Imagine if you could guarantee your business an up-to-date inventory of software and technologies - and the details necessary for IT governance. Wouldn’t it be great if the mundane parts of Enterprise Architecture could be automated, leaving more time for value-adding activities? Let’s explore how this is possible with the right tools and techniques.
In this article, you will:
To deliver more value to the organization, Gartner suggests that Enterprise Architects move from a traditional technology and compliance focus to a business outcome-driven approach. EA teams should clearly identify specific business outcomes that will be achieved through Enterprise Architecture - and build step-by-step to deliver additional outcomes.
In practice, this means talking to key stakeholders and clearly defining what questions they need answered rather than starting too broad and gathering lots of background data. If stakeholders aren’t good at communicating what they actually want, architects may need to act like detectives to clarify their meanings.
Once the outcome is defined, it’s important to try to focus on the end result and not get caught up in details. It's easy to spend too much time deciding what should be modeled, how to define various concepts, where the information will come from, and the appropriate level of detail and granularity. There is not enough time to go around - especially when processes are tedious and manually intensive.
These time-intensive tasks include:
If these tasks take too long, stakeholders become impatient and wonder when they will see results. No matter how fast or intensive an EA team works, they often see that stakeholders don’t appreciate the value they bring to the organization.
What can Enterprise Architects do to fix the problem?
One way Enterprise Architects can save time and deliver more value to a wider range of stakeholders is to automate the IT governance processes. Ardoq has a full range of features and functions in its platform that simplify IT governance.
Automating governance shortens the time it takes to gather baseline data for modeling and analysis and makes the best use of resources.
A continuous IT governance process includes four major components:
In the first of Ardoq’s new process playbooks, ‘Automating Application Ownership’, we provide a step-by-step guide on automating the collection and maintenance of mandatory and optional information needed to satisfy governance and IT quality policies.
This process helps Enterprise Architects overcome the common and time-consuming problems of manually updating application inventories and maintaining data accuracy. Automation makes it easier to spread the work of good IT governance across the organization, creating trust and improving efficiency simultaneously.
By following the steps in the playbook, Ardoq’s platform can automatically send surveys and collect data about application ownership and application inventory. This makes it easier for application owners to fulfill their responsibilities on time and with greater accuracy - benefiting the entire organization.
Some examples of information that can be collected with surveys includes:
Ardoq automatically captures the survey data and any changes are automatically reflected in models, diagrams, analysis, and Ardoq Discover dashboard reports. If application owners aren’t assigned to an application or someone doesn’t complete the necessary forms, Ardoq triggers reminders or customized messages to the relevant people.
Automating governance processes reduces tedious, manual work needed for IT governance and facilitates better, data-driven decision-making. As the quality of data increases, stakeholders can feel increasingly confident they are making valid decisions.
Automation enables organizations to:
Many key processes, in addition to the application ownership process, can be automated. Some examples include:
Automation can be incredibly empowering for Enterprise Architects, and there are many types of processes that can be automated. Our playbook focuses on application ownership specifically, but the same principles and functionality can be equally relevant to other processes, from data ownership, to risk and compliance. The flexibility of the Ardoq platform means that the only limit is your imagination.
To learn more, contact your Customer Success Manager or get in touch with us.