At our recent customer conference we took a moment to share the common characteristics we see in our most successful customers. Since this was so well received by the conference attendees we thought it would be a good idea to share with a wider audience.
- Start with the end in mind. Seek business value and outcomes that materially impact the top and bottom-line. If delivering business value is not your top priority – it should be. Delivering anything less ensures your effort will be regarded as not being relevant. Ignore an approach that puts business value at it’s heart more than once and you can be sure your Enterprise Architecture (EA) program will be destine to sit on the shelf along with all of the enterprise models and charts that have been created. Our most successful customers always tie their efforts back to answering key questions business stakeholders want to address. Take a look at one of our recent blogs titled ‘Doing the Right Thing vs. Doing Things Right’ – for more details.
- Gain the Right Level of Sponsorship. Another common trait we see in our most successful customers is their ability to obtain executive management support for their Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM)/ EA initiatives. Executive sponsorship is absolutely crucial. Organizational change management is one of the hardest things in business. If you don’t have executive sponsorship, you just aren’t going to get the organization to change its behaviors. For an EPM/EA program to be successful, you need participation from people outside the EA program. The executive sponsor does not need to be an EA expert or even care about the discipline of EA. But he or she must care about the results. To read more about this condition for success see our blog titled ‘How to avoid common mistakes with your EA program – Part I’.
- Start Small and Market Internally. A common mistake many EPM/EA teams make is based on a ‘Boil the Ocean’ approach to information gathering. Gathering and assessing data can be quite seductive. But if taken too far it’s the equivalent of modeling the universe, and it’s a recipe for disaster. In fact if we see any problem today in our deployments, it’s that people get so excited they want to gather all their data at once. It is also important to market your success internally. You secured support from the organization by promising something good for them, so make sure you go back and tell them you did it. Then the organization as a whole can share in your success. Read more about these success criteria in our blog titled ‘Just say no to modeling the universe’.
- Collaborate Rather Than Dictate. In a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) blog1 Michael Krigsman stated, “Modern CIOs must reconcile the gap between their role as protector of corporate information assets and the need to drive organizational innovation and openness. We all are quite aware that promoting collaboration inside a large organization doesn’t just happen; it requires a thoughtful plan, coordination, and effort. Enterprise Portfolio Management can help CIOs change the unwanted behavior that often is manifested by information hoarding and create a culture of collaboration by giving CIOs the means to shift the conversation from technology to business strategy and innovation. See our blog ‘Lessons Learn from Social Networking’ to read more about EPMs role in institutionalizing collaboration.
- Seek Value Early and Often. Instant gratification is something we all have grown accustom. The same holds true for business. Programs and projects that deliver their intended results in short order are often viewed as benchmarks for other efforts to come. Delivering value early and often should become a key part of any EPM/EA project teams battle-cry. Our most successful customers have been able to go from project start-up to delivering quantifiable business results in a few short weeks. Take a look at the case study from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership – a 2012 InfoWorld/Forrester EA Award winner to see how they delivered results in just 12 weeks.
- Institutionalize and Embed in Process. We have found that the organizations that achieve “best in class” results from their EPM/EA efforts are those that recognize that it is lifestyle change, not a one-time “crash diet. To make EPM/EA a lifestyle change rather than a crash diet, an organization must commit first to “instrumenting” the business to measure the performance and business value of key enterprise assets such as applications, technology, business capabilities, investments and information. By tying EA/EPM to key processes and initiatives such as application portfolio management, cloud migration, mergers and acquisitions, to name a few, EA/EPM teams will ensure the lifestyle change they deliver will have positive impacts across the enterprise. For more examples of how to embed EPM in key processes read our blog titled ’Application Portfolio Management: Crash Diet or Lifestyle Change’.
