Case Study: WestJet Creates Clarity With Its Architecture Services Catalog

EA organizations struggle to define what they do in terms the organization both understands and appreciates. The root cause for this struggle is often that the EA team itself is not clear about what it delivers, what stakeholders it is delivering to, and how the consumers of its services gain value from EA. This lack of insight makes it difficult for EA teams to deliver what their stakeholders need and to demonstrate value. WestJet, Canada's second-largest airline, gained significant insight into its architecture program as it went through the process of building an architecture services catalog, and this new insight gave WestJet the tools it needed to build a highly pragmatic, stakeholder-focused IT architecture practice. WestJet's experience shows that working through the process of defining services can be more valuable than the catalog itself.