Clear Value Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architects share a common and frustrating problem. Almost all have difficulty communicating the value of an agency's enterprise architecture (EA) to program managers, as most business users tend to view EA as an esoteric, technical exercise.

Recognizing this problem, we developed the Clear-Value Enterprise Architecture SM (Clear-Value EA), a methodology geared to give program managers easy Web access to the information in the EA repository, thus giving them the information they need, when they need it, to make critical IT decisions.

The heart of Clear-Value EA is a fundamental shift in emphasis from building an EA repository to building the repository and ensuring non-technical business users can easily use the repository's valuable information. Comparable resources are spent between building the EA repository, and ensuring that business managers can easily access it.

A key practical result of this methodology is the "Business Users EA Portal", an easy-to-use, Web-based tool that enables program managers to query, analyze and evaluate data in the EA repository.

For example, a manager, who wants to speed up the concurrence process in his division, could query the EA repository for workflow solutions. The result might reveal other organizational units, who are already using a workflow solution, and he could use their experiences to make a better, well-informed acquisition decision. Further, he could use the experiences of these other organizations to help formulate his Business Case, Cost/Benefit Analysis and other CPIC requirements.

This business user-centric EA methodology makes it easier to sell the value of an enterprise architecture effort to an organization's key stakeholders, and thereby secure their cooperation to help build, maintain and use the EA.

Our Clear-Value EA handles a problem that continues to frustrate much larger consulting firms, namely getting business users to understand the value of the EA effort. It is an innovation that was created through the know-how of our EA team of senior IT professionals who have an average of over 17 years of experience.