Embedding EAM into the project life cycle

Abstract

Developing a target enterprise architecture (EA) is necessary for the purposeful development of the organisation according to its strategic objectives and vision, but not of itself sufficient to ensure success. Realising a planned EA by means of a set of architecture-aware projects creates new challenges, such as having to translate strategic, long-term EA objectives into operational, short-term targets; additional, numerous stakeholders; the diverging objectives of the ‘planner’ and the ‘implementer’; the day-to-day management of scarce enterprise architecture management (EAM) resources; and the management of hundreds of ‘micro-decisions’ that all determine the future EA. A holistic EAM should therefore include a set of practices that structures, controls and monitors the projects that shape your EA.