From the course: Enterprise Architecture Foundations
Why do enterprises need architecture?
From the course: Enterprise Architecture Foundations
Why do enterprises need architecture?
- IT projects are complex, expensive, and risky. All too often, projects deliver only to a specification, and straight out neglect the desired business outcome. Why? Because of a lack of communication between business stakeholders and developers. As you can imagine, this is not good. Fortunately, enterprise architects can address these issues. They act as interpreters, translating from business needs to solution designs and then finally to real systems. Let's be honest, outsourcing with contractors, consultants, and offshoring are often used to fill the gaps between the business and IT, but they're expensive and they can be difficult to manage. They are spread out all over the world. Don't get me wrong. Contracting and consulting can be valuable when used wisely. However, the cost of these engagements will eventually exceed the cost of running an EA organization. At that point, it's time to bring that consulting in-house to a dedicated EA department. Trust me, managing technology strategy is a full time job. Just ask your chief information and chief technology officers. Business stakeholders don't have the time to learn systems development, and it's not really part of their job description. Software developers will of course focus on writing software to specifications. Enterprise architects focus on the space between the needs of the business and the needs of the IT departments that support enterprise systems. As you might imagine, EAs have a ton of work they need to do. Companies that do not have enterprise architects or EA departments may have talented engineering leads doing some EA tasks. In most cases, unfortunately, this simply aren't done. EA guidance is tailored and targeted to various stakeholders, presenting the perspective most relevant to them. For example, your asset management teams and accounting teams need different things from their systems. Each team's perspective is valid, and all varying concerns must be incorporated into a complete solution design. EA departments have the skill and time to wrangle and reconcile all these different sometimes competing concerns. Business leaders look to enterprise architecture teams to help them make some of the most important decisions they can make. Do we need a system to support this new business process? Should we build a new system or can we buy one? If we build a new system, can we reuse existing platforms or do we need new technology to support it? What is the risk of failure in the systems we currently support? How do we mitigate that risk? Enterprise architects work closely with all levels of the business to help make the best decisions possible. That, my friends, is how businesses can benefit from an EA team.