Beyond EA

posted by Chris:

Collaboration has been a hot topic item within the business and IT over the past decade. That said, one of the areas where this has not been implemented is within the Enterprise Architecture community. Since EA is a core function between the business and IT communication is key, however collaboration within EA has lagged IT as a whole.

Many within EA are still acting under the mandate of “some do all” acting as a data collection mechanism and then leveraging BI tools to produce reports. This does not allow them to understand the context of changes in the environment. This creates a situation where collecting a mass of data is expected to deliver value.

Don Tapscott in Wikinomics states “To innovate and succeed, the new mass collaboration must become part of every leader’s playbook and lexicon. Learning how to engage and co-create with a shifting set of self-organized partners is becoming an essential skill, as important as budgeting, R&D and planning.”

What are the keys to having a collaborative environment and how can EA leverage these?

• Being Open. Today, companies that make their boundaries porous to external ideas and human capital outperform companies that rely solely on their internal resources and capabilities. This relates internally as well within EA; if EA continues to operate as a “some do all” instead of a “some do all” paradigm they risk under performing their peers. People and institutions that have a higher degree of interaction are gaining unprecedented access to important information about corporate behavior, operations and performance.

• Sharing. Smart firms are treating intellectual property (IP) like a mutual fund —they manage a balanced portfolio of IP assets, some protected and some shared. Of course companies need to protect critical IP. But companies can’t work together effectively if all of their IP is hidden; this prevents collaboration both internally and externally.

• Acting Globally. The new globalization is both causing and caused by changes in collaboration and the way firms orchestrate capability to pioneer and produce things. Winning companies will need to know the world, including its markets, technologies and people. This cannot be done without collaboration and the transparency it promotes.

EA risks heading down the path to less relevance if they don’t collaborate with the business; the only way to do this is to move away from a data collection and reporting methodology to one in which data collection is pushed to the endpoints of the organization where that data is much likely to be more accurate.