This is one of the key sections of the title and deals with IT strategy and advisory domain. This section and the following sections have been written in a Q&A format and are well supported by elaborate diagrams where applicable. This chapter is structured in a way that starts with the strategy and advisory domain and ends with non-functional requirements. You can choose to go through this sequentially from the first to the last or pick and choose the sections relevant to your competencies. The following six domains are covered in the following chapters of the book:
|
IT Strategy and Advisory |
Enterprise Architecture and Modernization |
SOA and Integration |
|
Solution Architecture and Design |
Emerging Technologies-SMAC |
Methodologies, Frameworks, and NFRs |
This section covers the Q & A for IT strategy and advisory domain. Meeting customer needs and demands and creating technology adoption roadmaps is the primary goal/objective for IT strategy engagements. By answering these types of questions related to vision, strategy and roadmaps of a company, one will be able to understand the key aspects such as vision, IT strategy and roadmap, guiding principles and frameworks and tools.
Architecture vision is created and defined during the engagement initiation phase. The purpose of architecture vision is to agree with the key organizational stakeholders the requisite outcome for the IT architecture. Architecture vision emphasizes the benefits of the proposed architecture to the decision-makers and is like the elevator pitch for senior executives and CxOs. It also shows how the target architecture supports business strategy, business objectives, and stakeholder concerns.
Architecture vision artifact contents:
- Organizational problem definition
- Stakeholders' goals and objectives
- Business process definition
- Actors and roles
- Organizational restraints
- IT principles and standards
- Architecture strategy
- Mapping the proposed architecture to business processes and requirements
|
Phase |
Description |
|
Vision (the dream to be achieved) |
Created by consensus. This forms a mental image of a future to which people can align. It describes something possible, not necessarily predictable. It provides direction and focus, for example, offering a patented product for the retail domain. |
|
Mission (the statement of business) |
This establishes the business reason for the organization's existence and defines current and future business in terms of product, services, customer, and price. For example, we strive to expedite improvements in education by creating software products. |
|
Goals (the results to be achieved) |
This explains an ideal state to be realized by organization in future. It is defined with and related directly to organization vision and mission. It guides everyday decisions making and events. For example, reduce overall budget costs by 10% by 20xx. |
|
Objective (plans to reach the desired results) |
This emphasizes on organizational concerns and milestones. It establish tasks to be accomplished to achieve desired goals. It is measurable in terms of whether or not they are achieved. |
Table 1: Architecture Roadmap
Probability indicator: 
Today's IT organizations are carrying a heavy burden of applications that are not delivering value to the business. Transformation or modernization is needed to simplify the functionality of existing applications, reduce the amount of old technology, remove inefficiencies, and introduce new capabilities. Companies have more applications than the business needs and are forced to spend valuable IT resources on supporting obsolete systems, hence the need to go through a transformation. The key business and technology drivers for transformation include:
|
Business priorities |
Technology priorities |
|
Increasing enterprise growth |
Analytics and business intelligence |
|
Delivering operational results |
Mobile technologies |
|
Reducing enterprise costs |
Cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS) |
|
Attracting and retaining new customers |
Collaboration technologies (workflow) |
|
Improving IT applications and infrastructure |
Legacy modernization |
|
Creating new products and services (innovation) |
IT management |
|
Improving efficiency |
CRM |
|
Attracting and retaining the workforce |
Virtualization |
|
Implementing analytics and big data |
Security |
|
Expanding into new markets and geographies |
ERP applications |
Table 2: Business and technology priorities - Gartner 2014
Probability indicator:
The following is a list of typical challenges for enterprise transformation initiatives:
- Budgets are restricted and the focus of the application strategy shifts from innovation to cost cutting
- The resources to support growth and new development are not available and must be found from within the IT organization
- Cost is a key barrier for all transformation and modernization initiatives
- It is difficult to demonstrate fast Return on Investment (ROI) to get the business buy-in
Probability indicator: 
The following is a list of guiding principles for enterprise architecture transformation:
- Scalable and maintainable IT landscape while ensuring standardized infrastructure
- Treating application retirement as an essential step in the lifecycle
- Adoption of new methodologies and frameworks for transforming and modernizing applications
- Establishing clear transformational governance
- Simplifying business processes
- Leveraging SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) is a key to digital transforming the enterprise
The following diagram shows the value quadrants for transformation and depicts the business benefits for transformation:
Figure 1: EA value quadrant
Probability indicator: 
The top architecture transformation strategies involve standardizing the application portfolio by reducing the number of custom-built IT applications and moving towards a common set of applications, technologies, and infrastructure.
There are multiple strategies for transforming the applications, including but not limited to standardization, consolidation, replacement, migration, clouding, renewal, decommission, retention, and simplification.
Architecture transformation is comparable to open-heart surgery. A top-down and bottom-up approach are leveraged to envision the future state. A combination of these techniques and architecture frameworks will facilitate building the future end state architecture. An excellent option is always a robust and simple one against an unstable and complex one.
Figure 2: Modernization strategies
The following are the key benefits of any EA transformation:
- Creating value for the business, for example, business IT alignment
- Cut overall cost for the business, for example, decommissioning, data archiving, and cloud computing
- Increase productivity, for example, removing inefficiencies, removing Excel-sheets-based reporting, and incorporating service management, that is, ITIL processes
- Innovate new applications and services, for example, leveraging the competitive advantage of social business, cloud, or analytics
- Increase quality of application, for example, standardization and simplification, usage of frameworks
- Improve flexibility of IT systems, for example, IT can deliver more value to business
- Create better IT and business alignment
- Improve efficiency of IT systems, for example, automating processes or removing manual intervention
Probability indicator:
The following table illustrates the architecture of a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC):
|
Phase |
Description |
|
IT strategy |
Typically we engage with the customers to build an IT strategy or work with the customer to build IT strategy in a specific area, for example, supply chain management strategy, cloud strategy or SOA strategy. This phase also leverages accelerators or frameworks that may be organizations intellectual property (IPs). |
|
Architecture transformation |
EA transformation focuses on the solution definition. This is the next phase after the IT strategy. The team works with the customers to understand their challenges, gaps and pain areas by running workshops or through discussions. The next phase is envisioning future state architecture for the enterprise. The transformation engagement can be an end-to-end enterprise architecture engagement or specific to a business area like customer relationship management, SOA or SMAC. The transformation engagement includes current state, future state, gap and impact analysis and IT Roadmap, solution definition, planning, costing and road map preparations. For example, CRM solution architecture, SOA. |
|
Architecture governance |
Compliance reviews, managing risks, and guiding implementations. This is predominately applicable during the design, build, and operate phases. |
Table 3: Architecture Phases
The following image illustrates the components in detail:
Figure 3: Various EA SDLC phases
Probability indicator:
Various frameworks and tools are leveraged during advisory and strategy engagement, and most of them would be specific to an organization. These frameworks have focused questions that are asked to the customers/senior executive to identify gaps in capabilities for an organization or to get a sense of the maturity level of a certain function. This gives them a clearer picture of the weak areas and where IT could support improving the efficiencies. Please see this list of common frameworks:
- EA maturity assessment
- SOA maturity assessment
- Multi-channel assessment
- TCO-Cloud
- ROI-EA
- SOA ROI
Frameworks are recommended when there is a general guidance required for knowing the capability gaps in the landscape or the level of maturity for a certain function. These may also help identify quick wins. Workshops are planned with key customer personnel to determine how well you currently implement each best practice for a given domain. The frameworks assist in the following areas:
- Detailed assessment, providing the current and target maturity levels
- Identify go to market opportunities
- Capture pain points and opportunities for investments
- Identifying quick wins
- Enables client to determine the roadmap on how to embark on larger transformation journeys
These are four to six weeks of engagement with a price point between 150-200K, used as an investment, partially funded or in a fully funded model.
Probability indicator:
Meeting customer needs and demands is the primary goal/objective for strategy engagements. The strategy engagements provide benefits in one or more of the following areas:
- Increase revenue
- Reduce cost of operations by enabling new capabilities, for example, self-service portals
- Increase sales through new revenue streams
- Identify new areas of growth, for example, new Geo
- Improves customer experience, for example, multi-channel
- Deliver more predictable outcomes to customers
- Differentiate in a commoditized market, for example, product innovations
- Comply with regulations and laws, for example, Sarbanes-Oxley
Probability indicator:
This is done via a set of focused discussions with the senior executives/CxO to understand the pain areas/challenges in the application landscape/business landscape. The latest trends in social, mobile, analytics and cloud SMAC are taken into considerations during this phase and are the key to devising the plan of action. The outcome of these discussions is typically an IT strategy engagement undertaken for the areas that would have inefficiencies, for example, APR or CRM or where new capabilities are required to be built SMAC or/and maturity has to be accessed for a certain function for example, SOA. Strategy or advisory frameworks play a key role in this phase and are key talking points during such discussions. The outcome of these discussions may also result in the initiation of the transformation initiative like end-to-end EA transformation, but it is the IT strategy work that kick-starts the overall process (please refer to question architectural phases).
Probability indicator:
Competitive analysis is the process of analyzing the competitive landscape in the business domain, including strengths and weaknesses of your organization and your competitors. It involves identifying the strategies that can improvise your market position and weaknesses that prevent the organization from entering into new markets. The process also includes the barriers that the organization needs to erect to prevent others from eroding the market position.
Competitive analysis is a basis for the competitive strategy for multinational corporations. Business experts note that competitive analysis transcends industry areas and the practice is deeply relevant to all industries. Competitive analysis is a methodology of comparing your company, products, and services against market competitors in your industry. This is a key part of organizational planning, which is used to establish company strategies, goals, and tactics. Top management normally conduct strategic planning meetings at least once a year but may review competitors more often if competition is high.
Benefits of competitive analysis:
- Improve offering
- Planning market entry/product development
- Market gaps
- Market trends
- Marketing
Probability indicator:
Decision Matrix Analysis or Pugh Matrix Analysis is a key technique leveraged for making critical decisions. It is powerful where you have a number of alternatives to choose from, and many different factors to take into consideration. This is an excellent technique to leverage in any important decision making where there isn't a clear-cut and obvious preferred option. Leveraging Decision Matrix Analysis means that you can take decisions rationally, at a time when other people might be struggling to make decisions.
A simple decision matrix consists of establishing different options that are scored and added to obtain a final score. Importantly, these option are not weighted in the process.
A weighted decision matrix operates in very similar to the simple decision matrix but introduces the concept of weighting the criteria in order of importance, that is, the more critical the criteria, the higher the weight. All these options are scored and multiplied by the weight in order to produce a final result. The advantage of the decision matrix is that subjective opinions are made more objective.
The decision matrix analysis is leveraged in the following areas:
- RFP evaluation matrix
- Cost/benefit analysis matrix
- Solutions prioritization matrix
- Vendor selection matrix
- Criteria/alternatives matrix
- Supplier selection matrix
Probability indicator:
SMAC technologies are the capabilities that give enterprises a competitive edge over its market competition. When deployed in the IT landscape, these capabilities provide synergetic solutions for digitally transforming an organization to enable it for the future. Emphasize the fundamentals, the processes, and the methodologies for SMAC during the conversation. Be prepared to mention the lists of top vendors in this space, the key user scenarios (the journey) and the benefits to the enterprise. Be ready with the reference architecture or the fundamental building block for each of SMAC components. The examples of SMAC implementations for the competitors will be a critical point to include in the discussion. The following list provides the key benefits of SMAC that are typically the selling points for these capabilities.
|
Domain |
Description |
|
Social |
Social media allows sharing and creation of knowledge via social networks, which enhances collaboration and information exchange. To drive business goals and objectives social media helps unlock the knowledge from individuals and facilitate propagation of this knowledge. |
|
Mobile |
The advancements in smart devices are bringing in an era of ubiquitous connectivity. Mobile technologies are evolving and transforming the IT landscape. End users are now able to access information anywhere and on the go through these smart devices. |
|
Analytics |
Big data analytics allows companies to analyze new forms of data in the cloud, which generates unprecedented insight to enable real-time, critical decision making. Analytics enables supply chains, facilitates marketing, and optimizes CRM processes. |
|
Cloud |
Cloud technology is becoming the new foundation of the IT ecosystem and is the fulcrum of the SMAC stack. The cloud computing lends businesses agility, cutting the costs associated with physical server maintenance and breaking down the barriers of geography. Cloud provides limitless scalability and powers the transformative combination of analytic, mobile and social capabilities. |
Table 4: Emerging Technologies
Probability indicator:
Projects are prioritized by ascertaining the business value delivered against the cost of delivering them. The approach is first to determine, the net benefit of all of the solution building blocks/increments delivered by the projects, and then verify that the risks have been effectively mitigated. Afterward, the intent is to gain the requisite consensus at the enterprise level to create a prioritized list of projects based upon solution building blocks. The net benefit and the risk will provide the basis for planning and resource allocation. It is important to articulate all costs to ensure that executives understand the net benefit in terms of the cost savings over time.
- Buy versus build options are evaluated and target architectures are created
- Strategic parameters for change are articulated
- Transition work projects and packages are identified, that is, moving from current to target state
- Benefits, costs and dependencies of the projects are weighed
- Quick wins are identified
- High-value, long-term projects are ranked and prioritized
This includes work products such as an architecture requirements specification, a roadmap, capability assessment, and an implementation with migration plan and transition architecture.
Probability indicator:
The approach to execution of business strategy:
- Business architecture is the initial stage in EA transformation initiative Subsequent phases will align capabilities to applications and establish the data flows between those applications
- Defining reference models, capability models, and logical building blocks for the enterprise
- Logical building blocks need to be identified and information gathered and compared for levels of maturity in each capability
- Capabilities, people, processes, and technology need to be identified to deliver business strategy
- Establishing capability maps, information maps, value streams, and business processes
- The relationship between components from appropriate perspectives (that is, risk, compliance technical, acceptability, and so on) needs to be established
Probability indicator: