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Strategic Enterprise Architecture Planning
"Actively thinking about where your organization desires to be is a first step in creating a modernized enterprise architecture"
Business leadership is challenged to implement an enterprise strategic architecture with planned activities, budget and program schedules while continuously course correcting the current target strategy due to a myriad of strategic change drivers. That is, as the enerprise architecture plan is being implemented, the business model is changing or requires change. Change drivers such as poor revenue growth and high conversion costs, new technology disruption like AI LLMs, customer CRM demands, and M&A activity significantly impact the enterprise architecture plan. It takes an average organization several months of planning, analysis, scenario development, workflow and approvals to finalize an enterprise architecture strategy and budget. Once implemented, the programs within the plan are usually realized in 1, 2 or 3 year horizons with 80% budgetary focus on the current year. American company's generally lack a long term strategy, much different than Asian companies with their 20 year or more planning horizons.
Why is Enterprise Architecture strategy becoming more important?
And when is your enterprise architcture restricting your organization to achieve their goals instead of enabling business development? A good example is when ChatGTP was introduced in 2022. Most of the world was caught offguard with how disruptive the new technology is. Another is electric vehicles and their transformative impact on the auto industry. A third is enterprise ERP solutions rapidly increasing their predictive and prescriptive optimizations of business processes, analytics and forecasting using advanced AI algorithms. Organizations must adopt new ERP capabilities and functionality or face the consequences in the markeplace.
Most organizations' business model execution capabilities, whose future target state is largely defined by the capabilities of their enterprise architecture, will become restrictive if not detrimental to business strategy and operations as innovation occurs. As technology disruption strikes, inside and outside the organization, competitors and innovators will adopt and industry incumbents will not survive is they don't.
TekMetrix LLC empowers executive leaders to establish a dynamic, forward-looking management framework that continuously integrates cutting-edge technology to enhance and sustain their business models. With our software, TekMetrix AnalyticAI, we bring a visionary approach to technology planning and enterprise architecture, fostering an adaptable and open structure. This flexible architecture enables seamless adoption of new technologies and strengthens management of key enterprise assets—innovation, institutional knowledge, learning curve advancements, platform evolution, talent, and processes.
By committing to proactive technology scanning, skillful adoption, and strategic learning, organizations can thrive amid change, embedding innovative technologies as they evolve. Achieving agility requires cultivating ambidextrous thinking—where forecasting and deploying new IT capabilities are balanced with optimizing existing operations to drive cost efficiency and revenue growth. TekMetrix LLC helps organizations build this essential capability, positioning them to excel in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
What is the impact of business and IT health on enterprise architecture strategy?
| Enterprise Architecture Health Criteria | Business Health (Functional Criteria) | Technical Health (Technical Criteria) |
| Purpose | Evaluates how well each application fulfills its intended business role and meets key business metrics. | Assesses the underlying architecture and robustness of the technology to ensure efficiency, adaptability, and future-readiness. |
| Maintenance & Upgradability | Ease of implementing updates, patches, and aligning with evolving business needs. | Ability to maintain technical components efficiently, keeping systems updated and minimizing technical debt. |
| Customization & Flexibility | Degree of customization and impact on application flexibility and ability to adapt to business demands. | Capability of the technology stack to support modifications without degrading system performance or scalability. |
| Data Quality | Ensures data accuracy, consistency, and relevance for decision-making. | Verifies data structure integrity and alignment with modern standards, enabling smooth data flow and integration. |
| User Adoption & Usage Frequency | Rate of user adoption and engagement across business areas, indicating practical functionality. | Measures system performance in handling frequent user interactions, including response times under different load conditions. |
| Process Implementation & Responsiveness | Resources required for implementing new processes to meet changing business needs. | Speed and ease with which new technical capabilities and integrations can be added to support business changes. |
| Ecosystem Integration | Opportunities to enhance collaboration by integrating customers and partners into business processes. | Ability to integrate with external systems and data sources, enhancing overall system flexibility and ecosystem connectivity. |
| Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) | Encompasses all business costs of the application, including initial and ongoing expenses for maintenance and upgrades. | Includes costs associated with infrastructure requirements, cloud readiness, security, and compliance to maintain technology stack. |
| System Performance & Reliability | Measures uptime, response times, and system reliability, ensuring stable support for business processes under variable loads. | |
| Scalability | Capability of the technology to handle increasing data volumes and user demands without impacting performance. | |
| Security & Compliance | Ensures data protection, robust access controls, and compliance with industry regulations. | |
| Technology Stack Compatibility | Alignment with modern standards to ensure interoperability, ease of updates, and compatibility with future requirements. | |
| Cloud Readiness | Evaluates suitability for cloud deployment, supporting cost efficiency, flexibility, and scalability of IT resources. | |
| Automation & Monitoring | Availability of tools for automated monitoring, issue detection, and resolution to reduce downtime and enhance stability. | |
| AI & ML Capabilities | Ability to leverage AI and ML to generate insights, predict outcomes, and support real-time business decision-making. | Incorporation of AI/ML technologies to improve system efficiency, automate processes, and enable predictive maintenance and analytics. |
Enterprise architecture is the strategic integration of business goals, organizational structure, processes, computing platforms, analytics, applications, and infrastructure. It aligns an organization’s vision with IT capabilities, allowing technology to drive business outcomes. For large enterprises, this may mean harmonizing multiple SAP instances and thousands of applications, while for small-to-medium enterprises, a single ERP system might be a central IT strategy. Regardless of size, an effective enterprise architecture defines both the current state and the future vision, creating a roadmap to close the gap between current state and desired future state remaining competitive.
To realize this architecture, organizations must commit to a clear plan that gains organizational buy-in before technology solutions are deployed.
Key Benefits of TekMetrix LLC's Ambidextrous Approach to Enterprise Architecture:
- Enhanced Asset Productivity and Effectiveness: Track and optimize asset use to maximize ROI.
- Strategic Business Model Innovation: Embrace planned changes that keep the business agile and relevant.
- Alignment Between IT and Business: Achieve synergy, where IT empowers business goals and business strategy guides IT.
- Quick Wins: Deliver fast, impactful improvements that build momentum.
- Agile Adoption of New Models: Transition smoothly to new business models and processes.
- Efficiency Gains: Achieve more with fewer resources by optimizing and scaling intelligently
Developing an Enterprise Architecture
Start by conducting a thorough, objective assessment of your current business ecosystem with TekMetrix tools, methods and frameworks. Evaluate each application’s health by balancing functional and technical criteria, in collaboration with business subject matter experts.
Functional Health
Functional health measures how well an application fulfills its intended role, such as meeting key metrics for supply chain, order-to-cash, record-to-report, and maintenance predictions. Assess whether the application can deliver current and future functionality effectively. We consider such specifics as:
- Maintenance and Upgradability: Ease of system updates, patching, and alignment with evolving business needs.
- Degree of Customization: Level of customization and its impact on flexibility and scalability.
- Quality of Master and Transaction Data: Data accuracy, consistency, and relevance for decision-making.
- User Adoption and Frequency of Use: Rate of user adoption across functional areas and frequency of use.
- Implementation of New Processes: Resources required for implementing new processes and responding to changing business needs.
- Ecosystem Integration: Opportunities to bring customers and partners into the ecosystem for enhanced collaboration.
- Total Cost of Ownership: All costs associated with the application, including implementation, maintenance, and upgrades.
Technical Health
Technical health evaluates the underlying architecture and technology robustness to ensure it supports the business efficiently and can adapt to future demands. Key technical criteria include:
- System Performance and Reliability: Measures of system uptime, response time, and reliability under varying loads.
- Scalability: Ability of the application to scale with growing data volumes and user demands.
- Security and Compliance: Strength of data protection, user access controls, and adherence to industry regulations.
- Integration Capabilities: Ease of integrating with other systems, applications, and external data sources.
- Technology Stack Compatibility: Modernity and compatibility of the technology stack with current industry standards and future requirements.
- Cloud Readiness: Suitability for cloud deployment or migration, supporting flexibility, and cost efficiencies.
- Technical Debt: Degree of outdated or complex code, hindering maintainability and future enhancements.
- Automation and Monitoring: Capabilities for automated monitoring, reporting, and issue resolution to minimize downtime.
By thoroughly assessing these functional and technical criteria, you can craft a resilient, forward-looking enterprise architecture that aligns with business goals and technological advancements, supporting long-term growth and adaptability.
Two TekMetix Diagnostic Matrices
The end result of enterprise architecture strategic planning is an assessment of the relative health of business systems versus their impact on business value and an assessment of this impact versus the relative technical effort to address required changes.
This assessment is represented by two matrices above. The business impact axis refers to the relative impact a group of applications has on the business model. The second matrix suggest that to address the unhealthy state of AnalyticAI-ML the company needs to deploy a Data Fabric. Also, it would take less effort to deploy a data fabric than to consolidate multiple BW systems into one common platform(OCP). After determining the relative adequacy and business impact of each current system, create these matrice to assess the needs and requirements to design an enterprise architecture that enables business innovation and process improvement.These matrices help leadership prioritize initiatives by determining how much effort i required to implement each system and it's impact on business value.
TekMetrix Enterprise Architecture Planning Framework
The diagram below provides a high level view of the planning framework for an enterprise architecture.
- The current state of the business refers to the current state of the enterprise including how technology is used, where deployed, ownership, how the organization is managed from IT and business perspectives, the overall health and capabilities of the current enterprise systems solutions.
- Current initiatives are current or planned IT initiatives including current requirements, design and development efforts, new business models, processes, joint ventures and stragtegic plans. This defines the curren future state of the overall enterprise.
- The current future state is where the enterprise will end if the current plan and methods are not changed and implemented as planned.
- The desired future state is a result of business model change impacts. The desired future state is where the enterprise will end if the new required business model changes are implemented. The example stated above, AI and LLMs introduced in 2022 were not on every organizations radar. As they are transformative the change imperative is to get AI on processes and analytics implemented as soon as possible.
- The GAP is the difference between the current future state and the desired future state.
- The necessary initiatives are the effots required to close the GAP by aligning the desired future state with the current future state. Gaps must be closed.
Enterprise Architecure Desired Future State GAP Planning
The TekMetrix framework, implemented within TekMetrix AnalyticAI software, enables organizations to deploy and manage their enterprise architecture in a dynamic and responsive manner. The software streamlines the architecture deployment process by continuously updating the technical and business plans, allowing for rapid alignment with shifting business strategies and external conditions. By tracking performance against the evolving “desired future state,” TekMetrix AnalyticAI supports the seamless rollout of architecture updates, transition plans, and strategic initiatives.
To measure and optimize the impact of these efforts, TekMetrix AnalyticAI software leverages key metrics for tracking both business and technical performance, including:
- Time-to-Value (TTV): Measures the speed at which new architecture deployments deliver measurable business impact, emphasizing quick wins and continuous value from each iteration.
- Operational Efficiency Gains: Quantifies the reduction in process inefficiencies, manual tasks, and time taken to execute business processes—helping gauge the framework's effectiveness in streamlining operations.
- Technology Adoption Rate: Tracks the adoption and utilization of new tools, applications, or modules, ensuring each release is utilized and contributes to the business’s productivity.
- Business Process Improvement (BPI): Monitors performance enhancements in key areas such as order-to-cash, supply chain efficiency, and customer response times—demonstrating the enterprise architecture’s support for business goals.
- Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Measures the aggregate cost of maintaining and upgrading enterprise systems, ensuring that technology investments are cost-effective and sustainable.
- Scalability and Flexibility Scores: Rates the architecture’s ability to handle increases in data, transactions, or user demands and its agility in adapting to changing business requirements or technical innovations.
- Risk and Compliance Score: Assesses risk management, security, and compliance adherence across all architecture components, ensuring that new changes align with organizational policies and regulatory requirements.
- Innovation Velocity: Measures the frequency and impact of new initiatives or updates to the architecture, demonstrating the organization’s adaptability to emerging technologies and market demands.
By using these metrics, TekMetrix AnalyticAI provides actionable insights to guide continuous improvement in enterprise architecture and the business model. This approach not only aligns architecture updates with business goals but also allows executives to make informed decisions based on real-time performance data—maximizing the value and adaptability of the enterprise’s technical landscape
The TekMetrix software framework, deployed on a AnyDB and using Visual Studio with Python and C#, is an iterative, evolving business and technical strategy that is embedded in the TekMetrix AnalyticAI software. The plan is not a PowerPoint deck, nor an excel workbook. As a continuously updatable and versionable plan, integrated to corporate ERP and Analytic systems, it enables clear communication of the “desired future state” as an adaptable goal. Shifts in business strategies or market conditions can prompt adjustments to this future vision. Through each iteration, the framework refines and aligns enterprise architecture planning with broader strategic goals.
TekMetrix's approach ensures that architecture updates and the enterprise transition plan evolve as a "Synergy in Motion", allowing for the addition of new initiatives, the adjustment of priorities, or the phasing out of less relevant projects. It also guarantees a cohesive, up-to-date view of the business model across the organization. To maximize impact, the TekMetrix strategy framework must consistently deliver tangible business value, quickly showing incremental improvements that are embraced by enterprise leaders.
TekMetrix Business and IT Strategy Workshops
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Motivation
Most managers agree that growth and agility are the strategies for success as they move to market in the 21st century. Prior strategic initiatives of the middle 1990’s such as business process reengineering and corporate downsizing reduced costs and restructured our organizations permanently by eliminating duplicate functions and middle management. However, these initiatives and their incremental productivity
improvement will not sustain the profitability of our corporations in the 21st century - managers must
attack their competitors with growth and agility strategies while in the midst of shifting market segments requiring increasingly higher levels of customer service.
Managers recognize there will be considerable transformation of their markets well into the 21st century. Shifting markets will necessitate their corporations continuously adapt and innovate to grow profitably - and new organizational paradigms are needed in response to environmental and technological shifts. To grow, managers will need concentrated and unwavering customer focus in scope of products and services offered, competences and human resource skills, and in supporting information technology and infrastructure. Managers will restructure their organizations around customer value delivery processes and create new I/T competences in order to deliver new and differentiated products and customer service levels while beating their competitors to market.
Managers are exerting greater effort just to maintain their current competences needed to support the product and service offerings in their market segments - and developing new segments is no trivial task. The explanation may be ineffective I/T as a consequence of market shifts demanding new channel functions and higher service levels, or from vertical or horizontal integration as a result of strategic acquisitions, from insufficient coordination of I/T across the enterprise, or inefficient I/T application delivery processes due to a myriad of nonstandardized technologies used by the organization Rather than helping the manager successfully grow in the market place the lack of I/T vision and adequacy is working against business goals.
CFI/T
CFI/T is a customer focused information technology strategic planning process which enables the
manager to effectively define the scope of I/T products and services, competences and governance logic that is needed to survive, succeed and prosper in the 21st century. CFI/T eliminates the discontinuity between the managers ability to deliver customer value, and what the demands are - and creates a migration plan and business case to get there. It ensures that the manager’s portfolio of I/T products and services are aligned with and support the corporate scope of segmented customer products and service offerings, business competences and governance logic.
The CFI/T planning process, therefore, requires a synthesis and alliance of customer segment strategies, channel function, value delivery processes, and current I/T initiatives with I/T product and service scope, competences, application delivery processes and governance logic. Skills enhancement and acquisition needs, business case with metrics, standards and application portfolio transformation planning are key outputs of the CFI/T framework. The goal is to make short and long term decisions for deploying I/T resources and to build managers a migration plan for customer focused strategic alignment. Most important, the CFI/T migration plan is based on gap reduction requirements between customer segments and business competency needs, the current baseline of future I/T initiatives i.e., the present value of what the future I/T competency will be based on current I/T investments, and the managers current business and technical situation - CFI/T is a multi-faceted strategic planning process applicable to large industrials as well as smaller businesses.
Rather than plan individual projects CFI/T lets the manager address current and planned I/T initiatives as a portfolio of customer focused assets. Similarly to managing a new product portfolio for certain characteristics - targeted customers, total investment levels and risk attributes - CFI/T enables the management of I/T as a product and service portfolio to the defined needs of the customer. By treating I/T investments as a whole, overall investment levels, risk and flexibility to change can be managed and made to work for the good of the customer - and for the good for the enterprise.
CFI/T planning differs from traditional strategic planning systems in scope and focus. For the past 35 years managers have developed information systems to meet geographic, divisional or functional need. Few legacy systems provide customer focus and what has been created is not interoperable. These “islands” or vertical solutions and their associated architectures more often than not duplicate effort by deploying the same functionality and information differently and provide very little, if any, customer segment, channel or service delivery information. The CFI/T framework provides the logic for aligning customer focused business and I/T strategies and highlights the management challenges of business growth and effective I/T in the 21st century:
- how to achieve continuous alignment between business and I/T?
- inside versus outside?
- centralized versus decentralized?
- short-term versus long-term?
- business-led versus I/T-led?
- investment levels?
- governance and organizational design options?
- performance metrics?
Strategic Alignment
TSC defines strategy in terms of three components - scope, competence and governance - and view business and I/T strategies as parallel concepts. To achieve strategic alignment we begin by answering the question,
“What are the products and services that our company offers the customer segments in the marketplace? The answer to this question results in another, “ What are the distinctive attributes of our products and services that provide value to our customers, allowing us to outperform our competitors, and what business competences are required to create these attributes?
In answering these key questions we need to recognize the critical interdependence between business strategies and I/T strategies by focusing on their bi-directional impacts: how can I/T strategy support business strategy (e.g., through new technologies, systems, I/T competences, alliances, partnerships) and how can I/T strategy enable business strategy (e.g., through new products, markets, delivery channels, business competences, alliances, partnerships)?
The scope of I/T products and services defined during strategic alignment can be either internally or externally focused. An example of an I/T product and service for an internal customer is a corporate performance and reporting system and the on-going support to maintain its currency. An example of an I/T product and service for an external customer may be an electronic commerce function for order fulfillment over the Internet. For most companies I/T products and services will play an increasingly significant roll internally, as efforts to become a customer focused organization continue to accelerate to meet shifting market needs and externally, as it seeks revenue growth through new and expanding customer segments.
Business Value
The results of the strategic alignment process delineates the foundation for the development of an I/T strategic plan that delivers customer value in a timely manner. Besides being a clearly articulated statement of the managers business situation and strategy - and a view of the current state of future business and I/T initiatives, a CFI/T plan includes a segmented view of the managers business with analogous value propositions, delivery business processes and associated competences.
Delivery business processes are scored against the segmented value propositions to understand their relative value to the business both for today and the future. Ratings typically used to prioritize the usefulness of the delivery processes are degree of support against the segment propositions and the relative impact of the process on the segment including such factors as:
- ability to provide timely product and service information to the customer
- ability to customize the product or service for the customer
- degree to which the customer emphasizes product integrity and reliability
- ability to provide an assortment of products and services
- customer demands for product availability
- post sales service requirements
- efficiency of manufacturing, transporting, storing and supplying products and services to the end users
Understanding relative importance of the value delivery business processes is critical to understanding I/T implications and priorities. As the manager plans the I/T applications portfolio it is done so relative to the value delivery business processes - both existing and planned processes for the future e.g., the company may enter a new retail segment next year and requires a direct sales force as the delivery channel. The business blueprint is complete with a thorough, explainable high-level view and relative ranking of the key business processes providing customer value - those processes in place and those needed to realize the managers market segment strategies - and the I/T implications, required capabilities and enablers of the business processes.
Technology Potential
The potential of I/T to improve the ability of the manager to deliver value is fundamental to the strategic planning process. I/T potential is determined by assessing the means with which technology can be used to leverage the working performance of the business processes. This is a brainstorming exercise meant to stimulate conversations about what is possible with information technology as it relates to a business process. It explores and benchmarks what others have done or their thinking about what is possible. For this reason, technologies are reviewed as:
- proven by others to have significant and positive impact on business value
- demonstrated but no evidence to prove a “significant” impact
- an idea to be considered which is evolving in the next 5 years
- an idea... something not to be dismissed too soon
Typical technologies evaluated are:
- electronic commerce
- internet / intranet / EDI
- call centers
- enterprise applications
- groupware
- executive information systems
- modeling / simulation
- data warehouse
- data mining / pattern recognition
- virtual reality
- speech recognition
- portable computing
- remove access - ISDN
- cellular phones / PCN
- video conferencing
- geographical information systems
- optical character recognition / imaging
- global positioning
- multimedia
- wireless computing
- fuzzy logic
- neural nets
- CAD / CAM
- on-line services
- computer animation
- object oriented design / development
- CD-ROM
Technology choices are merged into a strategic grid and classified by business process to create a relative ranking. This grid represents the strategic value of the business process versus the possibilities of enabling the business process using information technology.
The results of the strategic grid analysis are summarized using the following four categories:
- eliminate
- reassess
- research
- apply
Technologies that fall in the eliminate category are candidates for elimination from the strategic plan. These technologies may never have been necessary or may have become obsolete because the market segments have changed. Since the value of the business process is low and the potential to improve the performance of the business process is low why should the manager invest in I/T for this process?
Technologies that fall in the reassess category may have been implemented by technician’s which the users failed to support or technologies which were in advance of business process needs. They should be reassessed to determine if they should be eliminated from the strategic plan or be applied against a different more value adding value process.
The research category of technologies represent potential business exposures. If the technologies fail to deliver on their promise then the performance of the business process will suffer. Technological investment opportunities are likely to be identified from these systems categories. Therefore it is likely that the manager will continue with research, engineering and design of new technologies to improve the cost performance systems supporting these business processes.
Technologies in the apply category should be given priority for any expenditures for maintenance or applications engineering to sustain the benefits or competitive advantages from these systems. Failure to adequately maintain and apply proven technologies may cause the business process to become a business exposure.
Systems Adequacy
Once business value and the potential of I/T is understood by the manager then a recognition the current application and technical environment is needed as input to the CFI/T plan. Key questions to address are:
- what is the value of the business process?
- how capable is the performance of the business process?
- how well is I/T contributing the to ability of the business process to deliver value?
- how well is I/T managed and governed?
- what are the guiding technology principles?
- what are the current I/T expenditures and initiatives?
The assessment of systems adequacy is done as objectively as possible and with the aid of a strategic grid - the 4 R’s of systems adequacy. First, current applications are inventoried and associated to the business process that they support. Then, the relative performance of each application is assessed by applying subjective measures and soliciting input from both the functional users and I/T organization.
Technical adequacy is how well the application leverages available technologies. Cost drivers such as database design, security, documentation, application efficiency, problem recovery and support personnel are used as technical adequacy measures. Other technical adequacy measures include the programming language, hardware platform and support for the year 2000.
Functional adequacy includes how well the application does what it needs to do while supporting its business process - from the users perspective. These measures include how easy it is for the user to learn the system, reliability, customer data currency, security, ease of special requests, data accuracy and how responsive the application is to market, technological and environmental and organizational shifts.
The technical and functional capability of applications make up the adequacy of the system in its current state. The results of the grid analysis are summarized using the following 4R’s:
- refine
- replace
- redesign
- replatform
Applications that fall in the upper right quadrant have high performance - both from a technological and functional perspective, and no corrective action or replacement may be required - only the continuous improvement and refinement of these applications.
However, if applications are characterized in the lower left quadrant as having low functionality and high technical costs the company may want to reduce its dependence on these applications by replacing them after a further assessment to determine the true business process and value delivery need.
In the lower right quadrant is the redesign category which implies a high technical adequacy and a low functional capability. These applications may be over engineered or are not in alignment with the business process for customer value delivery. Investments in I/T projects may be needed to improve the functional capability of the applications - should the value of the business process warrant the investment.
Finally, applications that fall in the upper left quadrant have a high level of business process capability - functional adequacy - but represent high cost of ownership from a technical perspective. Projects to improve the cost profiles of these applications, replatforming, should be undertaken - again, depending on the value of their associated business process.
Baseline Initiatives
One of the first steps in the development of a CFI/T plan involves the development of a thorough, explainable view of the customer segments and value delivery processes - those in place as well as those needed to realize the managers customer value propositions, the information that supports them and their key characteristics. The CFI/T planning process accomplishes this by developing strategic alignment and defining business value.
Baseline initiatives are those projects that the manager has funded and are underway - both from a business and I/T perspective. When implemented they represent a future state of business i.e., customer segments, value proposition and delivery processes and a future supporting I/T architecture and infrastructure. From a CFI/T planning perspective the “current business and technical future state” needs to be compared to the “business and technical vision” to determine if there are any gaps between the future state and the vision. These gaps along with the vision i.e., strategic alignment, business value, I/T potential and systems adequacy are used as input into the overall CFI/T planing process.
CFI/T Planning Principles
The diagram below, although fairly simplistic in its orientation, provides a high-level view of the CFI/T planning framework.
- Systems adequacy and I/T potential refer to the “current state of business” including how capably the managers business processes add value, i.e., business value, how technology and applications are used, where they are deployed, how the managers business is organized and governed from business and I/T perspectives, systems adequacy and capabilities of current solutions.
- “Current initiatives” are ongoing or planned I/T projects, including current design and development efforts, joint ventures, and program efforts.
- The “current future state” is where the manager will end up if the current plan and approach to implementation remains unchanged.
- The “desired future state” is where the manager will end up if the business vision were completely implemented.
- The “vision gap” is the difference between where the manager is headed and where the manager is going
- The “necessary initiatives” are the efforts required to move the manager toward its vision. They are the basis for a “transition plan” to change the manager’s business toward its future.
This framework is iterative because the desired future state is a moving target due to market, environmental, organizational and technical shifts in the managers business. By assuming the view that CFI/T planning drives the desired future state, the interations become overall refinements to the I/T strategy. Coordination between the development of architecture releases and the evolution of the transition plan includes adding initiatives and refocusing or halting current initiatives. It also ensures that consistent views of the managers business are delivered together. To be effective this framework must deliver value through each interation, and be used and accepted by managers and business leaders.
Strategic Architecture Planning
Investment opportunities and strategic architecture planning are derived from an understanding of customer segments, business value, systems adequacy and the potential of information technology to improve the performance of business processes. These grids represent where the manager should invest in I/T to obtain strategic advantage. It defines what needs to be done to the high priority items - customer focused business processes - to deliver on what the manager has outlined during the strategic alignment process. Most importantly, investment planning works to close the gap between those investments which define the current future state of business and I/T capabilities and the CFI/T strategic plan. Investment opportunities outline a prioritized list of target applications to undertake to reduce the difference between the scope of the CFI/T strategic plan and those I/T initiatives which define the current future state of the business. - and notes the dependencies among them.
Investment planning results from a combination of the business value versus systems adequacy and business value versus required effort matrixes - that is - what needs to be done and what effort is required. Effort includes everything from actual cost and time to how much change the organization must endure.
The sum of the target applications forms the managers customer focused technology and application strategy. This planning effort focuses and aligns efforts on the most critical tasks - the products and services for the customer segments, competency and governance logic with I/T products and services, competency and governance logic.
