Tactical Enterprise Architecture: Challenges to Building a Strategic Program
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is widely accepted as a strategic practice, focused on building a definition of future state and then managing a business and technology roadmap to help get there. The young EA program however, is often expected to contribute immediate benefits to the organization before an enterprise strategic vision or the long term roadmap has been defined. While engaged in building the solid foundations of an EA program, the Chief Architect will need to be sensitive to two distinctly different management expectations. The EA program must first be visionary, leading their management teams towards an integrated and enterprise view of business, information and technology architecture. Second, the program must also be flexible enough to manage tactical issues thrust upon them, and find ways to work those solutions into the longer term end-state architecture.