How to Create an Enterprise Architecture Practice Roadmap

Learn from practical experiences and further your career as an Enterprise Architect. You too can become recognized as an influential leader.

I have created a step by step guide using the tools and techniques that I have acquired over a 30 year IMIT career.  I will walk you through how I determine the activities needed to achieve a level 5 Enterprise Architecture Maturity level. 

Similar to creating an EA Consolidated Roadmap for an organization you must start with an understanding of the vision for the EA Practice. Ideally all organizations should have a vision to achieve a level 5 maturity but not all leaders are willing to invest in something they do not completely understanding.

My approach is to educate the organization while gaging the maturity level with a goal to have the senior executives asking... "What is the appropriate Enterprise Architecture Practice for our organization?" and not "Do we need an Enterprise Architecture Practice?"

The course focuses on the 5 areas measured when gaging an organization's EA Maturity level :

1. EA Process and Activities - the tasks performed by the EA Team. EA is all about orchestrated change and it is the EA process and activities that put structure around organizational change. Having structure around change ensures potential risks and liabilities are addressed and that projects achieve business goals and objectives.

2. EA Team - consists of five architectural disciplines lead by the Enterprise Architect. Each architectural discipline ensures their area of expertise is considered at all times. The leader of the EA team bridges the gap between business and technical.

3. Governance - vehicle to manage organizational change.

4. Business Processes - are what the organization does. Having a level 5 EA Maturity means all business processes are managed and monitored using KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and change is based on metrics of how well each of the business processes is performing.

5. Organizational Commitment - Enterprise Architecture must be embedded within the full organization for it to be successful, if there is not a commitment from the full organization a level 5 maturity will never be realized.

The course starts with walking you through the steps to understand the senior executive's vision with respect to an EA Practice. Once the vision is understood the course will explain how to gage the organization's current EA Maturity Level. By analyzing the current state and discussing what I have learned throughout my career I will help you identify the activities needed to move your organization from a level 0 maturity to a level 5.

The key to creating a successful Enterprise Architecture Practice is how you implement those activities - How to "DO" Enterprise Architecture - is the course that will demonstrate just that using a fictitious organization.