Transcript Document

Alignment and Maturity are Siblings in
Architecture Assessment
Bas van der Raadt (Capgemini)
Johan F. Hoorn (VU)
Hans van Vliet (VU)
CAiSE 2005 - Wed. June 15 - Session 2A - 14:00 to 14:30
Introduction
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Enterprise Architecture (EA) to structure and
improve complex situations
Practical problems with EA, e.g.:
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Getting organizational acceptance
Finding proper resources (human and other)
Etc.
Desire to identify these problems through an
architecture assessment
Create roadmap for improvement
Agenda
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Introduction to Alignment and Maturity
Existing architecture assessment models
Multi-dimensional architecture assessment
(MAAM)
Visualization of MAAM tool
Example of assessment questionnaire
Assessment process
Summary & conclusions
Alignment and Maturity
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Architecture alignment is the fit between:
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Architecture maturity is the ability to
organization-wide manage the development,
implementation and maintenance of
architectures on various levels:
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business and IT strategy
organizational and IT processes and structures
Business
Information
Information Systems
Infrastructure
Existing models
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Luftman’s alignment assessment:
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Gartner and METAGroup maturity models:
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Based on 6 variables: communications, competency/value,
governance, partnership, skills, and scope & architecture
5 alignment levels
Per variable 6 or 7 questions to determine level
Same structure as Luftman’s model
Comparable variables: process, governance,
communication, technology, business IT linkage (alignment)
5 maturity levels
Comparable questions to determine maturity levels
Existing models
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See either Alignment as explaining variable
for Maturity, or vice versa
Allow one-dimensional assessments
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Assign an organization an alignment or
maturity level
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Does not give sufficient insight
E.g. Human health assessment via Body Mass
Index requires two dimensions (Height and
weight)
Reaching the next level could become a goal
MAAM
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Two-dimensional (Alignment & Maturity)
Alignment en Maturity equally important
variables
6 explaining sub-variables:
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Architecture development process
Architecture governance
Organizational support
Communication via and about architecture
Architecture scope
Human and other resources
MAAM
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MAAM tool (visualization)
Business
management
Architecture
alignment
IT department
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Architecture maturity
MAAM tool (questionnaire)
Alignment
Question
1 Business strategy has a higher priority than the IT strategy
2 Senior management is only involved in developing the Business
strategy
3 Business strategy does not facilitate the IT strategy
4 Business managers don’t understand IT managers
Maturity
Question
1 The business architecture is well established
2 The IT architecture is well developed
3 The business architecture is accepted
4 People approve of the IT architecture
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0 = completely disagree, 1 = partly disagree, 2 = disagree a little, 3 = agree a little,
4 = partly agree, 5 = completely agree
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Assessment process
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Gather data within different domains using
the questionnaire
Cluster individual questionnaires and identify
groups and their differences
Discuss these differences and their causes
with involved management and architects
Identify solutions for getting ‘on the right
track’
Summary and conclusions
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MAAM
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Multi-dimensional (Alignment & Maturity)
Allows a more complete architecture assessment
that identifies the ‘direction’ in which an
organization moves
Based on existing models and improved by new
theories from preliminary work (ICSE2004)
References
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Polyphony in Architecture, Proceedings 26th
International Conference on Software
Engineering (ICSE2004), IEEE, pp 533-542
Alignment and Maturity are Siblings in
Architecture Assessment. Proceedings 17th
Conference on Advanced Information
Systems Engineering (CAiSE'05), SpringerVerlag, pp 357-371