03.18.10
At Journey’s End, Do You Remember Why You Started?
[Cartoon]
Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic to find a route to India. As we all know, he mistook the North American continent to be India and named the inhabitants “Indians”. Because of this mistake, we have continued calling the original inhabitants “American Indians”. Because Columbus was convinced of great wealth in the discovered land, he forgot his original quest.
Having been involved in many very large IT projects requiring several years to complete, I can honestly say my experience has been similar to that of Christopher Columbus. The projects would begin with a clear and stated objective that would be weathered by new understandings and new challenges in the business environment. The objective would be reworked to adjust to the new realities.
Unfortunately, when the objective of a project changes, it is nearly impossible to turn back and repair major components already planned or purchased. The project team will become very innovative and find a way to move on. This usually results in some duct tape to keep things working.
Often, the major reason for a large IT project is to replace large components that have become too complicated to modify. The complication has occurred due to years of applying duct-tape solutions. So, when the replacement project uses duct-tape solutions to adhere to the adjusted project, there is some question as to the validity of the project.
By applying the principles of Enterprise Architecture, there can be a more agile approach to initiating and managing projects. One of the principles is to uncover the current state of the business systems and IT infrastructure. This is not a study of one area in the business that might be experiencing a need for change. This is about examining the entire enterprise from a top-down perspective to uncover the dependencies among the major components.
Once there is a good visualization of the component dependencies, the magnitude of change can be better understood. The value of Improvements to components in the business systems and IT infrastructure can be compared.
This approach is similar to Six Sigma and other continuous improvement approaches that take small steps to incrementally improve an organization’s IT. It avoids the major initiatives that may take years to complete.
With Enterprise Architecture there is no journey. There is a current state that is being continually improved one piece at a time.
Closing the Business / IT gap
