Enterprise Modernisation: from Chaos to Coherence

Enterprise modernisation is a long journey moving the enterprise from chaos to coherence. The modernisation process includes every aspect of the enterprise. Even though enterprise IT systems look only a tiny bit of an organisation in overarching enterprise, this domain by itself can be gigantic especially for the large organisations. Enterprise IT systems include business IT processes, business data, business applications, IT infrastructure, and IT service delivery. These domains can even be more complicated with the addition of geographical factors such as adding multiple countries to the equation. The good news is that these primary domains can be modernised iteratively in parallel.

Both a top-down and bottom-up approach can be applied. At the top tier business, IT processes and at the bottom tier IT infrastructure. These two domains can independently be modernised using parallel activities. However, an integrated approach is essential as there can always be dependencies from multiple angles.

Once the modernisation strategy is set by the team, Enterprise Architects refine the strategy and convert it to the architectural speak. The strategy document is a critical artifact to bring all parties and stakeholders on the same page. Then the Enterprise Architects identify the critical dependencies among these domains based on the short term, midterm and long term considerations.

By using the strategy and considering the dependencies Enterprise Architects develop a high-level roadmap to inform the sponsoring executives. This roadmap can indicate the key outcomes, timelines and a ballpark cost for the overall modernisation. These indications can be very high level as there may be many factors affecting timelines and cost.

Once the roadmap for the enterprise modernisation is set the Enterprise Architects need to make a comprehensive viability assessment considering the current state of the scoped initiatives, their indicative future state and the strategies to reach the end state. This viability assessment must include key risks, constraints, and dependencies. The viability assessment is the most informative tool an Enterprise Architect can provide to the sponsoring executives to make informed decisions.

After review and approval of the viability assessment, Enterprise Architects delve into collecting the high-level requirements of the solutions based on the domains we mentioned earlier. As dealing with the requirements of those domains can be daunting, Enterprise Architects delegate the requirements collection process with the domain and program architects, including business analysts. In this phase, the role of Enterprise Architect is to coordinate and facilitate the requirements management team which can consist of multiple architects and business analysts.

After requirements are collected and analysed at a reasonable amount, the next important activity is to prioritise the requirements based on business impact. Enterprise Architects need to develop criteria to prioritise the requirements based on factors depicted in the strategy and roadmap documents, as well as the financial and business priorities set by the sponsoring executives.

I provide a practical view on enterprise modernisation in my recent publication A Modern Enterprise Architecture Approach Empowered with Cloud, Mobility, IoT & Big Data.