Alex Cullen

Just about every company Forrester works with tells us they are driving to become Digital Businesses. But not just ‘digital’ as a technology imperative – they are investing in digital to dramatically change how they serve their customers – with target…

Forrester and InfoWorld set the theme for this year’s awards as ‘Speed and Responsiveness – And EA”. The underlying premise is that business leaders are demanding that their business moves faster – everything from updating digital capabilities to bringing more agility in how firms work with customers and suppliers. In theory, enterprise architecture is a key capability to moving faster. But how can EA programs – traditionally policemen of technology – deliver on this potential?

This year’s Enterprise Architecture Award winners show how.

The title of this blog post is taken from the submission of one of our winners – Humana. The exact quote from their submission is:

“Humana believes enterprise architecture is primarily a verb, not a noun.”

But this isn’t just a sentiment unique to Humana. All our winners are delivering business results because they embed insight and guidance into the decisions made by their business and IT leaders – enabling these leaders to ‘enterprise architect’ how they achieve business results. The result? Speed and responsiveness of their enterprise.

Here is how our five winners of this year’s awards are doing this. But before I describe them, I must say that every year, it gets harder to select winners due to the range of innovation and impact our judges are seeing. When a judge says of one firm, not selected as a winner “This is a really neat concept, well conceived and executed. This company could do our profession a great service if they published this model!” – then you know there are many outstanding award submissions.

The 2016 Enterprise Architecture Award Winners

Humana– Evolving EA through Architecting for Change.

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Businesses of all types are experiencing the ramifications of an accelerating pace of change. Everything, from economies as a whole to the competitive landscape to consumers’ tastes, is more dynamic. As a consequence, business leaders are demanding tha…

Businesses of all types are experiencing the ramifications of an accelerating pace of change. Everything, from economies as a whole to the competitive landscape to consumers’ tastes, is more dynamic. As a consequence, business leaders are demanding tha…

One of the winners of this year’s Forrester/Infoworld Enterprise Architecture Awards segmented their EA practice into two disciplines: Innovation Architecture and Effectiveness Architecture. These two words describe the range of winners selected by our judges.

Before I announce the winners, let me tell you about why these two words are significant. The Forrester/Infoworld EA Awards have always sought to uncover programs that impact their business through the insight and value that only EA can provide. But many EA programs struggle with this – and the reason for this struggle lies more in themselves than in their context. Bottom line: They focus on “doing architecture” or on “being smart technical experts.” Many talk about being more business-focused but aren’t willing to change their thinking or how they engage with their business.

The five winners of this year’s awards have changed their approach to EA and delivering business impact, and the results show.

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