How To: Establish a Successful ETA

Enterprise Technology Architecture (ETA) is much more than standards, it’s a strategy, and adoption is the name of the game. Unfortunately, enterprises often focus too much creating a framework for compliance and not enough on enabling success. A successful ETA is rooted in people and process, fostering a productive and collaborative environment for informed decisions to be made and that enforce business goals.

Gartner outlines 5 best practices to get the most out of your ETA:

Make standards easy to follow

Documentation is key but too much can cause paralysis and/or avoidance. Having an organized destination for knowledge seekers to find information relatable to them and maintaining a minimalist approach to standard creation is necessary to attract compliance. Including examples, or patterns of common tasks in relation to standards will also invite users to your ETA by providing value back to them.

Connect technical architectures to strategic goals

Outcome driven EA should already be the operating model for your practice, so why shouldn’t your ETA? Making strategic direction clear and how a specific initiative enables it, will help drive excitement and make the importance of standards clear when the bigger picture is known.

Start early

The SDLC is complicated beast, getting involved early with technical development provide opportunities for communication and consultation on the use of ETA standards and guidelines. Everyone wants to avoid an ol’fashioned refactor.

Be transparent and forward thinking

Speaking of a complicated beast, old standards frustrate everyone. Be transparent on the direction of ETA and welcome interaction. Just like starting early, if teams have a view to where the enterprise is going they can plan accordingly.

Focus on communication and education

You can’t have adoption with awareness. Share success stories and tailor EA messaging to stakeholders to foster buy-in. Audiences need to be educated on the needs of the enterprise to drive alignment. This also requires standards in itself, have a regular cadence for communications (people are creatures of habit after all) and don’t forget to map back to strategic goals!

These best practices need to happen across domains too. Of course ETA is pointed at the technologists of your organization but enabling business resources to be involved in ETA is the sure fire way to gain adoption across the enterprise.

References:

• Robertson, B. (2009). Five Best Practices for Enterprise Technology Architecture. Gartner.