Continuous Improvement of Digital Enterprise Architecture Strategy for the Digital Age

As organisations work to adapt to a fast-changing business environment and increasingly complex technology landscape, leaders are taking a closer look at their Enterprise Architecture (EA) strategy to ensure their IT portfolio supports strategic business objectives. A strong EA provides the foundation that enables companies to be more agile, scale new innovations quickly and securely, and ultimately deliver greater value to customers.

Improving a solid digital EA strategy can help take product development organizations to the next level by providing the technological runway they need to create seamless customer experiences and respond quickly to market needs.

However, inside many organisations, EA has not reached the level of maturity needed to deliver on those promises. One of the main problems stemming from this lack of alignment is that it limits the capacity to create efficiencies and synergies that support business goals. It can also hamper business agility by making it more difficult to create and share relevant data and insights across the organization.

To overcome these challenges, organisations need an improved digital EA strategy that can adapt to changing market demands. That requires making digital EA an ongoing and evolving part of any digital transformation initiative.

Initiating the Improved Strategy

Figure 1: Digitally Connected Enterprise

With a clear understanding of the business objectives, as well as the data, applications, and infrastructure that will help an organisation achieve its goals, technology leaders can create a better digital EA roadmap for transforming the organisation. That includes thinking through which frameworks and tools may be used to implement the new and improved digital EA strategy.

There are several EA management tools in the market that businesses can use to map all business capabilities to the strategy, as well as to the logical and physical infrastructure. Depending on an organisation’s maturity, leaders may also opt to have more informal plans and architecture mapping, but it’s worth noting that this may inhibit the speed and effectiveness of implementation.

At the same time, it is important to frame digital EA as a light tool rather than a heavy process that only delivers documentation. When creating or improving digital EA strategy, leaders should think through how EA teams will continue to add value by enabling new product development and creating new opportunities for innovation at scale.

Creating a comprehensive EA strategy is not a linear process, and it takes time and many conversations to go from an idea to full execution. The journey does not stop once the EA has been implemented, but rather is an iterative process that will change and mature over time as technology evolves and priorities shift.