WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: McKinsey is right to highlight the importance of enterprise architecture in the digital world.

Where they miss the boat in their analysis is that EA is not a ROLE but rather a PRACTICE that many people in the organization should master.

EA provides the tools and methodologies to analyze complex options and determine the most appropriate one. EA looks at business plan, capabilities, data, systems, infrastructure, security and governance required to determine the people, process and technologies needed to deliver value.

They say it best in the article when they suggest to 'Build an architecture mindset across the company" and demand that Enterprise Architects - if such role & title remains relevant - need to work on their soft skills and get their hands dirty.

WHY IT MATTERS: I missed that one when it was published last year. The document lists and compares tens of solutions and provides great overview of their characteristics. A great starting point.

WHY IT MATTERS: this post highlights 6 key elements of successful technology projects. They include agile, cloud and service architecture. No surprise. What is interesting is that they can even prevent projects from busting their budget by 200%, which seems to be the "track record of comparable programs" according to McKinsey... #sad

WHY IT MATTERS: enterprise architecture remains a great idea with awful delivery IMHO.

Great idea because most organizations do not have a complete high level view of their organizations from a business, data, application and technology in order to drive governance and security and manage project portfolio priorities.

Awful delivery because most EA groups tends to isolate themselves in ivory towers, with hard to define value and limited deliverables.

EA tools, in the same vein, have traditionally been bloated versions of difficult to maintain and often stale information, the main issue not being the software but the content and its maintenance...

WHY IT MATTERS: a collection of articles on digital transformation by CIOs. Their insight is interesting because they have been at the forefront of the transformation from day one and have to have a cross-functional view of the organization, making their insights even more global and wide-ranging.