Make the Communication Simple and Abstract of EA

We learn from strategic writing teacher Mr. Barr that we should make the communication process simple thus can make the receivers easy to understand. In the communication between business department and IT department, we should also keep the process simple.

But what is the condition now?

What are CIOs thinking?

Cynthia Rettig wrote in The Trouble with Enterprise Software that, the CIOs and their managers try every effort to prove the value of IT to the business side of the organization. Yet, the cost overruns, delay and outright failures of enterprise systems have if anything widened the digital divide between IT and the executive suite.

What are CEOs thinking?

Nowadays, CEOs are finding that they cannot understand what the CIO teams are doing. As Shay said in 2007, only 28% of CEOs thought their CIOs were proactive or creative in terms of business process improvement. It seems that CIOs are in a really hard time.

All the problems seems point to the mechanism between business dept. and the IT dept. The managers and employees in each department cannot understand what guys do in the other. When this kind of thing happens in the core management layer, it will lead to a really bad ending.

My first job was at a company contains only 50 people. The CEO was an MBA graduated from Yale. She thought that the IT team in our company was not dependable. And can you guess what the reason was? Once, she asked an IT guy who was charging the company website to help her to fix her laptop. Unfortunately, the guy cannot solve the problem. In the end, the CEO wanted to fire that person and said that, ”he could not even fix my laptop.”

Why a person in charging website must know how to fix a computer?

This is what the CEOs are thinking.

How to solve this communication problem?——EA

Besides improving the basic communication skills of the both sides, to build up a fixed pattern for them to communicate with each other is a natural solution.

Considering this, John Zachman proposed the Framework for Information Systems Architecture in 1987, which was regarded as one of the creative discovery in Enterprise Architecture.

Except Zachman’s Framework, there are some other Framework models: e. g. NIST EA model, FEAF, TAFIM, and TOGAF.

Communication methods in EA building

So, what we should do in building the EA?

We should link different department (especially IT department and business department, which is of the most important) together into a whole.

What is EA?

Zachman wrote in the foreword of An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture 3^rd Edition (pp. 7-9) that Enterprise Architecture is not well understood. It is treated as an I/S or IT issue, or I/S management, or a kind of academia.

EA is the analysis and documentation of an enterprise in its current and future states from an integrated strategy, business, and technology perspective——An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture 3^rd Edition (pp. 31)

What I want to emphasize is, it is not a simple definition, it is an organic whole of strategy, business, and technology. As is shown in the Cube on the right.

“It is the Issue of the Century”, Zachman wrote.

How to analysis and design by EA?

It is quite easy to find out from the Figure above that, what we should do is analyze and find out how the enterprise do currently in the 5 aspects ( goals & initiatives, products & services, data & information, systems & application, networks & infrastructure) and what we want the enterprise to be in the future in the same 5 aspects.

When I was at work, I learned a basic thing in business and also suitable in every part of our life. Guess what it is?

It is Necessity Thinking. Thus, we can find out the shortest way to our goal. For example, suppose we know there are five elements that can affect whether the customers will choose a product (e.g. price, function, color, popularity, and size). After finding from statistics, we find out that it is the price that the customers most care about. All the other four elements are not so important. So, the price is the essential condition. Then, we should do every effort to lower the price. If we have time to improve the other four element, we do the improvement; and if the time is limited, we should focus on the price. This is the most efficiency and economical way to solve the problem.

To find a shortest way to make the transition from the current architecture and future architechture, the necessity thinking is quite important. 

There should be some obstacles in EA. Let's find them out in the future.

PS: http://eapad.dk/ea3-cube/overview/ this page is really good to have an overview of the Cube.