Lecture 3A - EA as a process (Method for change)

Question 1

How do you position EA according to Smits, in relation to organizational change?

Answer 1

A firm has an IS Applications portfolio, which supports or solves Emerging Business Problems because of design debt or complexity.

These problems can lead to internal drives for the Architecture Development Process. Combined with external drivers this can lead to Enterprise Architecture.

EA (with principles and a migration plan) is then the norm for both IT Project Proposals and the IT Projects Portfolio. (Proposals result in Project Portfolio).

The IT Projects Portfolio will result in the IS Application portfolio. Then the cycle can begin again.

Question 2

What can be internal drivers for EA?

Answer 2

• Complexity of IT
• High IT Cost (Decentralized IT budgets)
• Emerging Business Problems
• Poor IT flexibility

Question 3

What are external drivers for EA?

Answer 3

• Legislation
• Standardization
• Supervisory Institutions

Question 4

What are the products of the picture approach?

Answer 4

• Pictures

- Fact Sheets

Question 5

What is the focus of the picture approach?

Answer 5

The Application Portfolio and its relations to

• Process Architecture
• Information Architecture
• Organization Architecture
• IT Architecture

Question 6

What are the 5 (6) steps in the picture approach?

Answer 6

0. Establish the project, project management, senior management support.
1. Several photo shoots;
2. Review of the photos by management
3. Detailing the photos with fact sheets
   (Martin says the focus of IT architecture is on the sustainability of it)
4. Freezing the photo’s of the as is and to be situation
5. Choosing the target EA.

Question 7

What is an important question to ask yourself in the picture approach?

Answer 7

At what level in/of the firm has EA analysis been done?

Question 8

What is the ‘mapping applications/systems to business processes approach’ by PWC ?

Answer 8

A simpler approach to reduce complexity.
Excelsheet with the processes as columns and the applications/systems as rows.

• It shows which applications and how many are used per business process.
• Which applications are used by multiple processes
• Which processes use similar applications (redundancy)

Question 9

What does the ‘mapping applications/systems to business processes approach’ by PWC support?

Answer 9

Management decisions on:

• Which applications may be phased out
• Which application may be merged
• Prioritization of applications.

-> Leads to an IT project portfolio

Question 10

What is the ‘Quality of Applications Portfolio’ approach by PWC?

Answer 10

A simpler approach to reduce complexity.

• Shows Technical Quality from low to high on the x-axis
• Shows the Functional Quality from low to high on the y-axis.
• Shows the cost in terms of how big the circle is

Question 11

What does the ‘Quality of Applications Portfolio’ approach’ by PWC support?

Answer 11

Decisions on:

• Which application to improve technically
• Which applications to improve functionally
• Efficiency / cost measures
• Which applications to replace.

Question 12

How do you decide on the three EA approaches to reduce complexity?

Answer 12

• Depends on the firm (maturity)
• Depends on the design principles
• Depends on EA complexity

Question 13

How can you assess the size and complexity of software?

Answer 13

You can do a function point analysis.

Question 14

What is a function point?

Answer 14

A unit of measurement to express the amount of business functionality an information systems provides to a user.

The cost of a single unit is calculated from past projects.

• One function points requires an average 100 lines of code
• 10.000 function points require 1 million lines of programming.