Overview
“There is no business agility without agile architecture”
Today’s leaders know that effective information management, exploitation and digital transformation are key to gaining a competitive advantage. An enterprise architecture provides strategic context for the development of digital competencies in response to the constantly changing business environment. ?
An effective enterprise architecture strikes the right balance between business transformation and continuous operational efficiency. It enables individual business units to innovate securely in pursuit of evolving business goals and a competitive advantage. Preparing for a business transformation, or major infrastructure changes, typically requires a revisit or redesign of the enterprise architecture. In this way, cloud and agile change the way solutions are developed and integrated so drastically that moving towards an agile enterprise architecture is necessary.?
An agile enterprise architecture captures principles, values and practices which are important to the organisation. These principles, values and practices should align with and support the organisation’s cloud or digital transformation strategy. A high-level view on the cloud landing zones should also be part of the enterprise architecture. Furthermore, architects will use them to design cloud platforms (landing zone architecture) and cloud solutions.?
An agile enterprise architecture should also address stakeholders’ concerns and demands regarding the expected changes that the use of cloud technology brings.?
Architecture governance becomes even more crucial, since the velocity of change in cloud with regards to application and infrastructure landscape is much higher than before the transformation. Agile architecture values and practices support business agility. The agile enterprise architecture stimulates an agile way of working whilst maintaining governance over quality and risk control.
Activities checklist
Initial:
- Defining (or refining) the organisation’s cloud principles ?
- Identifying, refine and address the requirements of stakeholders ?
- Developing an enterprise level view of the cloud landing zones?
- Securing ownership of the Enterprise Architecture within the organisation?
- Defining process and responsibilities regarding enterprise architecture in the cloud context
Recurring:
- Revisiting, and if needed, update the agile enterprise architecture?
RASCI
| cloud consultant | transformation consultant | ||
| cloud architect | responsible | cloud partners | |
| cloud security specialist | supporting | DevOps team | |
| cloud developer | business stakeholder | consulting | |
| cloud engineer | architecture | accountable | |
| cloud analyst | security | consulting | |
| product owner CCoE | finance | ||
| management | informed | procurement |