EA Practitioners Conference - Johannesburg 2015

Many Enterprise Architecture (EA) implementations do not succeed in realising their full potential due to a failure in managing the “fuzzy” human aspects of organisational transformation. Change management is, or should be, an integral part of EA implementations. This presentation explores the role and composition of EA Change Management and examines how it differs from change leadership. It reviews John Kotter’s 8 steps for leading change and provides an overview of the process of managing human change in EA implementations and organisational transformations. The presentation also includes a consideration of the psychology of change - what psychological factors, change strategies and organisation conditions increase the individual’s motivation to change, and which merely exacerbate normal resistance to change?

Enterprise Architecture as a discipline is growing globally and even more rapidly as a profession. At the same time there are business and IT stakeholders with concerns, misconceptions and downright scepticism regarding the practice, methods and actual value-add of Enterprise Architecture. This session attempts to take a hard look at the current state of Enterprise Architecture locally and abroad from a few different perspectives, including: Frameworks, Tools, Skills, Certification, References, Maturity, etc.

The IBM Systems Journal is a seminal publication that records the outstanding research achievements of the IBM Research Laboratories. Adriaan Vorster takes us through two of their very prominent framework articles. The first is the renown Zachman Framework. Initially published in the IBM System Journal in 1987 as "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture", it has evolved from just three columns that were limited to the Information Systems domain into a true Enterprise Framework. The newer Cynefin Framework, which was published in the IBM Systems Journal in 2003, is rapidly gaining ground. Whereas the Zachman Framework can be seen as a classification scheme, the Cynefin Framework is seen as a “sense-making” framework.

As Enterprise Architects, we often suffer with over-enthusiasm in our own trade, without realising that not everybody might share this interest. The people who can really benefit from what the E in Enterprise Architecture can bring are top decision makers in IT and the business. They often do not have a technical background and struggle to understand the A in Enterprise Architecture. We discuss a new approach to Enterprise Architecture that is simpler, delivers quicker results and, more importantly, that really serves the top-level decision makers in a language that they can understand. We look at case studies and examples of this approach, as well as the lessons we can learn in our day-to-day jobs.

The increasing demand for digital services both from internal stakeholders and consumers is pressuring companies to "get digital". When the true implications of this requirement reaches decision-makers, the response is often to initiate a strategic initiative in the form of a transformation program to fundamentally change the way of doing business. Digital transformation programmes usually span multiple years, projects, and business units, and affect both internal and external stakeholders. The success of these programmes depend heavily on the communication of the envisaged “improved future” . Aligning programme management and EA in this area creates value for the organisation.

The Architecture team for Barclays Africa Group Limited took an informed decision to standardise on ArchiMate as the modelling notation and specification for building organisational architectures. They then invested in training and certifying their enterprise and domain architects, as well as those involved in capturing, creating or modelling architectural artefacts using the ArchiMate standard. This presentation is a reflection on the journey they travelled in learning ArchiMate as The Open Group technical standard, how it was implemented in our organisation, and how they used it as the foundation upon which their organisation tailors domain-specific capabilities to help visualise, manage and govern their transformation initiatives. The discussion includes insight into how ArchiMate informed the building and implementation of their meta model, and how they then built their architecture reference models and underlying architectures.