The Modern Architect: How to Facilitate Enterprise-wide Collaboration

The (new) role of the Enterprise Architect

Traditional enterprise architecture practices often focus on designing a final state be it a data model, a cloud configuration, an infrastructure plan, or an IT portfolio. This team typically consisted of a core group of individuals who collaborated with each other only – they worked in the same team, in the same department, often in the same location, and often had the same boss. A ‘traditional’ architect seldom collaborated with other departmental managers, let alone business executives. This situation worked for many years when Enterprise Architecture was buried in the IT department and was called upon infrequently by business executives. But the situation has changed. Organizations realize the importance of Enterprise Architecture and its ability to inform the CxO agenda. Questions which are being asked by the board are often only being answered by enterprise architects, as we’re the only people looking enterprise-wide. Enterprise Architecture goes beyond IT by connecting multiple perspectives: business strategies, IT strategies, product portfolios and investment portfolios. This discipline has the unique ability to connect the entire enterprise, break down silo-thinking and promote cross-organizational collaboration. As architects, we’re now valued for our ability to provide visibility into the current landscape of the organization. But, more importantly, we give the perspective necessary to chart the right path to a future outcome – the enterprise's future state. To enable this ‘new way of doing’, we need to break out of our typical comfort zones, change the way we do Enterprise Architecture and learn the art of cross-organizational collaboration.

Up your game – become a Collaborative Architect

We need to change the way that we communicate

Use a collaborative enterprise architecture platform

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GUIDE

To support business and IT strategy execution, architects need to collaborate not only within their domains but across the entire enterprise to the C-suite

Read this guide to learn:

The value of broadening your network across the organizational structure How to tailor your architectural models for specific audiences What to look for in a collaborative platform to reinvent your role as an architect

As architects, we often have knowledge of ArchiMate and associated languages such as BPMN and UML. These are the most popular languages of architecture across the key domains, including business, process, data, application, technology and security. Our challenge is that business users are unfamiliar with this terminology. We need to use a language that our stakeholder is familiar with – no one likes to be confused, and if we can't communicate effectively then our audience won’t understand and support our thinking. To become a Collaborative Architect, we need to address the following: Understand your audience: Who is your audience? What are they interested in? What are their concerns? You need to select the insights, perspectives and communication medium to which your audience best responds to. Answer a business question: Your work should provide an answer or insight into a business challenge which is relevant to your stakeholder. If not, it will not get noticed or acted upon. Create a drumbeat: Modeling architecture is a never-ending task and it’s easy to become relaxed about it when value is delivered. Ensure that you’re regularly providing insights, ideally at key decision points or governance meetings, for the initiative you’re working on.

Bizzdesign Horizzon helps you consider multiple perspectives, create storyboards, publish information widely, and successfully support your move to being the ‘Collaborative Architect’ your organization needs.

Broaden our network in the organizational structure

Collaboration across the enterprise would typically not be difficult for architects. We’ve often built up networks over time and we’ve worked in many lines of business and with many teams. We have access to many parts of IT – such as other architects in the information/ data, solution, infrastructure domains, and functions such as IT Service Management and IT Change. A strong enterprise architect often links these functions to ensure a conformant architecture approach, aligning to reference architectures and standards that govern the organization. However, as architects working on enterprise-wide initiatives, we need to involve an expanded set of stakeholders from a far larger cross-section of the enterprise. We need to understand and determine requirements from many different sub-cultures within the enterprise such as finance, marketing and HR.

In many cases, this requires identifying the right contacts and reaching out well beyond our own personal networks. We need to focus on gathering input on requirements and obtaining the buy-in and approvals required for change programs that drive the organization forward. Most importantly, as architects, our ultimate aim is to provide the best information possible to key decision-makers, which is usually the C-suite. We can support executive teams by answering many of their challenges and building an ever more robust architectural capability. But our real challenge is to engage with business executives. They require a much more sophisticated approach because they’re short on time, don’t understand the language that architects use, and need clear answers to complex questions.

Mapping of a tabular data source in Bizzdesign Connect

Integrating all major frameworks with the Bizzdesign Open API

A simple Dell Boomi integration process

There are two ways of setting policies: either interactively in Bizzdesign Horizzon or by using the REST API. The image shows an individual data block policy and update schedule created in Bizzdesign Horizzon’s user interface.

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“C-level executives and board members at enterprises with mature Enterprise Architecture practices are four times more likely to consume Enterprise Architecture content than their peers at less mature practices. Less mature practices are less effective at influencing the technology decisions of agile teams.” - State of the Enterprise Architecture Report 2022

To succeed in our expanded role as Collaborative Architects and to deliver on the associated expectations, we need to:

Promote your work: Simply producing insights by itself is not enough. You need to shout from the treetops about where the value lies. Remember that when your message is clear (what you solve), it’s easier to promote it. Carve out an evangelist role: The team needs an evangelist, someone who goes out of their way to promote and sell the value of what you’re doing. This requires spending time with stakeholders to help them understand. Start small and grow: Grand conceptual visions rarely gain traction. Start small, show value through regular incremental delivery, and grow. The ‘just enough architecture’ principle can ensure that the time-to-value is as short as possible. Become a storyteller: A visualization won’t sell itself without a narrative. Start a conversation. Don’t fear providing material that’s not perfect. Create material that will trigger a discussion and craft ways to engage stakeholders.

Exposing the walled garden of the architecture repository to non-architecture stakeholders drives collaboration to a new level. This enables and empowers new stakeholders to review, re-use and leverage the insights gained from architecture. Diagrams and data are digested by a range of users with little to no training required, empowering people to inform their own business decisions.

As architects we need to extend our reach of IT across the organization

In the past, architects used their special-purpose modeling and analysis tools for their domains only. This made collaboration across technology domains difficult, let alone with ‘non-experts’. Today’s enterprise architecture platform needs to be accessible to everyone in the organization. To involve everyone in the enterprise-wide architecture requires a new approach. Architecture tools typically focus on specific domains (e.g. UML diagrams, data models). To collaborate across the organization, you need a platform to see the relationships across domains. In other words, a SaaS platform that scales across your entire organization and which can model several domains and take into account both the run/change aspects. Therefore, any enterprise architecture tooling selection must meet a range of essential criteria before detailed requirements can even be considered. These include: Scalable collaboration for architects, analysts and consumers of architecture insights Being understandable across the organization for tech and non-tech stakeholders Having a repository to allow re-use of architecture components Enforcing rules for creating structured and consistent outputs Enabling dashboard and reporting capabilities to extract value from the architecture data Allowing easy integration into the organization via technological means and fitting with the organization’s ways of working such as governance processes

The key to your success is to share your models with your audience in a readily consumable manner, customized to the needs of different stakeholder groups. For a non-architect audience, you need to communicate models in layman’s terms and with exciting visualizations.

Tailor architectural models for specific audiences

Examples of models in Bizzdesign Horizzon created for specific audiences:

05 Chief Information Security Officer

What’s the sensitivity of the data in our organization’s applications?

This image shows how complex mappings can be represented simply. Within the enterprise architecture, data types (e.g. Personally Identifiable Information, Financial Data) are scored on their confidentiality levels. These are then mapped to data objects, which are in turn linked to application components. The privacy level of the applications is heatmapped to provide a readily understandable diagram.

04 Executives

How are my strategic goals being delivered?

This diagram shows the link between strategy components (drivers and goals are at the top), which drives investments in selected business capabilities. The capability improvements are then broken down into the As-Is and To-Be, which show the transformation of the relevant business processes and applications.

03 Head of Change

When are the organization’s strategic goals being delivered, and by which programs?

The diagram provides a way for leaders in the Change function to trace upward how their transformation projects and programs deliver against the goals of the corporate strategy.

02 Application Portfolio Manager

What do my applications cost, and which ones do I need to replace?

The diagram above is a way to answer the recurring query from many different stakeholders – IT costs. This model labels each application with a current cost and heatmaps the lifecycle stage.

01 Solution Architect:

Which parts of the enterprise architecture does my solution impact?

An example of an Operating Model drilling down from the Business Capability to the Business Process, Application and Data perspectives. The ‘chain link’ icon in the bottom right of some blocks allows stakeholders to click-through to relevant detailed BPMN processes and UML Class diagrams.

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Communication with business executives and getting their support is vital for any successful enterprise architect. Working with your new stakeholders helps them answer vital strategic questions around budget, customer experience and risk management. Their success translates into a readiness to provide you with information and support your initiatives – being well-informed and having supportive stakeholders are the twin pillars of your success. The ultimate prize is to become the trusted advisor to business executives. You have access to information that describes how the organization operates and an evidence-based approach to answering questions using a range of blueprints developed from the knowledge of key people across the entire organization. Become the ‘go to person’ who can answer key questions which drive decision-making. Become the Collaborative Architect.

Don’t delay: Reinvent your role as an architect