Strategic Enterprise Architecture

If you’re reading this, there is a good chance you know what needs to be done with your enterprise architecture. You know that some of your apps are so large that developers are afraid to touch them, and when they must, change costs many times what it should. You likely have an SOA infrastructure and some, or even widespread, implementation of XML-based messages, yet you know that your integration costs would drop much more rapidly if you were sharing messages, perhaps using canonical messages.

The “Knowing/Doing Gap”

That’s where we come in: helping you get from “knowing” what you need in your architecture to “getting it done.” Changing your Enterprise Architecture is hard. Everything is arrayed against the effort: budgets flow to the silos, project approval favors short term ROIs over long term improvements, outsourcing arrangements and packaged software make change harder than it ought to be. But change is still possible. We have a method that addresses these issues. We’ve used it on nearly a dozen major projects. The methodology isn’t even very exotic. Here is its essence in five boxes:

The execution is what makes it different. We’re not interested in writing impressive looking reports or telling you what you “should” do. Instead, we focus on creating a shared understanding, in unassailable high resolution, of where you currently stand and what it costs you. We help draw out a shared vision of your organization’s aspirations. And we recognize that changes of this magnitude are not short term fixes. As we work with our clients, we help them chart a course that will get them where they want to be in an appropriate time frame. Surprisingly, even with the advent of “internet time” and the “age of agile,” most of our clients are finding tectonic shifts of this magnitude are five- to ten-year endeavors.

If you have a vision for your enterprise architecture, and if you’re ready to make it real, we’d love to help…