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Enterprise Architecture as Part of Business Strategy

by Douwe Pieter van den Bos on March 19, 2010 · 5 comments

Green and Yellow

We have discussed the must of Business and IT working together, enabling instead of passively facilitating. We have talked about Enterprise Architecture and an approach where it goes wrong and just becomes an documentation obstacle and a way to ´hedging´ for the IT department and why we need to set a measurable Agility parameter inside the Architecture process. But in what way can we make sure Enterprise Architecture simply becomes a part of Business Strategy

There are several studies conducted on the matter, where the work of Ross, Weill and Robertson is very noticeable, where the Enterprise Architecture is mainly portrayed as a way to make business strategy possible, or as a part of business strategy. None of the studies I´ve seen show how or even if Business Strategy can be the outcome of Enterprise Architecture, more than a facilitator or a profile in which Business Strategy can evolve. (do you guys know any other studies or examples of this nature?)

In previous posts on the topic I made the wrong assumption that Enterprise Architecture was in fact an activity within the IT department, and therefore I contradicted myself. These things should never be in the sole propriety of IT, but a mutual adventure for the entire Business (including the IT department). But there’s also a change that this happens too much. Is this the reason why EA in the real live becomes an overacted documentation stream?

When we take a look at the title of this post, Enterprise Architecture as Part of Business Strategy, I come to think that in real live it’s the other way around. Business Strategy as Part of Enterprise Architecture. When Agility becomes one of the measurements of Enterprise Architecture it would be possible to create a both-win situation. Where the overall Business Strategy really gets input from the Enterprise Architecture and where Enterprise Architecture actually will help the overall Business Strategy. Your thoughts, please.

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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 peteski March 25, 2010 at 1:36 am

I am not going to be original this time, so all I am going to say that your blog rocks, sad that I don’t have suck a writing skills

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2 online March 29, 2010 at 10:49 pm

Bedankt voor de interessante informatie

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3 webwolf March 30, 2010 at 1:01 am

I read a article under the same title some time ago, but this articles quality is much, much better. How you do this?

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4 Younge April 3, 2010 at 5:42 pm

I read about it some days ago in another blog and the main things that you mention here are very similar

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5 Designer Handbags April 5, 2010 at 7:24 am

I have to say, every time I come to blog.whitehorses.nl there is another interesting post up. A friend of mine was talking to me about this topic several weeks ago. I think I will e-mail my friend the url here and see what they say.

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