IT Strategy, Architecture, Capability, Process Dots Connection

IT must be seen as a trusted partner, an enabler, and even a gamechanger in the overall business effectiveness and maturity.

Strategy management is about creating tomorrow's organization out of today. Architecture is a great strategic planning tool because infeasible or conflicting business strategies perhaps never get resolved but drive wasteful or conflicting behavior.

 Business processes underpin capabilities, and business capabilities underpin the organizational strategy. IT strategy is an integral component of business strategy. Here is a set of dot connections of IT strategy, architecture, capability, and process.


IT strategy and architecture: IT architecture is the visualization of IT strategy and IT strategy is a subcomponent of the business strategy. IT strategic planning is a necessary process that parallels or follows a business strategic planning process. But largely a process that cuts across all of IT and hopefully, business. Strategies need to be first and foremost long-term, to allow for the organization to move coherently in the right direction. IT strategic planning must be closely tied to that of the business, enhancing the maturity level of the organization. The "strategic" part of the planning process is the continual attention to current changes in the organization and its external environment, and how this affects the future of the organization.

The analysis of architecture enables early prediction of a business system’s qualities, considering the whole, and their purpose to achieve the goals for the thing being architected to unlock organizational performance and maturity. Enterprise Architecture is, in fact, a key mechanism in IT strategic planning; but it should be a strategic tool not only for IT but for the whole organization. In the ideal world, EA contributes to IT strategic planning in various ways and forms, but IT planning would be only one of Enterprise Architecture’s core processes and duties - can be its most important one in some organizations.

IT architecture and capability: IT Architecture is a high-level diagram describing the key IT-enabled business capabilities and flows, helping IT management create a strategy-capability mapping and making a road map that sets goals for building differentiated IT-enabled business competency. The IT architecture is used as a collaboration instrument to create a decent IT-enabled business capability map. The value of capability maps is the ability to identify capability patterns and offer insight to senior management in making holistic investment decisions. Assume you have a well crafted corporate strategy, then within the IT ranks, you can apply IT architecture to take each of these “WHATs,” and figure out the “HOWs” that will implement and execute the strategy effectively.

The simpler the IT systems, the agiler, in general, the IT systems are. In an architectural context, it effectively reflects the functional coverage of IT architecture. Many times, strategy-capability mapping fails to have enough detail to really serve the purpose. Business strategy and capability mapping is not a single-minded or one-dimensional approach. Seldom is there a strategy that is achieved by one capability. The best scenario is to leverage IT architecture for creating a comprehensive capability map through cross-functional collaboration. With IT architecture as an effective mapping tool, those business capabilities with gaps are evaluated more deeply, which produces a list of remediation work that needs completing to improve differentiated business capabilities.

IT architecture and process: IT Architecture and process management need to work closely to be successful. by encapsulating the five dimensions (What, How, Who, When and Where). Architecture is about "what" is in IT, and process drives "How" it can be managed, "Who" needs to manage, "When" it needs to be managed, "Where" it needs to be managed and overall keeping the tab on "Why" it needs to be managed. By applying IT Architecture as an effective tool, IT leaders should take the lead in introducing process management into the entire company and integrate processes across the organization for improving business effectiveness, responsiveness, agility, and maturity.

Process management addresses the process aspects of architecture, leading to all-encompassing enterprise architecture. The relationships of business processes in the context of the rest of the enterprise systems (architecture, organizational structure, strategies, etc.) create greater capabilities when analyzing and planning enterprise changes. The goal of process management is to eliminate unnecessary complications and reduce the burden on the company while trying to stay current with ever-changing technologies and dynamic business environments.

IT must be seen as a trusted partner, an enabler, and even a gamechanger in the overall business effectiveness and maturity. If not, you're doing it wrong. IT architecture, strategy, capability, and process are all important components of delivering business value and technology innovation in mature, operationally focused businesses and driving digital transformation continually.

Posted in: Connecting Dots,EA,Enterprise Capability,IT Strategy/Roadmap,IT Transformation