For Enterprise Architecture Professionals (Length: 11 pages)

June 10, 2009

Case Study: EA Aligns IT With Business' Emergent Strategy

This is the first document in the "Case Studies In Business-Focused Architecture" series.

by Gene Leganza

with Alex Cullen, Jeff Scott, Matt Czarnecki


Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Enterprise architecture (EA) programs are becoming more business focused and helping IT to deliver greater value to business. Business-focused EA teams are developing the "next practices" for interacting with the business, collecting and analyzing data, synthesizing across domains, and communicating the resulting architecture. In this case study, an EA team at an investment bank ran into difficulty with its business areas' ability to describe their business strategy. The EA team took a bottom-up approach to characterize the "emergent strategy" and created an "emergent architecture" to support this strategy. The result? Kudos and buy-in from top-level management — but although the process can be successful, it may be difficult for some firms to adopt. EA teams should add this approach to their arsenal.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTES & RESOURCES

itemSituation: The Top-Down Strategy Isn't Clear Enough To Be Useful

itemAn Investment Bank's EA Team Can't Find Data To Support A Coherent Future State Model

itemSolution: Find The Emergent Strategy, And Define The Enabling Architecture

itemStep 1: Uncover The Emergent Strategy With A Broad Net Of Discovery

itemStep 2: Develop The Detailed "Emergent Architecture" To Support The Business

itemWhat's Next: Successful Experiment But Hurdles In Taking It To Baked-In Process

recommendations

itemDon't Expect To Be Handed A Coherent Strategy, But Don't Do Without One

itemSupplemental Material

Forrester interviewed a user company that presented at a Forrester Forum in 2009 and its EA tool vendor.

Related Research Documents

itemChoose From Five Basic Approaches To Business Architecture Based On Your Context And Goals

January 7, 2009

itemClosing The Business Technology Alignment Gap

December 18, 2008

itemThe Business-IT Expectation Gap

November 7, 2008

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Analyst: Gene Leganza
Technology: Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Domains, IT Management, Serving the Business
Industry: Corporate Banking, Financial Services
Geography: Europe, North America