a firm will operate—thus providing a shared understanding of the role of IT. We have found enterprise architecture to be a critical tool for aligning IT and business strategy and for driving business value from IT. We emphasize three key concepts in our research:
Operating model: a simple statement of the integration and standardization requirements for the firm’s core processes (“Forget Strategy: Focus IT on Your Operating Model”).
Core diagram: a visual representation of the firm’s key business processes, shared data, and integrating technology (“Enterprise Architecture: Depicting a Vision of the Firm”).
Architecture maturity: a description of the journey an established firm embarks upon as it transitions into more strategic use of IT ( “Maturity Matters: How Firms Generate Value from Enterprise Architecture”).
The bottom line is that this is important work at CISR that enterprises ignore at their peril.
just my 2 cents: We saw a road map to success here. but peoples (who within companies) are short-sighted and focus on personal gain . Success adaption may depend on how to align two side. Rewarding model (result->reward driven) shall works better than the threatening model (policy->audit driven). because one side is about willingness, the other side is about covering up. Then, we have got a question here, how ?
Interesting.. I see a step before all this.. That is about infusion of aspects of design of the entire system. Design for me is more about looking at an overall solution that covers aspects of human need, business need, customer and user need. Or maybe we need to revisit the terms being used as the overall intent is the same.
Any recommendations in how to conduct an internal audit on a firms IT strategies, IT architecture and security architecture? Lots of audit programs on IT general controls, but I think there is opportunity to focus on strategy as part of risk based auditing. The opinions expressed are solely of Charles Snyder and not necessarily BKD.