Link: http://resources.troux.com/blog/bid/68305/EA-Ready-for-the-Big-Time-Get-Your-Skills-in-Line-Now
From Troux Blog
IT and enterprise architecture are changing more radically and quickly than ever before, says Angela Yochem, a business information executive and Troux customer at Dell. Those changes give EA experts an opportunity to deliver powerful results, as long as they educate themselves about the wider business.
In a recent interview Yochem said she’s seeing IT groups shrink and split into “very segment specific organizations.” While in the past this might have made for a management nightmare, she says, “now we’re not so concerned because so many IT shops have the governance model in place” to support such a distributed, yet very focused model.
Yochem has two pieces of advice for EA professionals who want to be effective in this new world. The first is to learn about areas outside of their customary comfort zone. “If you’ve historically been focused on governance models,” she says, start educating yourself about environments and scenarios you haven’t seen before. With both business and technology changing so quickly, learn about new types of technology, and parts of your business, so you’ll have the “context” you’ll need to help the business change.
Her second, and related, recommendation is to analyze, from an architectural perspective, how the organization’s systems and processes would handle unexpected changes. Imagine, she says, that you’re an accounting services company, and the CEO suddenly says he wants to begin selling accounting software in six months. “Would your current systems and processes support that?” she asks. By running through such scenarios with business users, she says, “You learn a lot about yourself, and a lot about your organization, and especially where the gaps are” that could slow business change.
On a final note, she described the powerful impact that “SWAT” teams of architects and senior developers had in speeding time to market within Dell. Putting these groups of 5, 10 or 12 experts to work on specific business acceleration activities, she says, “has a major business impact. If you can accelerate time to market, if you can solve a problem that was deemed to be unsolvable, if you can answer a `fire drill’ emergency…you’re a pretty powerful force, not only in IT but across the enterprise.”
As a result of these changes, she says, EA “is really hitting its stride this year.” But EA experts need to put the right skills in place to be sure they’re along for the ride.
