EA - Enterprise Architecture or Extreme Aggravation

In my previous post, I was musing about the increasing significance of Enterprise Architects. Continuing from where I left off, it is interesting to see others also striving to define the Enterprise Architect. There are a lot of different definitions for “enterprise architect.” It can get really confusing, particularly if you follow a lot of blogs written by enterprise architects — and I did.

I came across a few interesting blogs on technology managers and EA. Ed Gibbs blogs on Moving to Enterprise Architecture, the blogs on successful software architecture and Six Sure Fire ways to Sink your Enterprise Architecture also made for an interesting read.

Fact is that work being offshored to/by software services companies is highly technical in nature. Bulk of such technical work involves translating requirements to workable solutions and also to ensure that such solutions continue working according to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) defined by businesses. It is therefore imperative that initiatives get the required oversight from technical experts and stakeholders. Such oversight includes review of architecture and design for use of industry best practices and conformance with the required Quality of Service QoS. The real skill comes in contextualizing the applicability of technology, validating best practices and reuse in the specific business and enterprise context.

In an offshored context, there is no reason one cannot leverage offshore architects for required architectural inputs, review and governance. Thanks to pervasiveness of information about ‘technology building blocks,’ base frameworks and body of knowledge, best practices can be leveraged from across geographies where technical experts may happen to reside.

Bottomline: one can extend the theme from "A Litmus Test for IT" Just as the blog says "a good IT department should be able to describe the business problem – that the company’s definition of a customer is changing – and explain that the project it’s working on will update the systems to reflect that. If the IT guys start talking about a new data warehouse that can rationalize customer records it might be time to worry" An Enterprise architect too should be able to describe the business problem.

- Mohan Babu K.

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I read the recent BusinessWeek article “The Comeback of Consulting” with more than cursory interest. Having donned the consultant hat for my employer’s strong technology strategy consulting practice, working with clients across verticals, I can empathize with the resurgence in the consulting services that the author is talking about (though the article does not specifically focus on technology consulting). This viewpoint, when read along with the recent CIO magazine write-up "Hot Jobs Enterprise Architect" gives an interesting perspective. [Tipoff Agile Elephant] The article talks about how "Consultancies and systems integrators are good places to look (for Enterprise Architects), since staff there have honed their IT and business skills on a variety of IT projects focused on different industries and technologies."

To this, I will add Offshoring and sourcing perspective as a must-have skill that Architects working for services firms acquire. You may be wondering why firms should engage with an offshoring service provider, especially for Architecture consulting services. If you are expecting the ‘obvious’ answer [‘low cost’?] you might want to think again. Architecture consulting is an area where the maxim of ‘working with an offshore service provider is cheap’ gets flipped upside down. Such consulting services are certainly not cheap, especially when provided onsite and when stacked up against conventional ‘offshore billing rate.’ But the real driver for clients to engage with us and other offshore providers is the value, especially when such consulting is bundled with offshoring.

And what is in it for individuals who wish to pursue a career in technology consulting? The answer to this was provided by the CIO article that concludes "Sony was able to get two out of four application architects to jump to the next level and become enterprise architects. The pair who didn't make it only had software development experience, while the two who succeeded had those skills as well as backgrounds as IT consultants."

Note. In case you are wondering what exactly is involved in ‘technology strategy’ consulting: The gurus at Infosys have tried to describe it as “Architecture Services enable you to eliminate the Business-IT alignment dysfunction. We partner with you to address your concerns and develop implementable Enterprise Architecture (EA) solutions to translate your corporate strategy into an effective IT strategy. These services provide you a fact-based evaluation and selection process that best fit your IT roadmap.”

- Mohan Babu K.

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