Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Avoid IT Management Pitfalls by Using IT Architecture Tools

Among the reasons why architecture is important, worth practicing is that the analysis of architecture enables early prediction of a system’s qualities, considering the whole, and their purpose to achieve the goals for the thing being architected to unlock organizational performance and maturity.

With continuous disruptions often led by technology and abundant information, IT is the key component in building up differentiated business capabilities nowadays.

Excessive IT complexity limits innovation and enlarges gaps between IT and business. The useful tools such as IT Architecture(ITA) helps the management improve the growth capacity and maturity of the organization and rebrand IT as a trustful business partner.





ITA makes it easier to avoid the kinds of problems that "order-taker" IT organizations run into all the time: Many traditional IT organizations get stuck at the lower level of maturity, IT leaders need to make an objective assessment: Is IT being perceived as an order-taker? If the IT organization is strictly tactical, then "Yes." If the Help Desk mechanism is a glorified “To Do” list, then, "Yes." IT organizations need to maintain their value in an environment of increasing growth and complexity of their business units. IT management can leverage IT Architecture as a strategic planning and communication tool to keep focusing on top prioritized business issues and be able to see beyond tactical solutions and reach strategic dimensions. The longer view is essential to make sure that the patterns and impacts IT organization is going to provide in business solutions can be sustained not only in the "systems," but in the systems of people.

To avoid “only fixing the symptom” pitfall, an IT Architect is a technology strategist who understands the need for root cause analysis of an issue with regards to existing systems and is able to find a systemic solution by working closely with business functions. IT architecture is also a critical tool for IT-business alignment and integration. If you cannot build for sustainable development and the pragmatism of efficient delivery for achieving business goals; no matter how elegant the technical designs are, they are doomed.

Enterprise Architecture is a great strategic planning tool because infeasible or conflicting business strategies perhaps never get resolved but drive wasteful or conflicting behavior: Digital enterprises are inherently and intensely complex and unpredictable systems, amplify multiple effects and shape business structures and systems continuously. IT strategy is an integral component of business strategy. Strategies need to be first and foremost long-term, specifically, because they are directional and need to allow for the organization to knock the rust off and move coherently in the right direction, as well as look at the function (products and markets), processes required and the structure, resources, authority of the system.

Conflicting business strategies waste resource and lead conflict behaviors, IT should be part of business decision making for dealing with conflicts by applying EA as a useful tool, outline the areas where possible conflicting priorities may lie and outline how they are able to be handled by the organization in terms of resource allocation such as time, budget, people, etc, in order to arrive at an optimal solution for the benefit of the entire company.

ITA as an effective decision-making tool: Sometimes, unvetted or unreviewed business decisions and initiatives that optimize one area of the business at the greater expense of other areas: Traditional organizations were run in silos in the industrial age, most IT leaders have been silo managers who have a narrow view of IT management and don't really have the business skills or personality traits to take a holistic perspective and make effective decisions. IT architecture helps to achieve a situational balanced compromise or a trade-off, also understand IT management in the company scope, facilitate IT-enabled business initiatives, responsibility, objectives, and needed resources to be successful.

Effective IT management means understanding every island of operation and every workflow process. IT leaders and architects should work both within IT and on IT, across the business scope and seek ways to deal with enterprise complexity smoothly. It's important to leverage ITA as a balanced tool to light up the business full cycles and emerging properties (trends, opportunities) to create the business synergy and ensure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.

The architecture is used as an instrument to orchestrate capabilities and avoid implementation of redundant, complex, and duplicative capabilities: Effective IT leaders leverage IT Architecture to create a decent IT-enabled business capability map and use that to frame activities/artifacts. Capabilities may include dependencies - one is part of another or depends on another. The value of capability maps is the ability to identify capability patterns of the enterprise to make holistic investment decisions.

To avoid duplication, you must also be aware of the integration of a single functional capability into a holistic portfolio of digital capabilities across all enterprises, to build a unique and sustainable business advantage. By leveraging ITA/Solution Architecture as a good tool, the management can get a better clearer picture of IT solutions from a cost, transparency, and complexity perspective, as well as eliminate waste which is not used and save effort on maintaining it.

Apply IT architecture as an effective IT management tool to avoid the syndrome: Well-intentioned projects that the business wants, but don't deliver value: The business/IT architectures are the effective management tools to help evaluate whether the business initiative is worth the effort with tangible ROI. IT projects are essential "business initiatives with technology dependencies." IT project management has a high failure rate. There are many causes to fail an IT project such as Scope Creep, Failure to obtain stakeholder commitment, ineffectual team, or failure to plan or execute well. You need to define the root causes of IT-enabled business initiatives.

Highly effective IT management uses ITA as a useful tool to communicate and navigate, to ensure IT delivery is about People, Process and Technology, not just technology. When looking for the success traits of those really successful organizations that seem to always be able to execute projects and programs well, they mostly have inspiring leadership; well-designed architecture and roadmap, engaged and driven employees and technical expertise, as well as sound management disciplines, to ensure value deliveries.

Leverage EA as a problem diagnosis tool to avoid ignoring the root cause of problems because they are politically difficult to address: Many business managers or professionals still apply silo mentality and linear management discipline to solve ever complex business problems. When they only want to see things from their own point of view, see what they want to see, or, hear-what-they-want-to-hear, they often miss the point to understand the real problem holistically. A better solution that crosses all industries is to keep peeling back the layers by applying architecture or other useful tools to discover the real cause and address it.

To overcome the “problem-solving” impasse, it’s critical to leverage business/ITA architecture as a useful tool to challenge, debate, and learn by applying holistic thinking and opening the dialogues to close blind spots and bridge gaps for identifying and solving real problems, rather than only fixing the symptom while the real problem keeps coming back.

We no longer live in the world that runs in years, but one that runs in minutes. The major issue at hand in architecture is effective partitioning leading to effective decomposition to handle the complexity. The IT maturity within an enterprise determines the focus and priorities of most CIOs. Among the reasons why architecture is important, worth practicing is that the analysis of architecture enables early prediction of a system’s qualities, considering the whole, and their purpose to achieve the goals for the thing being architected to unlock organizational performance and maturity.

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