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Architecture Alignment

B2

Collaborate and support the development of enterprise strategy and planning. Use architecture principles and blueprints to align business needs and organizational capabilities. Define strategic guidelines for selecting capabilities for IT enablement and investment.

Improvement Planning

Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)

Representative POMs are described for Architecture Alignment at each level of maturity.

2Basic
  • Practice
    Identify questions on strategic and operational alignment that will enable informed decisions and better use of standards-based approaches.
    Outcome
    Solutions to the identified misalignments are revealed by enterprise architecture.
    Metrics
    • Survey results that identify where organization support and resistance to architecture projects lie.
    • Satisfaction ratings for the architecture function.
    • Basic counters and trends for architecture artefacts creation and usage.
    • Budgets, costs, and resource usage.
    • Aggregated project portfolio, programme, and project metrics for dash boards, and project phase and task metrics for diagnosis.
  • Practices
    • Build architectural conceptualizations that indicate current activity, both ‘as-is’ and ‘should-be’, to identify current alignment issues.
    • This should be undertaken for the business (e.g. business capabilities) and technical layers (e.g. data layer) and for any views (e.g. security) of interest.
    • Note: It may be more expedient to identify the ‘to-be’ and close the misalignment gaps with a single set of transformations.
    Outcomes
    • Gap analysis between the current actual and current intended states is enabled.
    • Technical debt reductions are achieved.
    Metrics
    • Survey results that identify where organization support and resistance to architecture projects lie.
    • Satisfaction ratings for the architecture function.
    • Basic counters and trends for architecture artefacts creation and usage.
    • Budgets, costs, and resource usage.
    • Aggregated project portfolio, programme, and project metrics for dash boards, and project phase and task metrics for diagnosis.
3Intermediate
  • Practice
    Build alignment reviews into architecture efforts and projects that impact architecture.
    Outcome
    Enterprise architecture alignment is sustained across projects and within projects.
    Metrics
    • Counts, averages, variances, and associated trends of errors and rework.
    • Variance from targets and mean.
    • Issue counts and trends (by severity and urgency).
    • Open to close metrics (e.g. time, total cost of fix).
    • Metadata enabled aggregate metrics by department, function, business unit, geospatial region, product, service, and so forth.
    • Surveys on awareness of, usability, and use of architecture artefacts and guidance.
    • Project portfolio, programme, and project life-cycle metrics.
  • Practice
    Take corrective actions where enterprise architecture divergences should not be allowed.
    Outcome
    Earlier corrective actions reduce the cost of such changes and enhance the effectiveness of these corrections.
    Metrics
    • Counts, averages, variances, and associated trends of errors and rework.
    • Variance from targets and mean.
    • Issue counts and trends (by severity and urgency).
    • Open to close metrics (e.g. time, total cost of fix).
    • Metadata enabled aggregate metrics by department, function, business unit, geospatial region, product, service, and so forth.
    • Surveys on awareness of, usability, and use of architecture artefacts and guidance.
    • Project portfolio, programme, and project life-cycle metrics.
  • Practice
    Periodically synchronize alignment between the architectural layers or at least mark out layers that are out of sync.
    Outcome
    Obsolete or incorrect artefacts in the information base will not be used as if they were synchronized aligned artefacts.
    Metrics
    • Counts, averages, variances, and associated trends of errors and rework.
    • Variance from targets and mean.
    • Issue counts and trends (by severity and urgency).
    • Open to close metrics (e.g. time, total cost of fix).
    • Metadata enabled aggregate metrics by department, function, business unit, geospatial region, product, service, and so forth.
    • Surveys on awareness of, usability, and use of architecture artefacts and guidance.
    • Project portfolio, programme, and project life-cycle metrics.
4Advanced
  • Practice
    Maintain strategic and operational alignment across the organization's functions.
    Outcome
    Strategic and operational alignment across the organization simplifies enterprise architecture.
    Metrics
    • Counts and trends of governance compliance and governance exceptions.
    • Elapsed time and trends for governance steps such as approvals cycles.
    • Counts and trends for first time fixed and count issues re-opened.
    • Pareto of missing information types that cause delays in decision-making.
    • Frequency and time in use of tool features.
    • Cost, cycle-time, and resource utilization impact of automation and architecture driven process changes.
    • Baseline measurements of business (unit) operations before an architecturally significant change implementation so that its impact can subsequently be determined more accurately.
    • Comprehensive project portfolio, programme, and project metrics.
    • Stakeholder surveys on communications, architecture engagement, and architecture artefact utility.
  • Practice
    Use architectural artefacts to share ideas and areas for alignment.
    Outcome
    Architecture enables alignment through its artefacts, and insights through its analysis.
    Metrics
    • Counts and trends of governance compliance and governance exceptions.
    • Elapsed time and trends for governance steps such as approvals cycles.
    • Counts and trends for first time fixed and count issues re-opened.
    • Pareto of missing information types that cause delays in decision-making.
    • Frequency and time in use of tool features.
    • Cost, cycle-time, and resource utilization impact of automation and architecture driven process changes.
    • Baseline measurements of business (unit) operations before an architecturally significant change implementation so that its impact can subsequently be determined more accurately.
    • Comprehensive project portfolio, programme, and project metrics.
    • Stakeholder surveys on communications, architecture engagement, and architecture artefact utility.
  • Practice
    Issue architecture guidance to help align processes, technologies, and staff.
    Outcome
    Architecture guidance reduces variance and enhances simplification and normalization of business and technology work practices, tools, and technologies.
    Metrics
    • Counts and trends of governance compliance and governance exceptions.
    • Elapsed time and trends for governance steps such as approvals cycles.
    • Counts and trends for first time fixed and count issues re-opened.
    • Pareto of missing information types that cause delays in decision-making.
    • Frequency and time in use of tool features.
    • Cost, cycle-time, and resource utilization impact of automation and architecture driven process changes.
    • Baseline measurements of business (unit) operations before an architecturally significant change implementation so that its impact can subsequently be determined more accurately.
    • Comprehensive project portfolio, programme, and project metrics.
    • Stakeholder surveys on communications, architecture engagement, and architecture artefact utility.
5Optimized
  • Practice
    Use advanced depiction and modelling techniques to enable the simplification of complex ideas.
    Outcome
    The enterprise architecture capability can reduce even the most complex concepts to rational, understandable, simplified concepts.
    Metrics
    • Pareto of architecture guidance principles explicitly used in decision-making.
    • Count of decisions adjusted by enterprise architecture governance committee.
    • % of decisions getting enterprise architecture approval without modification.
    • Cost to projects of technology debt.
    • Complexity metrics (e.g. # of decisions in process, divergent process path counts, count of tasks requiring experts/consultant level staff).
    • Satisfaction rating surveys that are value focused (i.e. how valuable is the enterprise architecture function to the stakeholders).
    • Benefits realization metrics from project portfolios, programmes, and the benefits realization function.
  • Practice
    Maintain a programme of continuous improvement for business, process, technology, and staff alignment with the vision, strategy, and operational needs of the organization across the business ecosystem.
    Outcome
    The organization is exceptionally good at enterprise architecture and leverages it for significant competitive advantage.
    Metrics
    • Pareto of architecture guidance principles explicitly used in decision-making.
    • Count of decisions adjusted by enterprise architecture governance committee.
    • % of decisions getting enterprise architecture approval without modification.
    • Cost to projects of technology debt.
    • Complexity metrics (e.g. # of decisions in process, divergent process path counts, count of tasks requiring experts/consultant level staff).
    • Satisfaction rating surveys that are value focused (i.e. how valuable is the enterprise architecture function to the stakeholders).
    • Benefits realization metrics from project portfolios, programmes, and the benefits realization function.