I, often times ponder about the role of an 'Enterprise Architect' in the technology sector. I was taking a stroll in the city and one of a charity-fundriser in the city asked - 'What do you do for a living?'. Though my job title is not 'Enterprise Architect', I consider myself one, and told her that I am an enterprise architect. In my job function I am more of a soultion architect in the GRC space.
In my opinion, the role of an enterprise architect is a critical one. Though not all organizations (of big , medium and small sizes) have enterprise architects , it is usually found in larger organizations. Besides, the role definition of an 'Enterprise Architect' is not set clearly. Before proceeding further, I will set the context as a 'large' organization while explaining the idea, and I will explore as how the role of an Enterprise Architect is playing out in a fictional 'large' organization.
In my opinion, the following are some of the critical job descriptions of an enterprise architect (EA). Though it is pointing to the responsibilities of an individual EA, these responsibilities when applied in an organizational context , are better evaluated as a EA function as it is massive in scope and understanding.
1. Understanding the long term business vision of the enterprise and guide the enterprise in preparing the technology roadmap.
2. Evaluating and adopting the necessary enterprise wide frameworks (like TOGAF) to organize all the relevant technology artefacts and also help build a system of governance and monitoring around it.
3. Help the enterprise in the standardisation and consolidation of technology, applications and infrastructure.
4. Help the enterprise in organizing the body of knowledge (including its IT knowledge repository) in a suitable knowledge management system.
5. Help the enterprise in reducing the technology risk. This includes carefully evaluated options around consolidation of application servers, data storage mechanisms, tools around operational technology etc., to reduce digital footprint and increase security/protection. The EA should also take into effect the cascading effect of other risks (such as climate risk or pandemic risk) that impact and amplify the technology risk.
6. Carefully crafting processes that puts the organization in a continuous improvement path with respect to its technology landscape and knowledge management.
7. Identifying and implementing the core processes around data governance for those critical assets that support critical requirements like legal and regulatory compliance, fiduciary responsibilities, protection of intellectual property rights etc.,
8. As part of enforcing security as envisioned in the corporate information security policies, the EA should help build technology designs that are easy to adapt and enforce. It is to be noted here that as part of development of any mission-critical policies . like the information security policy ,3rd party management policy, data and privacy policy etc., the EA team is expected to play an important role as authors/co-authors/reviwers and approvers.
9. As part of enforcing governence and monitoring, the EA should help build reliable technology designs that are easy for businesses to adapt and monitor.
10. The EA function should also oversee the training aspects related to technology adoption in different businesses.
11. The EA function, with an enterprise-wide scope, should also develop reporting systems and the underlying data storage mechanisms while addressing the requirements around data duplication, authentication and access-control of data storage mechanisms, data lineage, data transformations, data quality, data immutability, data obsoletion etc. All of these considerations are to be done with the understanding of the capital and operational expenses needed for these programs.
12. The EA function should also develop and enforce the life-cycles of different technology artefacts like servers, data, operational technologies etc.,
13. Help the enterprise adopt frameworks like ITIL for reliable and effective service managment aspects.
14. In my opinion, It is the EA function that shall help the offices of CIO/CRO etc., to get a reliable outlook on the inherent and residual scores of the technology risk. The EA function is also, thus, expected to build group controls after identifying the appropriate control areas and control objectives on the technology landscape.
Now we can take a look at how the organizations can develop the EA function and help organizations achieve maximum outcomes out of its technogy investements.
1. Like any other business units, the EA shall have a group function and a local function as seen in the federated models of many large enterprises.
2. The group EA function should ideally fold under the offices of the CIO/CTO.
3. The local EA functions should report to both the group EA function and the local representatives of CIO/CRO offices.
4. Each of the significant business functions and organizations should have its internal business focussed enterprise architect. For the central office, thie EA reports to the business/function leaders and also to the group EA function. For the location offices, the EA reports to the location business/function leaders and also to the local EA function.
5. The group EA function is responsible for realising the above responsibilities in a given organizational context and also to develop the core central processes around technology evaluation, rollout and adoption, design and implementation, training, governence, monitoring and obsoletion. These standards and processes can be collectively named as Enterprise Architecture Management Framework (EAMF).
6. The local EA function should inherit the EAMF set by the group function and customize it for local consumption.
7. The EA representatives of the different businesses/functions should consult thier group/local EA function for guidance and suggestions on implementing the EAMF.
8. This organizational design is complete, with the feedback of technology service aspects from business/function leaders and participants, going back to group/local functions from the EA representatives of the businesses/functions thus aiding the organization in the continuous improvement journey.
9. The business/function leaders may also consult the EA representative for any technology related advice and also for their technology related training, adoption and rollout.
10. The business/function leaders may, thus delegate the technology risks of all the technology goods and services of the businesses/functions they reprensent to the representative EA in their business/function and focus only on their business related and strategy risks. The judgement of the representative EA should be supported by adequate amount of data as evidence.
Now the above responsibilities of EA function are to be evaluated together with the budget allocation and critical objectives to decide upon a modified organizational structure suitable, keeping in mind the size and spread of the organization.