Review: Evaluating Enterprise Architecture Processes

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From a recent post from Robert Mcllree he talks about the evaluation of EA. He breaks down the evaluation into a set of factors. When I saw this post it was quite lengthy and looked as it may provide some interesting insights. It did, however I struggled with what the post was meant to address. A few things came to mind, was this to:

  • Gauge the Health of the EA Organization
  • Gauge the Maturity of the EA Organization
  • Create Justification of the EA Organization
  • Find Reasons to Disband

Even though the post was a bit ambiguous it doesn't mean that the post is not relevant or didn't have great content. I think it did.

Robert provides a great set of questions that you should ask yourself (as an EA) or your EA team:

  • Is EA a distinct function in the organization?
  • Does the EA group have both functional and technical responsibilities and generate actionable outputs to both?
  • How is EA specifically funded?
  • How are EA outputs received and utilized by the organization?
  • How skewed are EA efforts toward specific vendors and/or integrators?
  • Does the EA organization set IT standards, and if so, how are they specifically enforced (and exceptions made)?
  • What is the relationship between EA and the business?
  • What is the relationship between EA and IT management?
  • What is the relationship between EA and project management?
  • Are EA toolsets used? What kinds, how often, and for what specifically?

Like I said earlier, I think that these are great questions to ask but they are simply questions. I think that this needs a little more work. Not on the question side but when the answers come back, what do they mean?

Tags: Enterprise Architecture