CIOReview
| | September 20169CIOReviewincrease response time changes in the business landscape (a small pool of experts vs a large pool of generalists). Obsolescence levels Often organizations make the decision to not perform that next big upgrade because of the capital investment and lack of a solid business case. When done with eyes wide open and purposeful intent, these decisions are appropriate. But the balance sheet argument only gets you a year or two as you continue to incur "technology debt" via: Growing extended support contractsIncreases in platform instability requiring incident remediation efforts.Response to cyber security threats of aging and unsupported technologies. Operational or Regulatory Risk Not all industries are all under regulatory oversight, those who are will have a list of concerns. Cost / expense of technology This can be an outcome of any of the previously mentioned items as well as others. Financial impact of technology decisions is critical to an organization therefore must be its own indicator. Others that are applicable to your organization.Step2. Figure out how to deliver information in a mode that is consumable and understandable by the business. Personally I like the concept of "Business on a Page", I recommend identifying some industry based model that represents how an organization of your type operates, this should not be an org chart and may not even map directly to the way the organization is structured operatesUnderstand the "levels" of this operating model. L1 should really be no more then 5/6 areas, L2 could be 5 to 10 items per L1 entity so one and so forth. Going passed a L3 or L4 level of granularity quickly becomes a conversation of diminishing returns. Most EAMS tools will already have brought you too this exercise including application mapping into the appropriate business segment.Why is the important? Few executives care about individual applications. Everyone cares about the performance of their call centers or perhaps trading floors, but focusing a discussion on the 20 applications and the 75 technologies that support those applications is too detailed.With this information in hand more knowledge can be brought forth in the business decision making process. Ongoing expense of technology is one of the most actively discussed topics in any forum. Like all cost cutting exercise we are often focusing on broad brush strokes or straight percent haircuts across all categories. How many of you have technology charge back policies that are a Peanut Butter tax lacking transparency to the business owners?Consider our Call Center conversation a bit more. The business executive may not care about the 18 applications that support the call center but she will likely care about the total cost of IT ownership. She may even notice that a large percentage of that cost is one or two applications. Is that expense justified or is an outcome of say obsolescence or high change failure rate?Even if your EA function is still largely technology focused, you can communicate technology decisions in a transparent way. Similar to the "Business on a Page", consider creating a "Technology on a Page" view. Start with something like Technopedia as your primary organization (as with application mapping an EAMS will take you down this path well). Consider many of the same categories as above1. What percent of your compute infrastructure maybe obsolete?2. How many different operating systems does your infrastructure team need to support?3. Database and SAN communication a popular source of problem management records?In closing, whether transitioning focus, struggling with value to the organization, or simply looking to mature...consider a yearlong goal of "If Architecture does nothing this year it brings Transparency forward"! This will not make the CEA one of the most welcome people at planning meetings, but that will quickly change as the conversations move from a defensive mode to an intellectual engagement on "how to improve what we are seeing". EA consumers rarely care about the process or internal workings of the EA organization - but they do care about the value the work efforts bring to the enterprise. Remember, EA offers no value until its recommendation or deliverable is converted into an actionable event ­ and one of the easiest ways of forcing action is to shine the light of transparency
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