I have been consulting with a client’s Enterprise Architecture team and got around to reflect on questions that I have been asked in other contexts: Who are SAP Enterprise Architects? What (if anything) is different about Enterprise Architecture in a product/ERP landscape?

The client, lets call it MyCorp, is a multi-billion dollar global manufacturing company with a few core lines of businesses. The business and IT operations are managed by geographic units for Latin America, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. MyCorp`s IT is supported by a federated team of Enterprise Architects . As with most multinationals, MyCorp has several “key” ongoing technology and transformational initiatives that the Enterprise Architects are supporting. So what is unique about MyCorp`s Enterprise Architecture focus? Besides the fact that every organization is “unique,” this happens to be a “SAP Shop.” Which is to say the IT application landscape is predominantly a mix of SAP tools and technologies and in pockets where it is not, there is a roadmap to move towards this direction.

In my previous EA blog entry, I had written about contextualizing Infosys’ Enterprise Architecture survey findings. Since then I had an opportunity to observe and reflect on an aspect of the survey: adoption – and challenges - of Enterprise Architecture Tool at a Global 500 enterprise. To set the context for the discussion, a brief extract from the survey report as it pertains to adoption of EA tools:

• There is an increased adoption of EA tools, but there is no product which has managed to dominate the market
• The EA tools market is fragmented with the vast majority of respondents claiming to use general office and collaboration tools and drawing tools (e.g. Microsoft Visio) for Enterprise Architecture Modeling

This should not surprise many of us in the industry!

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Dear All
Some of you may have participated in the Infosys’ Enterprise Architecture Survey 2008/2009. Attached is a soft-copy of the survey findings.

One of the key findings is that participants of the survey saw Enterprise Architecture as a capability that was core to their business and inherently part of their organization's crown jewels. However, given the daunting set of activities that most Enterprise Architecture functions have to execute today, the opportunity to work with ESPs and enlist them to execute some of these activities is real. In other words, some activities (the more tactical ones), can be outsourced to a strategic vendor partner.

Form an Architecture Governance Team
 

• A central team constituted with representation from stakeholders across the organization, should govern the planning, evolution and implementation of an Enterprise Architecture framework
   
• Architecture should be well thought through to meet the common goals of all stakeholders.
   
• The central team also should play a key role in establishing products, design and technology standards
  

During the past few weeks I got involved in an interesting activity: analysis and review of responses to the 2008 Enterprise Architecture survey that Infosys has been conducting annually for the past few years.
 
This year, we invited technology leaders from our client base and the global IT community to participate. 207 respondents from a cross-section of industry verticals, geographies and organizational sizes completed a web questionnaire of 24 detailed questions.  A preliminary analysis of the results indicates a few trends, including:

• Enterprise Architecture is enabling business transformation [Does this surprise me?]
• EA practices continue to mature with increasing use of metrics and processes [Again no surprises on this front]
• Outsourcing of activities focused at Enterprise Architecture is an opportunity that most EA teams have not seriously considered [Now, this is interesting]

In my last post, I talked about the movie The 300 Spartans and the lessons it held for Architects about doing the right thing, courage under fire, looking for alternatives etc.

My Cousin Vinny (Year of Release: 1992; Director: Jonathan Lynn; Our Architect: Vincent Gambini, played by Joe Pesci; Architect's Character: Lawyer handling his first case for his cousin).

‘My Cousin Vinny’ is the story of a lawyer who finds himself defending his first cousin on the charges of first degree murder in his first ever trial. He has no experience as a lawyer and has never even attended the court as a lawyer, is totally unaware of the process or the protocol. He learns on the fly, makes silly mistakes on his first case, is excited by the trivial stuff, but makes a solid come back using his fundamental skills and saves his cousin from an almost certain seat on the electric chair.

Current issue of the New Scientist magazine has a very interesting cover story on “Seven reasons why people hate reason”.  Now, that is a guide I would have loved to have alongside during some rather difficult stakeholder engagements, when I couldn’t stop thinking “If only they could be reasonable…”.

In my last post, I talked about the movie Swades and the lessons it held for Architects about giving back in the form of teaching budding architects, publishing papers etc.

The 300 Spartans (Year of Release: 1962; Director: Rudolph Mate; Our Architect: King Leonidas, played by Richard Egan; Architect's Character: The Greek king of Sparta who is up against a stronger Persian army)

‘The 300 Spartans’ depicts the invasion of Greece by the Persian army and the role of King Leonidas, the king of Sparta, known for its proud, bold and courageous army. The story deals with a number of issues – the role of the senate, the mammoth scale of problem at hand and the values of a team, in this case of a state.

 A very common occurance is to use a lot of buzzwords.  I once encountered an architect who said "issue A and issue B are orthagonal".  He meant A and B are independent of each other.  Architecture patterns too - be they singletons or facades - can be confusing explanations to IT management and customers.

In my last post, I talked about the movie Padosan and the lessons it held for Architects about observation, analyzing the non-obvious, taking care of your team, knowing your priorities etc.

Swades (Year of Release: 2004; Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar; Our Architect: Mohan Bhargav, played by Shahrukh Khan; Architect's Character: A Music Director by profession, US-based research scientist with NASA, of Indian origin).

‘Swades’ is a story of Mohan Bhargav, a research scientist with NASA. He has Indian origin but is settled in the US with a nice job and comforts of life. He makes a trip to India to see his grandmother when leads him to a village. During this trip, he gets a firsthand experience of life in rural India and how far behind they have been left from the ‘progress’ made by towns of the world.