In my previous post, I suggested that integrating Kevin Kelly’s 8 “generatives” will help EA adoption (please read Kevin’s excellent article Better than Free for the details on each):
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability
This really got me thinking about how we approach introducing and maturing enterprise architecture in our organizations. How many of you made attempts to introduce EA practices and struggled in your organizations? What attracts clients to your EA service? Do you use a carrot or a stick? Why would people in your organization come to you for services? What makes your service better than free?
Can we take Kevin’s “generatives” and apply them as principles of our EA practice? This post describes how we can apply Kevin’s “generatives” as influencing guiding principles for delivering Enterprise Architecture.
Immediacy – Does your EA practice provide immediacy to facilitate solution delivery in your organization? Can your EA serve to deliver solutions quicker and in a supported, sustainable manner? If your EA process takes weeks or months or even years, there is no immediacy for your clients and they will go elsewhere even if it costs them more. If we design our EA services to address the immediacy demand of our clients, we can deliver the immediacy generative. Applying our EA Guiding Principle “Reuse-Acquire-Create” will help.
Personalization – Does your EA practice address the requirements of your client’s specific needs? Communication is a key role for an Enterprise Architect. Building relationships and creating value for your clients by understanding their needs and enabling solutions tailored to their business challenges. This creates “stickiness” between the business and your EA practice. Both parties collaboratively build a relationship which is a generative asset that they are invested in. To me this is a great way of thinking about technology services becoming a trusted partner to the business and delivering the personalization generative.
Interpretation- Can your EA practice be the interpreter and bridge between easily accessible technology solutions and real business requirements? How many times do business units in your organization buy a technology to address their current pain point ,only to find that the technology is cheap to acquire but costly to implement and difficult to integrate? If we as EA’s, can help our business partners make better choices by guiding them with standard solution architectures that integrate into our overall enterprise architecture, we meet the interpretation generative.
Authenticity – Do the solutions proposed by your EA practice provide a total solution that addresses implementation and ongoing service delivery at a fair price? We need to build the Business Architecture layer of our Enterprise Architecture. By understanding the business processes and cycles, we can tailor standard solution architectures that integrate people, process, information and technology. By putting the business needs ahead of technology acquisition, we can deliver the authentic generative.
