Business Implications of SOA: Part 3

The previous post and the post before that addressed the first 3 business implications of SOA.  Let’s discuss the other two major business implications of SOA.  First, with SOA it becomes important to understand the distinction between “enabling” and “actualizing” a business process.  Actualizing a business process embeds IT automation elements such as workflow into the [...]

You Know You’ve Reached Level 3 When…

 
Back in mid-December, I posted “You Know You’ve Reached Level 3 When…“   As the BSG Alliance multi-company research project that has been examining Reaching Level 3 Business-IT Maturity shifts gears from its research to its reporting phase, I want to revisit that headline.  Here are some ‘one-liners’ that are being discussed in today’s WebEx session [...]

Did You Accidently Outsource Your Enterprise Architecture?

I’ve referenced Enterprise Architecture several times in this blog, and see it (or lack thereof!) as a common “sticking point” (see, for Example, Enterprise Architecture and Level 2 Sticking Point) as it’s one of those things that does not naturally “grow” out of less mature practices (IT Architecture, for example) but takes a different twist [...]

Increasing Maturity by Reducing Complexity

There are characteristics of Level 1 and low Level 2 Business-IT Maturity that allow (cause?) the IT environment to become overly complex, and with that complexity comes high cost and low agility.  This complexity is a killer sticking point for getting to higher maturity. 
Let’s first try to understand what it is about the lower maturity [...]

From ‘Supply Constrained’ to ‘Value Constrained’ Business-IT Model

One of the difficult paradigm shifts that tends to trap IT organizations in Level 2 Business-IT Maturity is the notion that business demand must be constrained by IT supply.  Demand always exceeds supply for IT capacity, so the idea (part of the Level 1 experience) is to set a limit on IT supply, then figure [...]

IT Funding and the “Stealth Infrastructure” Trap

Another common sticking point that shows up in IT funding approaches in Level 2is the “stealth infrastructure” trap.  The logic (or illogic!) behind this is, “The business does not understand all this infrastructure stuff (or plug in your enterprise-wide IT improvement initiative du jour - e.g., SOA, Enterprise Architecture) so we will squirrel away funds [...]

Enterprise Architecture, SOA and Service Management

I think the dependencies between EA and SOA are just now really being understood.  I’ve recently been involved in a multi-company research project on the Business Implications of SOA.   Based upon that research, and what I see in the IT shops I get to work with over the years, I believe a strong EA capability and [...]

Enterprise Architecture and Level 2 Sticking Point

One of the manifestations of the mid-Level 2 sticking point referred to in an earlier post is around Enterprise Architecture (EA).  At the risk of over simplifying, way back, most IT shops had some kind of Technology Architecture (TA) capability - usually focused on selecting and enforcing standards, providing an overall schema and logic for physical [...]