fadzai.muvuti@absa.co.za

The question of where the EA capability should reside within an organisation has been discussed at length in various forums – and by various people who are either EA professionals themselves – or have had some insight/understanding into the EA role.

There have been various opinions put forward on this topic – of which mine will join the queue. However – this awareness has not translated into an “active movement� to reposition EA within the organisation.

The majority agree that EA is an enterprise-wide capability and should span across the entire organisation. However one of the greatest challenges to this – is that EA is still very much seen as a predominantly IT function. This is largely due the fact that discipline is “fairly young� and largely misunderstood – but becoming increasingly popular nonetheless.

The profession has some very knowledgeable EAs – who can drive the purist agenda of the capability within the organisation – but these are only a subset of the EA population. The majority of EAs are people who come from either a technical or development background and gradually migrated towards adopting the EA titles. So when these people take up EA roles – their comfort zone is naturally within the IT domain – and it is within this space – that they feel most comfortable in conversing and driving change.

So perhaps we are a victim of our own circumstances – the fact that business hardly understands the EA vision. That is not to say that we should be developing EAs from some other pool (besides IT). My view is that a there needs to be a very balanced understanding and appreciation of both the business and IT angles – and because enabling end-to-end EA programs may require some understanding of IT – perhaps this background is beneficial (and this is from the point of view that most EA frameworks e.g. TOGAF, Zachmaan, Gartner, FEAF include technology domains).

The greatest hurdle to overcoming this alignment challenge – is that EA teams are in most cases – far removed from the “front line�. The Chief Enterprise Architect in most organisations will report to a CIO as opposed to reporting to the CEO/COO. Therefore the scope of understanding regarding strategic direction of the organization becomes very limited.

EAs have generally had a hard time selling the value of the capability to business – and in driving the mindset change – however this is slowly changing with increased awareness in the value-add of the EA discipline. In the interim – perhaps a “middle-way� position would work. For example - placing Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) function within business – reporting to the CEO/COO and with a “dotted “ reporting line to CIO, and then placing the Enterprise Technology Architecture function (information, security, applications, infrastructure) within IT - reporting directly to the CIO (assuming that the CIO function has a direct reporting line to CEO/COO). This then creates a dual responsibility where the EBA function will need to ensure alignment of the business agenda to the IT strategy – and will create the much needed bridge in EA between business and IT.

In the longer term though – perhaps the move to migrate the EA function directly under the mandate of the CEO/COO would be most effective. But one could also argue that ultimately – it is not the organograms and reporting lines that make the difference. It is about EAs having the mandate to span across the entire organisation and effect relevant changes - with the required level of executive sponsorship and support.

Perhaps it is a question of maturity of the EA discipline, or that of the organisation at large understanding what EAs should be doing – or fatally – even a combination of both these factors.

Nonetheless - the question still remains: what then needs to be done to turn the tide? This question has in itself - spawned yet another series of discussions e.g.: introducing EA formally within the education system in the form of degrees and/or certifications – whilst others argue that it’s good old fashioned experience that will - over time change the situation – and this has nothing to do with formal EA education.

Until we find a permanent solution to overcoming this challenge – it remains up to the active EAs in the industry to continuously drive the movement for progressive change!