Moving From Reactive To Strategic ITtem-sw.com/library/Moving from Reactive to Strategic IT.pdf ·...

Helping Business Thrive On Technology Change

December 27, 2006

Moving From Reactive To Strategic ITby Alex Cullen

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© 2006, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, WholeView 2, Technographics, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Forrester clients may make one attributed copy or slide of each figure contained herein. Additional reproduction is strictly prohibited. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to www.forrester.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected].

BEST PRAC TICES

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYIT execs are continually challenged with aligning business needs for IT capabilities with the capabilities that IT provides. Firms employ a number of different approaches to close the gap that don’t go far enough. Gaps remain between the business’s desire for more innovation and IT’s ability to deliver and between the business need for speed and the widespread perception that IT still moves too slow and is too expensive. Nobody wins if IT only strives for faster reaction time. Instead, IT must forge an understanding of what’s important for business outcomes to craft a deliverable vision for how to enable them. This business-focused enterprise architecture (BFEA) must be championed by the CIO.

TABLE OF CONTENTSReactive IT Suboptimizes Business Value

IT Can Do Better Than Wait For — And React To — The Business

Business-Focused Enterprise Architecture Exposes Opportunity

People: Reinvent How IT Works With Its Business Stakeholders

Process: Guide Discovery In An Outcome-Driven Approach

Tools: Build And Enrich An Outcome-Driven Analysis Tool kit

Knowing When You Must Adopt BFEA

RECOMMENDATIONS

Your Road To Proactive Alignment

NOTES & RESOURCESForrester interviewed CIOs, heads of IT planning and strategy, and heads of enterprise architecture across 15 end user firms. We also interviewed thought leaders from academia and management consulting firms.

Related Research Documents“Requirements For Long-Term Architecture” August 8, 2006, Best Practices

“Creating The Strategic Plan For Today’s IT” June 8, 2006, Best Practices

“Enterprise Architecture’s Role In IT-Enabled Business Innovation” May 30, 2006, Best Practices

December 27, 2006

Moving From Reactive To Strategic ITUse Business-Focused Enterprise Architecture To Make It Happenby Alex Cullenwith Gene Leganza, Craig Symons, Bobby Cameron, Laurie M. Orlov, and Bo Belanger

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http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=40106&src=40735pdf




Best Practices | Moving From Reactive To Strategic IT

© 2006, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedDecember 27, 2006

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TARGET AUDIENCE

Chief information officer, enterprise architecture professional

REACTIVE IT SUBOPTIMIZES BUSINESS VALUE

Case studies by Forrester and many other groups and publications provide selective examples where IT has made a significant impact to the market success of firms and nonprofit entities. Forrester has profiled firms where IT-based business innovation was used strategically and with razor-like precision to improve core business capabilities.1 For the vast majority of organizations, however, this impact is elusive. IT doesn’t make this strategic contribution because it too often (see Figure 1):

· Focuses solely on today’s business requests. Firms struggle with IT-business alignment, but they interpret alignment as working on the priorities defined by the business.2 While this may sound good, these priorities can be short-sighted. Why? Business demand for IT always exceeds IT’s capacity, and the IT work to address this demand always takes more time and costs more than the business would like. Knowing this, business tries to game the system, asking for narrow tactical changes to address the most urgent pain points so that it gets “something.” And IT goes along with this by scoping projects as narrowly as possible so that it delivers “something.” The result is little lasting business impact for the effort expended.

“IT focuses on the squeakiest wheel and delivers end user capabilities that aren’t substantially contributing to the firm’s broader strategic agenda.” (Diversified electronics manufacturer CIO)

Figure 1 Today’s IT Organizations Are Caught In A No-Win Alignment Circle

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.40735

Wait for business to lead IT

Push technology as a solutionto alignment

Focus on today’spriorities


© 2006, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited December 27, 2006

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· Waits for the business to identify strategic fit. Too often, IT organizations wait for a business strategy that they can align with, and they then complain about the absence of clear business needs that IT can translate into actions to address them. IT would like to be a source of innovation for the firm, but, when IT initiates an R&D program, it is too often focused on IT needs because business needs aren’t easily understood. So business execs, consumed by a variety of short-term pressures, view IT as tactical and reactive.

“What most firms do for alignment: IT has a list of things it’s working on, perhaps with some subjective connection to business objectives, and a hurried business agrees that, yes, this is the right list.” (Management consulting firm partner)

· Pushes technology as the solution without any business context. IT organizations pursue technology-based strategies such as service-oriented architecture (SOA) with the belief that by speeding up their response to business demand, they will become more strategic partners. While quick response is necessary, it does not create dialogue that uncovers where IT can be applied for the greatest strategic impact. And, technology solutions require long-term investment before benefits are realized, which IT’s business clients have little patience for when they don’t see the connection to their own agendas.

“The CTO presented SOA to the senior management team. They followed along pretty well for a while, but when he started explaining Web services, you could see they had no idea what this was supposed to mean to them.” (Architecture conference attendee)

IT CAN DO BETTER THAN WAIT FOR — AND REACT TO — THE BUSINESS

A reactive IT does not have anything to offer business peers beyond the status of projects and tracking of performance against budget and service-level objectives. But if CIOs believe that IT can be a strategic business partner, they must offer more to the business than faster response times.3 IT must:

· Focus on business outcomes, not just today’s priorities. IT must respond to today’s stated priorities; but, to be a partner, IT must add explicit focus on business outcomes. These outcomes are desired, but perhaps unstated, results that business execs care about, such as process speed or optimization, innovation, or partnering. For example, a firm in a commodity market, such as industrial valves, wants to lower costs by optimizing supply chain efficiency. These business execs recognize that the competitive landscape continually raises the bar on these outcomes; what constitutes success today will be insufficient in five years as competitors catch up. The concern that business execs have for these outcomes serves as the context for both current and long-term IT needs (see Figure 2).



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Figure 2 Business Execs Care About Outcomes

· Bring opportunities to the business. By sharpening focus on business outcomes, IT now has something more to offer to the business: an understanding of what issues executives view as most critical and opportunities for improving these outcomes using IT. By boosting IT’s focus on business outcomes, client relationship managers who work closely with business executives will provide more value to their clients, and CIOs striving for a seat at the firm’s leadership table will have a stronger argument for being there.

· Place technology in a business outcome context. IT may adopt a strategy like Digital Business Architecture to make core business systems more adaptable. Business execs will be able to relate to this strategy when it is connected to specific, high-value outcomes, such as market expansion via acquisitions or rapidly productizing innovations.4 So executives in a firm with diverse distribution channels like an electrical equipment manufacturer can see that Digital Business Architecture will enable them to more quickly integrate systems with their distribution partners. When IT R&D is reoriented around these outcomes, it too will become more relevant as outcomes are used to evaluate the potential of an innovation. IT architecture becomes more firm-specific. IT road maps also become more relevant to business, inspiring more commitment to following them.

BUSINESS-FOCUSED ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE EXPOSES OPPORTUNITY

Translating desired business outcomes into tangible opportunities is hard work. CIOs will rarely get, and can’t count on, explicit instructions. Instead, IT staff must shape and drive discussion to find the most valuable opportunities and minimize the foreground noise from today’s issues. CIOs should use an approach that Forrester calls business-focused enterprise architecture (BFEA), changing the business-IT relationship by encompassing people, process, and analysis tools (see Figure 3).


Accelerating response to opportunities or threats

Optimizing firm’s supply and value chain

Innovating products and services

Partnering to increase market impact

Airline introduces online seat selection ahead ofcompetition

Manufacturing firm achieves costs 10% lower thancompetitors through greater sourcing flexibility

Brick-and-mortar retailers compete with onlineretailers with “order online, pick up at local store” programs

Software firm creates ecosystem of partners, which helpswith product release and customer adoption

Business outcome Example



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Figure 3 BFEA Encompasses People, Process, And Analysis Tools

· People: Reinvent how IT works with its business stakeholders. Old ways of working die hard. Business execs may expect IT to operate tactically, and IT execs are used to fitting these expectations. Instead, CIOs should begin to reset business expectations and retrain business-facing IT staff.

· Process: Guide discovery in an outcome-driven approach. IT is used to asking for business requirements and building to them. Now, IT must become proficient in a new process, where the outputs are identification of strategic opportunities and IT plans that prioritize these strategic opportunities alongside today’s tactical deliverables.

· Tools: Build and enrich an outcome-driven analysis tool kit. IT and its business partners will be engaging in a new set of conversations. Guiding these conversations requires analysis tools to identify options for improving those outcomes that are developed. Because the context of each conversation will vary, IT needs a variety of analysis tools to support these different contexts.

People: Reinvent How IT Works With Its Business Stakeholders

Reinventing the IT-business relationship is necessary and must be addressed from both sides of the relationship. First, CIOs must make the case to firm management — from the CEO on down to business area executives — about potential benefits when IT suggests ways to improve business outcomes. And within the IT organization, CIOs must make the same case, addressing concerns about creating new workload and selling a vision for IT’s contribution to business success. Because


PeopleReinvent how IT works with

its business stakeholders

ProcessGuide discovery in an

outcome-driven approach

Analysis toolsBuild your outcome-driven

analysis tool kit

• Recruit business execs• Educate IT relationship managers• Adapt PMO processes• Refocus or build EA competency

• Identify key business outcomes• Analyze drivers of these outcomes• Develop concepts for improvement• Incorporate into IT planning processes

• Business capabilities uncover improvements• Business metrics focus analysis on performance improvement• Business scenarios surface future opportunities• Business principles guide execution consistency



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this new engagement model will likely evaporate without an organizational focus, the CIO must designate the owner of the process and tool kits. The CIO’s action items:

· Recruit business execs. CIOs must bring business execs into this new relationship and apprise them of unrecognized opportunities. Even if IT is willing to invest time to uncover them, CIOs must recruit these business leaders to invest time as well. CIOs must ask them to work with IT to identify the most critical outcomes, help with the analysis, listen to proposals, and, if they like what they see, champion their priority.

· Educate relationship and demand managers. Relationship and demand managers benefit the most from BFEA, but they must learn new roles. They will have to lead and facilitate the discovery process. When planning upcoming initiatives with their business counterparts, they will have to remind them of the strategic opportunities that they have already identified.

· Direct IT planning and PMO functions to adapt their processes. These functions need to make sure that they bring the strategic opportunities codeveloped with business leaders into the planning process at the right time with the right priority. Everyone must understand that this does not remove focus from current work priorities — it should result in changing IT’s upcoming agenda.

· Refocus the EA group. The BFEA process and tool kit must have an owner, a group that is the center of excellence. The prime candidate is the enterprise architecture (EA) group. Why? Because in many IT organizations, EA staff members are typically the creative problem-solvers and should have the right analysis skills. Additionally, they aren’t tied up with day-to-day operational responsibilities. But, they will likely need to change: They are too often part of the reactive mindset and work primarily with technology decisions with an IT-centric perspective. CIOs must give this group goals for their championing and support of the BFEA approach.

· No EA group? Create one for BFEA. Once analysis of business outcomes is complete, IT must design possible IT solutions to improve them. IT must deliver the best architected solutions that it can, or it will fall into the trap of creating tactical patchwork changes that have made the current IT environment so complex. CIOs should use the business outcome focus of BFEA to change the recruitment criteria for this function, adding stronger business and analysis skills and correspondingly less technology depth.5

Process: Guide Discovery In An Outcome-Driven Approach

To help CIOs and IT staffers focus effectively on business outcomes, the discovery process should ensure that they (see Figure 4):



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· Find out what business outcomes are important. CIOs should hold an open-ended discussion about the key outcomes for firm or organization success. They should pick the ones that are the most visible and critical. For example, an international construction firm’s business model may be highly dependent on bringing in specialty partnerships for projects. CIOs should ask about the desired outcomes for these partnerships and what makes them viable for the firm.

· Analyze what drives the outcome metrics. When they have identified critical business outcomes, CIOs should investigate what will positively impact these outcomes. What is the business goal for them, and what is the gap today? What metrics show how well they are performing, and what drives these metrics? Using the construction firm example, CIOs can analyze what affects the success of these project-based partnerships, such as how collaboration around designs, change items, and schedules affects project schedule or profitability.

· Develop concepts for how IT can be applied to improve these outcomes. When IT understands the drivers for an outcome, it can solve the problem of improving the outcomes by addressing the drivers — and IT is good at solving problems. For the international construction firm, IT can use the knowledge about impacts to project or profitability to focus on ways to improve project information sharing and change tracking. When IT has identified these concepts and associated outcomes, CIOs should bring them to the business leaders for their endorsement. They should then ask: If we could improve this outcome, would you be interested?

Figure 4 Business-Focused Enterprise Architecture Discovery Process


Process steps

Identify keyoutcomes

Analyze outcomedrivers

Develop & proposeconcepts

Incorporate into planning

Partneringeffectiveness:

• Project profitability• Client satisfaction

Partnershipsincrease projectmanagementoverhead:

• Communicationdelays

• Slower taskcompletion

Extend PMworkflow topartners:

• Create dashboard to improve visibility

• Measure collaborationefficiency

• Package PM offering for partners

Business sponsoredinitiative for:

PM and projectpartner dashboardand portal

Updatedarchitectures for:

Constructionproject managementarchitecture and road map

Build into “to be” architecture

Construction firm example



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· Incorporate proposals into the IT planning process. When business leaders see that IT understands their concerns and has proposals to address these concerns, the IT planning process should change. Planning will no longer work solely with long lists of tactical changes developed by business groups. Instead, IT can offer new proposals on the business’ behalf and, with their endorsement, build a portfolio that better balances tactical projects with strategic ones.6 Instead of a tell-us-your-priorities planning process, IT can ask questions like: What do we want to invest in to realize potential speed increases or savings?

· Build this business understanding into future-state architecture and road maps. IT needs road maps, such as application road maps, to coordinate and communicate plans across IT and with business areas. EA groups are often tasked with developing and maintaining these road maps, based on a “to be” architecture. But they struggle with defining a “to be” architecture that has relevance to the business. The effort to understand business outcomes and the IT opportunities to improve them provides this relevance. EA groups should use the opportunity to flesh out their business architectures and refine their “to be” states for the information and application architectures.7 The result will be an enterprise architecture that has more buy-in across the firm and more utility for IT strategy and planning.

Tools: Build And Enrich An Outcome-Driven Analysis Tool kit

BFEA depends on a set of analysis tools, which are used to uncover opportunities for IT to improve business outcomes. Business executives will talk about these outcomes in ways that are too vague for IT to work with. Using these analysis tools uncovers a technology-enabled lever that can change the business outcome. When IT understands these levers, it can scope and share possible solutions for improving them. IT needs more than one analysis tool because of the context in which the outcomes apply. For example, in a firm focused on lowering cost, the discussion needs an analysis tool that helps the firm understand cost drivers across processes. But in a firm operating in a highly dynamic market, a more valuable tool is one that captures the implications of possible market changes or trends. The BFEA tool kit includes (see Figure 5):

· Business capabilities to uncover functional improvements. Business capabilities are competencies needed by an organization to operate, such as a sales capability, a manufacturing capability, or a product development capability. Each capability includes necessary processes and activities. For example, the sales capability includes prospecting, qualifying, and order management. Business capabilities are used as analysis tools when the business outcome is focused on one or two aspects of the firm’s operations. Through dialogue with business peers, IT can capture the goals or expectations for how well the capability could be performed and the gap with current performance. Understanding the capability, goals, and gaps, forward-looking architects can identify technology-enabled ways to close the gaps (see Figure 6).



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Figure 5 Different Concerns Need Different BFEA Analysis Tools

Figure 6 Business Capabilities Uncover Improvement Opportunities


Context

Rapidly changingmarkets forcingbusiness modelchanges

Pricing pressures: Competition isincreasingly price-based

Market changes,such as customerdemographicsgetting older

Market is changingtoward moreintegrated productand informationofferings

Example

Healthcare firmincreasingly client-focused insteadof plan-focused

Industrial partsmanufacturerexpanding into worldwide markets

Gardening equipment manufacturer targeting older consumers

Insurance carrier pursuing morerelationship-oriented sales

Analysis need

How to improvespecific businessfunctions

How to improvecross-functionprocess efficiency

How to position toleverage market or environmentchanges

How to alignexecution acrossdifferent firm areas with strategicintent

Analysis tools

Businesscapabilities

Businessmetrics

Businessscenarios

Businessprinciples


Business activities

Capability Sales

Key informationsubjects

Current gaps

Prospecting, prospect qualification, product presentation, proposal andnegotiation, delivery commitment, and fulfillment

Prospect, history, customer, proposal, status, and profit

• Poor ability to determine potential customer value• Inefficient prospecting and qualification

• Augmenting prospect data with external segmentation and demographic data• Building industry peer repository to help qualify and motivate prospects

How can IT closethese gaps?

Desired business outcome: boost sales efficiency and effectiveness in building long-lasting customer relationships

Structure: Example:

IT opportunities:



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· Business metrics to focus analysis on performance. Business metrics are the core performance indicators for the firm. These might be cost metrics, such as the cost of a product, or the speed of a process, such as order-to-cash. They may also include value metrics, such as the full value of a customer relationship, or margin metrics, such as product profitability. As an analysis tool, using business metrics to understand outcome drivers makes sense when the outcome is expressed as improving measurable performance of processes. By focusing on these metrics and understanding their drivers — for example, what drives the cost of a product or slows the order-to-cash process — IT organizations can scope options to improve these drivers (see Figure 7).

· Business scenarios to prepare for future probabilities. Firms use business scenarios to bind and understand potential market or business environment conditions that they may view as opportunities or threats.8 For example, the move to the highly interactive and multimedia aspects of Web 2.0 may provide new inputs to product development or new ways of reaching potential customers, but, at the same time, it may open the door for new competitors to eat away at particular market segments. When business execs think about these market or environment impacts, IT should contribute to their thinking. IT architects can identify ways that firms can pursue opportunities or minimize threats if these scenarios occur (see Figure 8).

· Business principles to guide consistency of execution. Firms often operate with core beliefs about their operations or value proposition, which are not documented. Often, firms do not reexamine these core beliefs to see if they align with current execution. As the firm changes over time through normal evolution or mergers, these principles may become out of sync, and firms need to periodically reexamine them. For example, partnerships may be core to the firm’s value proposition, but both systems and operations may be impediments to effective partnerships. IT can play a catalytic role by leading discussion about the business principles underlying this value proposition. As these are discussed, IT can highlight gaps between current practices and these principles and expose the opportunities for change (see Figure 9).

Figure 7 Business Metrics Focus On Performance Improvement Opportunities


Metrics

Current measurements

Metric drivers

Idea-to-product: time to develop and introducenew products

• Small product enhancements: four to eight months• Major new products: 12 to 18 months

• Capturing customer feedback on product prototypes• Assessing and planning manufacturing line changes

IT opportunities:

• Virtual test drive with online feedback• Manufacturing simulation

Desired business outcome: speed up product development

Strategy: Example:

How can IT improvethese metrics?



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Figure 8 Business Scenarios Assess Future Opportunities Or Threats

Figure 9 Business Principles Guide Consistent Decisions


Opportunities

Threats

Viral marketing through peerinformation sharing

Easier comparison shoppingimpacting brand

IT opportunities: Real-time information services,which external sites canintegrate

Scenario Web 2.0 impact onSocial Computing

Increasing energy costs

• Improve online comparison shopping

• Use energy efficiency as a differentiator

Market slowdowns

• Integrate government forecasts into design and production planning

• Create the ability to model a product’s energy cost

Structure: Example 1: Example 2:

How can IT helpposition firms for theseopportunities or threats?


Principle

Rationale

Implications

We will use partnerships with firms’ productsand services to increase relationship value toour customers

Partnerships will increase the range of customer needs thatwe can address. This will improve customer retention byincreasing switching costs

• Partners should also gain from our client relationships bygetting better market insights

• Our customer service should appear to customers to be tightly integrated with our partners

IT opportunities:

• Create portal to give partners visibility to customer demand data• Develop infrastructure to manage partner input to designs

Desired business outcome: revenue growth through improved customer retention and new customers

Structure: Example:What is the gap betweenprinciple and current practices?How can IT close the gap?



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KNOWING WHEN YOU MUST ADOPT BFEA

IT organizations that believe they are performing well could view being as proactive as BFEA requires to be unnecessary: They already have all the business demand that they can handle, they are meeting their commitments, and they don’t want to create new expectations for IT that they can’t handle. But, IT organizations can’t stand still without, in some, way losing ground; there is no status quo that IT organizations can comfortably inhabit. So how do CIOs know when they have to change?

· They have mastered the basics, but haven’t changed the dynamic. A CIO’s IT organization may be a Solid Utility in terms of infrastructure and a Trusted Supplier of project work to the business. But from the perspective of a CIO’s business counterparts, he or she is an order-taker — brought into the conversation only when these business execs believe that they already know what they want.

· The business landscape is changing, and their ability to keep up is declining. Firms are responding to an increasingly dynamic business landscape with accelerating plans for change, perhaps for new products, expanding distribution networks, or more flexible supply chains. This means more change for IT to support, a longer queue of outstanding work, and an increased risk of falling further behind without a more proactive approach.

· Peers on the business side don’t see IT’s value. Peers read about what other firms are doing, and they listen to consulting and outsourcing firms that are honed into their concerns. CIOs should have a strong value proposition for their firms simply because they are closer to the business and culture, but this isn’t always apparent to these business leaders.

R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S

YOUR ROAD TO PROACTIVE ALIGNMENT

Your organization must master how it responds to today’s business needs, and it must continuously improve its capacity to do so. This is table stakes to the work of IT. IT organizations must invest in improving product delivery performance through improved project management and requirements management techniques, adopt flexible resourcing models to better handle changing demand, and invest in re-architecting their core business systems to improve their flexibility. But, while mastering today’s needs is essential, it is not sufficient — you must prepare for tomorrow by:

· Aligning IT with business outcomes, not just today’s priorities. By aligning IT with business outcomes, such as the ability to respond faster to market opportunities, IT and the business create a common target by which to direct IT investments. The IT organization will boost its business understanding, and business executives will better grasp the



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interdependent investments needed to impact these outcomes. The result? Prioritization based less on today’s problems and more on business goals.

· Proactively proposing how IT can drive better business outcomes. IT understands better than its business peers how to apply technology to business processes. Waiting for business execs to clearly describe what they want serves neither them nor IT very well. Instead, IT execs should use the analysis skills IT has to uncover opportunities and alert their business counterparts as to what these opportunities will mean to their goals.

· Not dropping the ball on today’s needs and reserving some capacity for proactive thinking. This shift toward a proactive engagement model is not an all-or-nothing proposition. IT can be both an effective responder or Trusted Supplier and a proactive partner; but it will not be proactive if it does not reserve some capacity for this because what is urgent will drive out what is important. The enterprise architecture group’s time is part of this capacity, but CIOs and relationship managers must carve out time, too.

· Using BFEA to shape your future IT agenda. Firms should not impose an agenda, which includes the business initiatives and projects with their timetables and budgets, on IT that it has little control over. But without the structured approach provided by business-focused enterprise architecture, IT will have limited ability to shape this agenda other than trying to push back. CIOs and senior IT management should instead make business-focused enterprise architecture core to their business engagement and planning.

ENDNOTES1 IT’s key and unique assets — broad knowledge of the business, awareness of technology, and the ability to

detect solution potential — are invaluable innovation-enabling capabilities for the firm. See the November 3, 2005, Best Practices “Make IT Matter For Business Innovation.”

2 In recent Forrester interviews on IT and business alignment, we asked CIOs if they believed that they were in alignment with their business peers. The results were no surprise. On a scale from one to five, only 21% ranked themselves as a five for fully aligned. With alignment still the unrealized nirvana for 79% of CIOs, these technology execs continue to have a tough slog getting business solutions funded, delivered, and fully contributing to the firm’s success. See the September 13, 2006, Trends “Business Technology: Do Business Execs Get IT?”

3 From the outside looking in, all IT organizations appear to have the same reason for being. But CIOs must understand that there is no one type of IT organization right for all enterprises and all industries. Instead, there are three clear archetypes for successful IT organizations: Solid Utilities, Trusted Suppliers, and Partner Players. Understanding which is which helps articulate IT strategy, dictate tradeoffs, and help IT achieve its goal of running more like a business. Top management expectations dictate which type is right — but overall IT maturity constrains or enables performance within each archetype. See the March 22, 2006, Trends “The Three Archetypes Of IT.”







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4 Forrester’s Digital Business Architecture lets diverse IT domains work together as one, enabling IT to deliver unified solutions to business problems that cross IT domains. Building a Digital Business Architecture means capturing business processes and policies as metadata and combining diverse trends like business process management (BPM), service-oriented architecture (SOA), unified communications, and utility computing into a coherent model. See the November 7, 2005, Forrester Big Idea “Digital Business Architecture: IT Foundation For Business Flexibility.”

5 The new IT career paths meander into and out of IT. Entrances and exits to and from business groups and ecosystem partners are not only possible but accepted and routine. These IT paths span IT sourcing, architecture, management, and innovation. IT executives must step up to reinvigorate the IT career, getting it done with the help of consortia, partners, and universities. See the August 10, 2006, Trends “Is There A Career Focus In Enterprise IT?”

6 The foundation of good IT governance is built on an active portfolio management process that enables decisions on what IT investments to approve and fund and how they should be sequenced. Equally important is a regular review of the existing portfolio to decide when ongoing investments should be accelerated, slowed, or even terminated. See the September 25, 2006, Best Practices “Five Best Practices For Portfolio Management.”

7 Business Architecture creates a vision for the future state of the business and governs development activities — particularly IT projects — to align with that vision. Information architecture helps IT address business needs by providing a framework to map and describe an enterprise’s information assets and their relationship to processes and systems. See the May 27, 2005, Best Practices “Public And Private Sector Business Architecture” , and see the September 9, 2005, Best Practices “Simplifying Information Architecture.”

8 Scenario-based planning allows requirements to be derived from probable scenarios, and by combining requirements from multiple scenarios, it can define the boundaries of needed agility. See the August 8, 2006, Best Practices “Scenarios Provide Forward-Looking EA Planning Capabilities.”












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