Why do business executives avoid enterprise architecture — and how do you get them genuinely engaged?
The complaint is common among IT architects: business executives won't engage with enterprise architecture, leaving the whole effort directionless. But as this 2009 presentation by Graham McLeod argues, the real problem lies with what is typically presented to business people as "business architecture" — a technically framed, detail-heavy, IT-grown discipline that offers little of immediate relevance to the executives who actually own the business. Delivered at The Open Group EA Practitioners Conference in London, the presentation sets out both a diagnosis and a remedy. The diagnosis: most EA has grown upward from IT rather than downward from business strategy, and neither TOGAF nor most frameworks at the time adequately captured the full scope of genuine business architecture — context, markets, products, channels, customers, scenarios, and cross-cutting concerns like cost, risk, quality, and governance. The remedy: a comprehensive business architecture meta model, drawn from Inspired and PROMIS experience across banking, healthcare, assurance, telecommunications, and government, that gives executives models they recognise as their own. A particularly practical section addresses how architects must shift their role — from technical experts presenting conclusions to skilled facilitators asking good questions, holding up a mirror, and ensuring that models and content belong to the business rather than the architecture team. The presentation closes with specific suggestions for how TOGAF should expand its treatment of business architecture.
Originally presented by Graham McLeod at The Open Group EA Practitioners Conference (EAPC), London, UK, April 2009.