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Generating short-term wins

Quick wins, even on a small scale, become the catalyst to building momentum in enterprise architecture.

Stuart Macgregor
By Stuart Macgregor, CEO of Real IRM.
Johannesburg, 08 Oct 2014

By this point in the process of business transformation (see my previous Industry Insight), the company has established and communicated the vision for change, and then begun the process of empowering the right teams to start executing on that vision.

Now, as it starts to package some of the early-phase model content, it becomes crucial for the fledgling enterprise architecture (EA) practice to generate some quick wins. Demonstrating tangible business value, even on a small scale, helps to maintain the interest of key stakeholders, and ensures the momentum doesn't start to wane.

In fact, a virtuous cycle should begin to emerge: as the EA practice develops the operational capability to satisfy some business needs, stakeholders begin to recognise the business value. This leads to positive word-of-mouth being spread throughout the company, which in turn stimulates increased levels of demand from various quarters.

Ultimately, this demand translates into increased willingness to invest in the EA journey. With greater levels of buy-in, the EA practice's operational capabilities continue to expand, and the cycle continues.

Success breeds success

Short-term wins become the catalyst to building momentum in EA. John Kotter (who advises on the eight stages of change management) says these early successes are vital for a number of reasons, including the following:

* Providing evidence that sacrifices are worth it: many staff within the coalition and other areas of the business have invested great time and energy in getting to this point.
* Reward change agents with a pat on the back: adding business value is the biggest recognition of success.
* Help fine-tune vision and strategies: insights learned from practically applying EA can be fed back into the strategic thinking.
* Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters: tangible EA successes start to erode the credibility of naysayers.
* Keep bosses on board: maintaining the support of line managers, executives, and other senior stakeholders happens naturally
* Build momentum: more and more people are drawn into the developing EA practice, as people want to associate with a 'success story'.

It goes without saying that these short-term wins need to be built on a sustainable and professional EA practice. The foundations must be strong - so the content can be easily accessed, and re-used for further process improvement in other areas of the business.

As the demand for business transformation increases, the EA practice needs to manage expectations and delivery. The EA team cannot take on 'too much' in the early stages, and be seen as the team that slows things down, or hampers innovation and change.

Essentially, the value that stakeholders derive from EA needs to continually exceed their perceived cost of contribution.

As the practice reaches out into the broader company, new opportunities emerge for specialists to contribute their unique insights. To keep the right people on the team, the company also needs to attend to human capital issues, like:

* Ensuring key EA staff members have professional development paths and the opportunities to further their formal qualifications.
* Providing mentoring (from within the organisation, or by pulling in outside mentors).
* Performance management processes that ensure staff are accurately rewarded for their performance.

With the right team in place, the lead architect's focus can shift from the everyday EA operations to higher-value activities. These include continually engaging with executives from across the business - to extend the scope of the EA practice and ensure it remains relevant and value-adding.

The value that stakeholders derive from EA needs to continually exceed their perceived cost of contribution.

The lead architect and the team can concentrate on understanding the potentially disruptive "nexus of forces" (cloud, mobility, big data and social), conducting impact assessments, scenario planning, and implementing new strategies.

The architecture team is then operating on all three levels - strategic, tactical and operational; and facilitating learning across the enterprise.

In this way, the chief architect and his EA team start to position themselves as trusted advisors and business partners to the company - becoming a crucial leadership support function. Ultimately, the true measure of the EA team's worth is the extent to which the company engages with it, and the extent to which business transformation has been realised.

In the next Industry Insight, I will look at how these early gains can be consolidated, as EA is rolled out more broadly across the company.

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