Enterprise architecture plays a crucial role in managing and addressing business complexity, which in turn can have a significant impact on business performance. By implementing effective enterprise architecture practices, organizations can navigate through complexity, optimize resource allocation, improve operational efficiency, and achieve better business performance outcomes. Higher levels of enterprise architecture maturity are expected to positively influence various aspects of business performance, including reduced IT costs, increased customer satisfaction, improved operational excellence, better decision making, enhanced competitive performance, and faster time to market.
- Business Complexity:
- People:
- People are communicating clearly within the organization.
- Internal communication within our organization is understandable for everyone within the organization.
- Politics:
- Within meetings politics play an important role within our organization, sometimes ignoring rational arguments.
- I have to deal with too much politics within meetings.
- Organizational Design:
- The organization has a complex internal organizational structure.
- The organization has too many layers from the CEO to the shop floor and/or the span of control is too wide.
- Multinational Operations:
- We are a multinational organization operating in multiple domains.
- Our organization serves a wide variation of markets/segments in different countries.
- Strategy:
- Our business strategy changes frequently.
- Over the past five years, we have changed our corporate strategy multiple times.
- Budgeting Process:
- The annual budgeting process is clear and simple to understand.
- The budgeting process is centrally controlled and simple to understand.
- Products and Services:
- The past five years, our organization has launched more new products/services than our competitors.
- Compared to our competitors, our organization has a highly innovative product portfolio.
- Customer Demands:
- The diversity of customer demands is high compared to other organizations (also other segments).
- Our organization has to produce many different products/services to meet customer demands compared to other organizations.
- Processes:
- The organization has a project methodology that dictates how a project progresses from idea to project to implementation.
- The organization’s project methodology is well-established and applied to every project.
- External:
- The number of competitors is high compared to the number of competitors in other markets.
- We operate in a highly competitive market.
- Regulatory Constraints:
- In our day-to-day business, we have to take into account complex laws and regulations.
- Regulatory constraints have a big impact on our operation.
- People:
- Enterprise Architecture Maturity:
- EA Foundation:
- There is a clear governance structure and process for the creation and implementation of our architectures.
- EA processes and governance are well-established and in use throughout the organization.
- EA Development:
- Our EA principles, rules, standards, and guidelines are defined following best practices but specifically tailored for the organization.
- My organization has a clear set of EA principles, rules, standards, and guidelines to improve decision making, planning, and design.
- EA Realization:
- There is a process for compliancy check and escalation during implementation of the target architecture during projects.
- The firm has a well-established, timely architectural exception and compliancy check process.
- EA Alignment:
- Our enterprise architecture activities are explicitly linked to our business strategies and/or drivers.
- The organization has a full-time enterprise architecture team (or individual) ensuring alignment between IT and business priorities.
- EA Development:
- Our architects use best practice EA modeling standards for the design of the baseline, transition, and target architecture.
- EA modeling standards are in place for the creation of the business and technology architectures.
- EA Realization:
- Within our organization, the baseline, transition, target architecture for both business and technology are present.
- Business blueprints, technology blueprints, and a roadmap for transition are in place.
- EA Alignment:
- EA Foundation:
- Our enterprise architects influence the IT investment and acquisition strategy by delivering a clear target architecture and roadmap.
- Business Performance Factors:
- IT Costs:
- Our relative IT maintenance costs and IT innovation costs have decreased over the past years.
- The past five years, a relative decrease of operational expenditures is observable.
- Customer Satisfaction:
- A poll of our customers would indicate that they are generally satisfied with our organization.
- Our customers are pleased with the products and services we provide them.
- Operational Excellence:
- We are leading in operational excellence.
- Our organization scores well in operational excellence, compared to our competitors.
- Decision Making:
- Our decision-making process is well-established and easy to understand.
- Our decision-making process has been effective in the past.
- Competitive Performance:
- Our market share is the highest in the industry.
- The sales of our organization are high as a percentage of sales in the served market.
- Time-to-Market:
- The time-to-market is relatively short compared to that of our competitors.
- Compared to our competitors, the time from idea generation to product launching is relatively short.
- IT Costs: