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Why Enterprise Architecture Often Fails (and How Application Modernization Can Ensure Success)
Posted 19 June 2024
Written by Mark Richards
Enterprise architecture is perhaps one of the most difficult disciplines to define, which is one of the myriad reasons why it fails. Some say it’s technical and involves the integration and governance of systems throughout the enterprise, yet others say it’s a business function involving both technical and business transformations. Regardless of how it’s defined, the unfortunate reality is that most enterprise architecture efforts fail—meaning, they don’t achieve the expectations from both the business and the IT department.
In this article, you’ll learn about what enterprise architecture is, and why it sometimes fails— and how application modernization can help prevent those failures.
Defining Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise architecture is all about facilitating change within an organization. Without change, enterprise architecture would be a rather boring activity. One of the primary activities of enterprise architecture is to ensure that the business strategy and operating model is aligned with IT systems and infrastructure, Unfortunately, all too often this is like putting a square peg in round hole. Business goals and IT capabilities diverge, making it hard for businesses to achieve their goals.
To illustrate this concept, imagine you want to run a marathon. The first thing you would do is evaluate your lifestyle, fitness, and ability. After you stop laughing, you realize there’s quite a gap between your goal (running a marathon) and your abilities (yeah, enough said). However, let’s say you are serious about this goal. The next step would be to develop a workout plan so that you can work hard towards achieving your goal. This workout plan becomes your roadmap to achieving your goal.
Now, suppose your company wants to enter a new line of business. They first assess its operating model and IT infrastructure, and like the marathon example, find gaps. The workout plan the company develops to achieve its goals is an enterprise architecture roadmap.
In addition to aligning the business goals with IT capabilities, enterprise architecture involves many other activities:
- Provide strategic architecture vision and direction
- Lead architecture and organizational transformation
- Establish architecture and governance practices and standards
- Communicate goals, metrics, and value across the organization
Enterprise architecture is much more than understanding the technology landscape. It’s about understanding the business and collaborating with business stakeholders to realize business goals and objectives. And that’s where most enterprise architecture efforts fail.
Warning Signs of Failure
Enterprise architects have a tough job. Business stakeholders complain that enterprise architects don’t know enough about the business, and application architects and development teams complain that enterprise architects leave out too many details. Not surprisingly, the lack of collaboration between enterprise architects and business stakeholders is the primary reason for most failures. But there are more reasons—many more.
The following are some of the warning signs that your enterprise architecture practice is not as effective as it should be and is likely headed towards failure.
Business stakeholders stop listening to enterprise architecture teams or simply don’t care
Communication and collaboration between enterprise architecture teams and the business is critical to the success of any enterprise architecture practice. Once this communication and collaboration falls apart, business stakeholders will start to lose interest in what enterprise architecture teams have to say.
Your enterprise architecture team is seen as support staff and get assigned to tactical projects
A cohesive and consistent enterprise architecture team is essential for a company to realize its business goals. If enterprise architects get assigned to tactical projects, its members cannot perform the role expected of an enterprise architect. The team will likely be eventually disbanded, and the enterprise architecture effort abandoned.
Your enterprise architecture team doesn’t have access to key business stakeholders
An effective enterprise architect must communicate and collaborate with key business stakeholders to better understand the business initiative and develop an effective implementation roadmap. Unfortunately, many companies create walls and roadblocks where enterprise architects don’t have access to key business stakeholders, thinking that IT and business should remain separate entities and activities. These walls and roadblocks are a good indicator that your enterprise architecture effort will likely fail.
Your enterprise architecture team is constantly asked to explain what they do
Let’s face it—everyone in the IT industry has complicated roles and responsibilities. If you doubt this fact, try explaining what you do for a living to a spouse or friend not in the IT industry. The same is true for enterprise architecture teams. If the enterprise architecture team must explain what they do to business stakeholder it means that those stakeholders do not understand the role and value of the enterprise architecture practice, and consequently it will likely fail.
The value of your enterprise architecture team is constantly being questioned
Like the previous warning sign, this one also indicates that the enterprise architecture team is not as effective as it should be. If key business stakeholders question the value of the enterprise architecture team, it means that it is a prime target for dismantling it.
Your enterprise architecture team is unaware of strategic business decisions and direction
Keeping enterprise architecture teams in the dark in terms of the strategic business direction is a sure way of ensuring its failure. How can an enterprise architecture team be effective and develop appropriate implementation roadmaps if they are unaware of the business decisions and direction? They can’t. And that’s a recipe for failure.
The artifacts produced by the enterprise architecture team are ignored and become shelf-ware
Enterprise architecture teams develop a lot of artifacts—diagrams, documents, spreadsheets, metrics, roadmaps, models—the list goes on. Does anyone read them? Do they even care? If business stakeholders ignore these artifacts, it’s a good indicator that either the artifacts are not needed, too technical, extraneous, or not effectively conveyed. If the artifacts are ignored, the enterprise architecture team will be next.
Techniques for Avoiding Failure
Communication and collaboration are key for ensuring the success of an enterprise architecture practice. The following techniques will help enterprise architects avoid the warning signs of failure and form a tight and positive relationship with the business stakeholders.
Make it personal; people are only interested in what is relevant to them
Too often enterprise architects broadcast artifacts, issues, and solutions to too wide an audience, most of which don’t care. This contributes to the first warning sign about business stakeholders not listening to enterprise architects or not caring. Targeting communications to the appropriate audience will help make them listen and care. Use the following phrase as a guideline: “I’ve made an important architecture decision that directly impacts you…”. This will help ensure that the business stakeholders will read and listen to what you have to say, because it directly impacts them. Furthermore, this helps an enterprise architect decide on the right audience, because if it doesn’t directly impact them then they should not be included in the communication.
Maintain a constant presence—walk around and be seen
Hiding away in a cubicle or isolating at home without communicating and collaborating is a sure way of guaranteeing failure. Walk around—be seen. In today’s post-pandemic world many enterprise architects work from home, making those “water cooler” or “coffee station” conversations much more difficult. Don’t let that stop you from reaching out to key business stakeholders virtually, even if it’s just to check in, say hello, or even to introduce yourself to someone you don’t know.
Keep things simple, straightforward, and most importantly concise
The work products of an enterprise architects are necessarily complex and detailed. Unfortunately, most business stakeholders don’t have the time—or patience—to read and listen to all these details. By describing a solution, roadmap, plan, or architecture in simple and clear terms will help get the attention of your business stakeholders. Also remember that most business stakeholders are also very busy and often overworked, and will appreciate when you are concise in your explanation of a solution or problem.
Leverage metrics to communicate your value across the organization
Key performance indicators—metrics—are a great way to communicate your value. It’s easy to say you’re on track with your roadmap plan, but to demonstrate it through metrics is a much better way of getting business stakeholders to realize your progress. Remember: demonstration defeats discussion. Use metrics to demonstrate your value.
Frequently communicate accomplishments and progress
Waiting too long to communicate your progress might cause business stakeholders to question your value and purpose, contributing to one of the warning signs of failure. Ideally, each iteration of your implementation roadmap should provide business value, hence an opportunity to communicate your progress and accomplishments.
Don’t over-communicate; focus communication on those things that are significant
While frequent communication of your accomplishments and progress is good, be sure not to over-communicate. Peppering your business stakeholders with constant emails, slack messages, and phone calls will only serve to frustrate them, and as a result, stop listening to you. If you have something significant to say, then communicate it. If you find that you are communicating too much, then try grouping things you want to communicate into a single, less frequent communication.
Utilize multimodal communications when presenting ideas and solutions
Everyone loves a story. It captures the attention of your audience and makes them pay attention. Leverage story telling in the description and explanation of your solution or plan. But don’t limit it to just verbal communications. Leverage the power of animations in PowerPoint or Keynote to make your story more compelling. Let’s face it—no one likes reading a 50-page word document full of technical details or looking at a slide full of bullet points. Use multimodal communications and slide animations to bring your solution or plan to life.
Conclusion
Enterprise architecture is hard. It’s even harder to create and maintain an effective enterprise architecture practice. By understanding what enterprise architecture is, defining its role in your company, understanding the warning signs of failure, and taking action to avoid them is a sure way of realizing a successful enterprise architecture practice.
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Mark Richards
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