Index
Enterprise Architecture as Strategy - book.............................................................................................2
Ch 1 – To execute your strategy, first build your foundation.............................................................2
Ch 2 – Define your operating model...................................................................................................4
Ch 3 – Implement the operating model via enterprise architecture..................................................7
Ch 4 – Navigate the stages of enterprise architecture maturity.......................................................11
Ch 5 – Cash in on the learning..........................................................................................................17
Ch 6 – Build the Foundation One Project at a Time..........................................................................21
Ch 7 – Use enterprise architecture to guide outsourcing.................................................................24
Ch 8 – Now exploit your foundation for profitable growth..............................................................27
Ch 9 – Take charge! The leadership agenda.....................................................................................29
Enterprise Architecture as a Business strategy - Articles......................................................................33
Week 1: Zachman & Sowa 1992 – Extending and formalizing the framework for information
systems.............................................................................................................................................33
Kinds of techniques......................................................................................................................33
Overview of the framework..........................................................................................................33
Week 2: Gemino & Wand 2004........................................................................................................35
Week 2: Recker et al. 2011 / Week 2: Recker et al. 2009.................................................................37
Week 2: Wand & Weber 1993 – on the ontological expressiveness of information systems analysis
and design grammars.......................................................................................................................38
Week 3: Sessions (advised) -.............................................................................................................40
Week 3: Groot, Smits & Kuipers 2006 – A method to redesign the IS portfolios in large
organizations....................................................................................................................................40
Week 3: Haki & Legner 2013 – Enterprise architecture principles in research and practice: insights
from an exploratory analysis............................................................................................................43
Week 6: McDonald (advised) - (Ch. 1 (0, 1, 2, 5); Ch. 2 (0, 1, 3, 4, 5); Ch. 3 (0, 1, 2, 3))...................45
Week 7: Tamm, Seddon, Shanks, Reynolds 2011 – How does enterprise architecture add value to
organizations....................................................................................................................................46
Week 7: Boh & Yellin 2007 – Using Enterprise Architecture standards in managing information
technology........................................................................................................................................50
Week 7: Frampton, Shanks, Tamm, Kurnia & Milton 2015 – enterprise architecture service
provision: pathways to value............................................................................................................60
Week 7: Lange, Mendling & Recker 2016 – an empirical analysis of the factors and measures of
enterprise architecture management success..................................................................................63
Lecture 1-2 Amiri..................................................................................................................................68
Lectures Smits......................................................................................................................................77
1
,Enterprise Architecture as Strategy - book
Ch 1 – To execute your strategy, first build your foundation
We believe these companies execute better because they have a better foundation for execution.
They have embedded technology in their processes so that they can efficiently and reliably execute
the core operations of the company. These companies have made tough decisions about what
operations they must execute well, and they've implemented the IT systems they need to digitize
those operations.
What is a foundation for execution?
The foundation for execution digitizes these routine processes to provide reliability and predictability
in processes that must go right.
Do you have a good foundation for Execution?
Warning signs of a company that doesn't have a foundation that supports its strategy. Comments
from senior executives like the following are indicators:
• Different parts of our company give different answers to the same customer questions.
• Meeting a new regulatory or reporting requirement is a major effort for us, requiring a concerted
push from the top and Significant infrastructure investment.
• Our business lacks agility - every new strategic initiative is like starting from scratch.
• IT is consistently a bottleneck.
• There are different business processes completing the same activity across the company, each
with a different system.
• Information needed to make key product and customer decisions is not available.
• A significant part of people's jobs is to take data from one set of systems, manipulate it, and
enter it into other systems.
• Senior management dreads discussing IT agenda items.
• We don't know whether our company gets good value from IT.
An effective foundation for execution depends on tight alignment between business objectives and IT
capabilities. Toward that end, most companies put in business processes and IT systems using a fairly
straightforward logic.
First, management defines a strategic direction; then the IT unit, ideally in conjunction with business
management, designs a set of IT-enabled solutions to support the initiative; and, finally, the IT unit
delivers the applications, data, and technology infrastructure to implement the solutions.
The process starts over each time management defines another strategic initiative. This process goes
wrong in at least three ways.
• First, the strategy isn't always clear enough to act upon. General statements about the
importance of "leveraging synergies" or "getting close to the customer" are difficult to
implement. So the company builds IT solutions rather than IT capabilities.
• Second, even if the strategy is clear enough to act upon, the company implements it in a
piecemeal, sequential process. Each strategic initiative results in a separate IT solution, each
implemented on a different technology.
• Third, because IT is always reacting to the latest strategic initiative, IT is always a bottleneck. IT
never becomes an asset shaping future strategic opportunities.
2
,How do you build a foundation for execution
The foundation for execution results from carefully selecting which processes and IT systems to
standardize and integrate. To build an effective foundation for execution, companies must master
three key disciplines:
1. Operating model. The operating model is the necessary level of business process integration and
standardization for delivering goods and services to customers.
a. process integration: the extent to which business units share data.
(Integration enables end-to-end processing and a single face to the customer, but it
forces a common understanding of data across diverse business units.)
b. business process standardization: the extent to which business units will perform the
same processes the same way.
(Process standardization creates efficiencies across business units but limits
opportunities to customize services.)
2. Enterprise architecture. The enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes
and IT infrastructure, reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the
company's operating model. The enterprise architecture provides a long-term view of a
company's processes, systems, and technologies so that individual projects can build capabilities-
not just fulfil immediate needs.
Companies go through four stages in learning how to take an enterprise architecture approach to
designing business processes:
a. Business Silos, Standardized Technology, Optimized Core, and Business Modularity.
3. IT engagement model. The IT engagement model is the system of governance mechanisms that
ensure business and IT projects achieve both local and companywide objectives.
The engagement model provides for alignment between the IT and business objectives of
projects, and coordinates the IT and business process decisions made at multiple organizational
levels (e.g., companywide, business unit, project).
Why is a foundation for execution important
Companies with a solid foundation had higher profitability, faster time to market, and lower IT costs.
Growing Complexity in Companies' Systems Can Fossilize Operations
It was the result of systems so complex that any change required individually rewiring systems to all
the other systems they connect to.
Business Agility Increasingly Depends on a Foundation for Execution
If they digitize what is not changing, they can focus on what is changing. In this way the foundation
for execution becomes a foundation for agility.
Current National and Political Environments Demand Business Discipline
Companies with a solid foundation for execution have more transparent information and the ability
to access data more quickly.
Building a Foundation Is Less Risky and Expensive Than the Alternative
The foundation for execution can be implemented one project at a time. By spending smarter rather
than more, companies can use ongoing projects to steadily build their foundation for execution. And
as the foundation gets built, IT costs decrease and business efficiencies increase, paying dividends on
the original investment.
3
, Ch 2 – Define your operating model
To best support a company's strategy, we recommend that the company define an operating model.
An operating model is the necessary level of business process integration and standardization for
delivering goods and services to customers. An operating model describes how a company wants to
thrive and grow. By providing a more stable and actionable view of the company than strategy, the
operating model drives the design of the foundation for execution.
An operating model enables rapid implementation of a range of strategic initiatives. But that same
operating model will fail to support initiatives that are inconsistent with the assumptions it's built on.
Thus, the operating model is a choice about what strategies are going to be supported.
The operating model decision (or lack thereof) has a profound impact on how a company implements
business processes and IT infrastructure. A company without a clear model brings no automated,
pre-existing, low-cost capabilities to a new strategic pursuit. Instead, with each new strategic
initiative the company must effectively begin a new to identify its key capabilities. But selecting an
operating model is a commitment to a way of doing business.
The dimensions of the operating model-standardization and integration-and then describe the four
types of operating models: Diversification, Coordination, Unification, and Replication.
Integration and standardization: Key Dimensions of an operating model
An operating model has two dimensions: business process standardization and integration.
• Standardization of business processes and related systems means defining exactly how a process
will be executed regardless of who is performing the process or where it is completed.
Process standardization delivers efficiency and predictability across the company.
Yet greater standardization has a cost. In exchange for increased predictability, standardized
processes necessarily limit local innovation.
• Integration links the efforts of organizational units through shared data. This sharing of data can
be between processes to enable end-to-end transaction processing, or across processes to allow
the company to present a single face to customers.
The benefits of integration include increased efficiency, coordination, transparency, and agility.
An integrated set of business processes can improve customer service, provide management
with better information to make decisions, and allow changes in one part of the business to alert
other parts of actions they need to take. Integration can also speed up the overall flow of
information and transactions through a company. The biggest challenge of integration is usually
around data. End-to-end integration requires companies to develop standard definitions and
formats for data that will be shared across business units or functions.
Four types of operating models
1. Diversification (low standardization, low integration)
2. Coordination (low standardization, high integration)
3. Replication (high standardization, low integration)
4. Unification (high standardization, high integration)
4