Rob Byrd the Chief Architect at the City of Austin, gave his insights into running an enterprise architecture practice at a largish, and rapidly growing, US city.
Information Technology departments are unable to keep pace with the business needs (demand) for enterprise-wide capabilities.
Capability: People, processes and technology
The City of Austin wants to be the best managed city (in the world), not only the “Live Music Capital of the World“.
- Need for interface
- Data
Quote: Get a good mentor. A good architect takes at least a year (with a good mentor) to get productive.
Enterprise Architecture is about:
- Common Capabilities
- Common Data
- Identify Common Goals
Business Needs Analysis:
- Value Proposition (what can an architect give you)
- What goals are you trying to achieve? (Goal Dependency)
Business Strategic Viewpoint:
- Patterns
- Map to IT capabilities
- Realize the goals
Define the Customer Experience:
- Integrate the business needs
- User tells IT what they want – specification
Develop IT Business Need Strategy
- Center of Excellence
- Service Delivery Model
EA Derived IT Strategy
- EA should work for corporate executives not CIO
- Align IT to deliver maximum value to business