Gartner Top 10 Enterprise Architecture Pitfalls

[Latest News Headlines]

 



I love Top 10 Lists.  They are usually a great way to distill salient information into digestible  “packages” and focus one on the important particulars of a subject.  So, when I found this is a great article from Gartner with 10 EA Pitfalls that could not be more accurate, I thought I’d share them.  The first point is, by far, a key point; you need an architect who has both the technical and people skills to pull it off.  I have mentioned that EA is where business and IT meet in a previous post and this article calls out the importance of communication, business support and governance to help make sure business and IT are in alignment.

The article provides important clarity on these points, but I thought I’d pull them out and list them here to whet your appetite:

1. The Wrong Lead Architect
2. Insufficient Stakeholder Understanding and Support
3. Not Engaging the Business People
4. Doing Only Technical Domain-Level Architecture
5. Doing Current-State EA First
6. The EA Group Does Most of the Architecting
7. Not Measuring and Not Communicating the Impact
8. Architecting the ‘Boxes’ Only
9. Not Establishing Effective EA Governance Early
10. Not Spending Enough Time on Communications

The Wrong Lead Architect: Gartner identified the single biggest EA problem as a chief architect who is an ineffective leader. He or she may understand EA well but has ineffective leadership skills that even a good organisational structure and staffing levels cannot overcome. Gartner recommends that such a lead architect be replaced by someone with strong ‘soft’ skills such as enthusiasm, communication and passion, as well as being well respected and strategically minded.

Gartner Identifies Ten Enterprise Architecture Pitfalls



More from the Enterprise Architecture at Oracle Blog ...