In this post, I will describe the IT governance committee for small and medium projects, their terms of reference and the scoring system for ranking projects. In September 2007, we started a process to use IT governance to help us manage the flood of proposals and project requests. Thanks to my colleagues Gary Lake and Dave Cresswell who did the heavy lifting and put the process in place.

The Business Applications Advisory Committee (BAAC) gives advice and guidance to IT Services on which project requests would be the “right things” to do; recognizing that we have limited resources and want to focus them on the work that will deliver the most value to our community. 

BAAC Terms of Reference

Business Application Advisory Committee advises Information Technology Services on the priorities for small to medium sized business application proposals that will further the goals and strategies of BCIT.

We define two types of business application projects: Major and Minor.  Major projects are referred to the BCIT Executive Leadership team for governance. Minor projects are referred to the BAAC for ranking. 

Minor projects are defined as:

  1.  projects that will improve BCIT business processes and are not part of routine maintenance or operational activities of IT Services
  2. projects that are not large enough or significant enough to meet the criteria of the BCIT Executive Leadership project approval process.

Committee Goals

The BAAC represents the interests of the entire Institute. Specifically the committee will:

  1. facilitate submission and review of proposals and business plans of small and medium business application projects from across the Institute
  2. prioritize those projects through criteria that are viable and directly support the strategic goals of BCIT
  3. ensure that the lifecycle process of a proposal is transparent to the Institute community

Membership

The BAAC is made up of representatives from across our community at the middle management level:

  • Student – Registrar’s Office, Learner Services, Alumni
  • Education – School Operations Managers (2)
  • Research and International – Technology Centre Operations Manager
  • Finance and Supply Management
  • Human Resources and Labour Relations
  • Facilities Management
  • IT Services
  • Foundation

The committee will be chaired by the Manager, Program Management Office, IT Services.

Project Proposal Ranking Criteria

Compliance Risk to the Institute

Simple Yes/No.  If yes, indicate whether the project is directly or indirectly related to a compliance issue (cite compliance source).  Include outcomes if the Institute does not comply with regulation.

Compliance source could be a legally binding agreement, regulation, contract, inspection order, court ruling or law.

 

I am at the point in my career where I feel the need to get a Masters degree to advance my career. The question is which one to go for? I have been asking friends and colleagues so I thought I would ask all of you.

Here are my criteria for the program:

  • suitable for a senior IT leader who is working to move up to a CIO/CTO level
  • focused on Enterprise Architecture and Technology Management
  • offered in part time mode over several years
  • delivered in an blended online/F2F delivery mode
  • some residency portions would be good because I enjoy F2F interaction
  • looking to start the program in September 2009

Please post any suggestions as comments.  Thank you for helping me!

 

Mike Kavis‘ got me thinking about EA frameworks with his Twitter posts about the E2AF.

The Zachman Framework was my first introduction to an EA framework in 2004 and it continues to be a significant reference model for how I think about EA. Here is a slide of the Zachman Framework Version 2.  The geometry of Zachman sits in one and two dimensions. For example, creating lists for cells in ZF Row 1 results in one dimensional, primitives. Next, creating matrices between the Row 1 lists results in two dimensional, composites. There is no third dimension to overlay or underpin the artifacts in this model. So how are governance, security and risk management articulated?

Mike is looking at leveraging the Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework.  Here is a slide with their model – Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework (E2AF).  This framework slightly modified Zachman components like the column interrogatives to: Why? With Who? What? How? With What? When?  (Note: John Zachman has always maintained that there is no precident order to the columns in his framework). The rows have been simplified from 6 to 4 : Business, Information, Information – Systems, Technology – Infrastructure. This results in the same geometry as the Zachman Framework but the E2AF model goes a further step and introduces “Viewpoints” : Privacy, Governance, Security and Other Viewpoints are identified. These viewpoints introduce a critical third dimension and allow the framework to be view from specific stakeholder’s perspectives. Here is a link to the article that explains viewpoints in this framework.

Interestingly, I have always had a sense that communicating EA in a model/diagram needed 3 dimensions. Here is a link to my post about our EA Model from June 2007.  I was surprised how much similarity there is to the E2AF model and some linkages to the model discussed below.

Last May I collaborated with Dr Scott Bernardto introduce Enteprise Architecture to the University of Alaska.  Scott introduced me to his EA3 Frameworkwhich is based on a 3D model.  This model provides a view of an enterprise in 3 dimensions with the concepts Scott introduced like Line of Business segments and crosscutting components like governance, security, workforce.  With this framework, we get a representation of a coherent view of the enterprise.  I took Scott’s course and got hands on experience populating his EA3 cube with artifacts from a fictitious aerospace company.

There are many other EA frameworks and approaches …

  • Do you use them as thinking tools to help with EA?
  • Have you adopted and populate a prescribed EA framework?
  • Or maybe you have your own EA framework you would like to share!
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Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education by Leo de Sousa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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