Three ways to create a new role for IT architecture
Andreas Dietze, Partner in the InfoCom Competence Center
IT architects have to establish themselves as expert sounding boards for the business side of the company. Andreas Dietze and Curt Cramer of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants show us how in their column.
A centrally managed IT architecture function helps to structure application and infrastructure landscapes in a way that is fit for the future. By taking a holistic view of the business requirements and ensuring end-to-end process support with the application landscape, centralized IT makes new go-to-market approaches possible – and much more besides.
For example, if the information architecture is set up in such a way that the various divisions access only one set of master data per customer, it becomes possible to cross-sell products. In addition, centrally managing the IT architecture reduces complexity in operations and the development of applications, and thus saves costs.
To achieve these benefits for the company, the IT architecture function must fulfill three tasks:
A centrally managed IT architecture function helps to structure application and infrastructure landscapes in a way that is fit for the future. By taking a holistic view of the business requirements and ensuring end-to-end process support with the application landscape, centralized IT makes new go-to-market approaches possible – and much more besides.
For example, if the information architecture is set up in such a way that the various divisions access only one set of master data per customer, it becomes possible to cross-sell products. In addition, centrally managing the IT architecture reduces complexity in operations and the development of applications, and thus saves costs.
To achieve these benefits for the company, the IT architecture function must fulfill three tasks:
- Establish governance independent of application development
- Provide tools and documentation within an architecture framework for planning the overall architecture
- Provide support services to the business divisions for IT issues
Tasks of the IT architecture function
Establishing architecture governance
The normal background to governance is that without established central IT-architecture management, developers in different divisions or projects make decisions on application architectures independently of one another. These architectures are then optimized for each specific purpose, but not for the company as a whole. So a generalized architecture governance that takes a neutral stance is needed.By prescribing company-wide architecture guidelines and clarifying questions that affect the company as a whole in an Architecture Board, individual architecture decisions can be made in consideration of the overall goals. Adherence to the guidelines can be ensured, for example, by subjecting projects with an IT implementation component to reviews at agreed points within the project. Actions agreed on by the project and the IT architecture function have to be realized by the next project milestone.
Architecture framework
Providing framework support
Framework support ensures that the architecture guidelines formulated in governance can be implemented. Based on the guidelines, the architecture function defines a framework that contains tools and documents at all architecture levels. These tools and documents substantiate the guidelines.This framework begins at the functional level, continues through the application and information levels and ends at the infrastructure level. Components of the framework at the application level are, for example, actual and target landscapes and how to move from the former to the latter. Concrete, reusable components, such as application platforms and data buses, are defined for implementing this transformation within projects. The application level also encompasses a list of the main applications in which life cycles are tracked. Typically, the artifacts of the framework are managed in a central tool.
An architecture planning process is also part of framework support. Its objective is to regularly update and maintain the framework.
Providing support services
Services form the third field of the architecture function's activities. It helps the business divisions uphold the governance criteria and use the architecture framework. After all, merely communicating architecture concepts is no guarantee that they will be implemented. To this end, the architecture function offers a range of services, from supporting concept design for divisions and projects to making central architecture resources available.
Challenges when setting up the IT architecture function
To do their jobs successfully, the people responsible for the architecture function must be accepted as experts, and have a good awareness of the challenges faced by the individual divisions. This is difficult to realize in practice, which means that the departments wind up viewing IT architecture as more of a hindrance than a help.
One example: A company group merged together various divisions over several years. During that time, architecture functions of the divisions that used to be autonomous were centralized, but the structure and focus of the new function were not adjusted to account for these changes. The business departments felt that they were not getting enough support from the central function and installed their own architects. As a result, the architects in the central function lost contact with the business side of operations. This effect was then amplified when the central function tried to counteract this loss with increased controls to gain more insight into the subprojects.
Design options of the architecture function
Structural options of the IT architecture function
A good way to break this downward spiral is to optimize the organizational structure of the architecture function. This optimization pursues three objectives:
- Establish the architecture function as a value-adding business partner
- Provide the right expertise for projects and business divisions
- Retain the autonomous governance
The optimization encompasses several aspects but we will focus on the three below:
- Interfaces between business divisions and the IT architecture function
- Shaping architecture domains and areas of responsibility
- Organization of the IT architecture experts
Interfaces between business divisions and the IT architecture function
When structuring the interfaces between business divisions and the IT architecture function, it is important to define contacts for certain architecture domains (parts of the architecture landscapes). Clearly defined Single Points of Contact (SPOCs) represent the architecture domains to the business divisions.
Business divisions want an SPOC to be someone who advises them on IT architecture matters and supports the governance process. For example, this contact defines the content of the reviews with the division and examines solutions. This helps avoid confrontations and the reviews become constructive approval meetings.
To be effective, the contact needs to be conversant with the procedures within the division. When defining the role of the SPOC, it makes a big difference whether the contacts are also responsible for architecture decisions or not. If they merely coordinate the forwarding of inquiries to other experts, the divisions soon start talking directly with these experts. This leads to the SPOCs not having the required insight and they cannot help with a view to the future or plan architectures. For this reason, they are ideally responsible both for IT architecture issues and for the regular coordination with the business division.
In the example of the group cited above, the architecture contacts met once a week with their counterparts from the business division. Here, the architecture contact regularly informed the division about upcoming project reviews, offered assistance, and in return received the news from the division's project planning.
Shaping architecture domains and areas of responsibility
The second aspect deals with how the architecture domains are set up, for which the division contacts are responsible. Ideally, the structure is based on the company's value chain. However, a setup of this kind is very rare, due to company politics, which is why it makes sense to first base the domains on the line or project organization. A line-oriented domain encompasses, for example, all finance/controlling applications. A project-oriented domain focuses on, say, business analytics across all fields of application.
Project orientation is recommended only if a company is largely project-driven or if it is in the midst of a transformation process with several programs/projects. Otherwise, it is better for the stability of the organization to align domains with the line organization. We should point out, however, that this requires coordinating cross-domain solutions on complex projects.
Organization of the IT architecture experts
The third aspect concerns how to organize the architecture experts. They can be allocated to a certain domain or be part of a pool from which teams are compiled for specific tasks in the various domains. A domain allocation means experts gain much better insight into the process, but capacity fluctuations among the domains are more difficult to offset. Where there are typically only few employees, this structure quickly forms a bottleneck.
For this reason, it makes more sense to organize the employees in a pool to which the contacts have access. In the above example, the required resources for solving project issues were coordinated with a central pool management after weekly meetings with the divisions. Other tasks of this function, particularly reviews, were planned centrally together with the pool.
In addition to the three discussed here, further aspects are to be structured when optimizing the organizational structure of an IT architecture function. These include how to maintain an independent architecture governance and the cooperation processes for the various company contexts.
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