State of Enterprise Architecture by Steve Else

I propose to present a State of Enterprise Architecture (EA) from the Perspective of the Covid-19 Pandemic. I will include lessons learned about the existing maturity of EA itself including the lack of understanding of its potentially outstanding role for providing better-informed decisions faster across the dynamic Architecture Landscape. Not only will I highlight its need to be able to contribute to Crisis Management, but also to Healthcare, Supply Chain and Logistics, Financial Services (including Banking and Insurance), but also to Manufacturing. I will illustrate how the low understanding among government and industry captains has led to a default to have non-architectural experts working in non-collaborative ways and failing to consider the interconnectedness at different levels of government, including globally, for enhanced collaboration, requirements gathering and agile adjustments to them, gap analysis in terms of both Capability-Based Planning and Performance Management, and the inability to bridge between healthcare mandates and economic planning in an incremental way tied to transition architectures. I will illustrate how there has been a failure for EA to be perceived as an essential value-added team player to help with integrated project planning, collaboration and innovation across different time dimensions. On a positive note, I will make recommendations for how EA can mature rapidly to step up and be a critical strategic planning, governance, and project planning partner going forward, including be explaining it in as simple a way as possible and including it in all engineering, ICT, and MBA programs, at least at the graduate levels, as well as for CxO orientations and PMO and IT Staff workshops.