Review and Design of Enterprise Architecture Documents
Overview
Our client is a large not for profit undergoing a digital transformation to take advantage of key technology.
The business needed some architectural guidance to ensure they maintained architecture governance, security and privacy.
Diaxion’s proven methodology, industry knowledge and extensive experience were used to complete this engagement.
The Challenge
Our client is a large not for profit organisation who is undergoing a digital transformation. Technology plays an increasingly key part of this transformation. They made the transition from paper to digital documents several years ago, but the advances in technology along with the needs and expectations of contributors and consumers, have meant that traditional digital documents no longer meet those needs. The organisation also wants to offer a new experience to consumers of their products. This has meant the business taking on new systems, tools and technology, especially SaaS products in a short space of time which has overwhelmed IT’s ability to absorb and identify overall implications.
Our client required help and guidance for the following areas:
- Provide business leaders with self-directed guidance that allows the business to proceed while maintaining security and privacy needs,
- Overall enterprise architecture definition and guidance for IT to help prevent projects from making decisions on the fly without considering the rest of the organisation and,
- An approach and help in defining technology and program standards. Diaxion was chosen to help define the architecture and technology targets for the
organisation in support of the digital transformation as, - The organisation did not have the skills or experience in enterprise architecture and architecture trade-offs,
- The IT organisation was stretched to capacity by the large amount of work that was defined as part of the transformation.
The engagement allowed our client to take the business architecture and identify functions/capabilities that support it from a technology standpoint and link the existing applications to the functions/capabilities. Key recommendations were made as to overlaps or extending applications beyond their expected capability.
The Solution
Diaxion approached the engagement with a structured two (2) stage methodology. The first stage covering
The assessment of the current state
Definition of IT principles to support the target state
Preparation of practical roadmap options
- Identification and scope of enterprise architecture artefacts
And the second stage covering
Production of enterprise architecture artefacts
Update and clarification of road map to reflect best option for our client
Walkthrough artefacts with key stakeholders
Diaxion performed a review of existing documentation, completed workshops with stakeholders and familiarised ourselves with the business and technology landscape. We then took the output of the discovery, used the information and our knowledge of the wider IT market and industry trends to perform an analysis both with and without our client. This analysis was able to identify gaps, issues and themes from the discovery phase and form the foundation for the delivery of architecture artefacts.
Diaxion proceeded with an options phase that produced the initial artefacts including a set of IT principles for the organisation, roadmap options for the way forward and a high-level current state capability assessment.
The Outcome
The engagement allowed our client to take the business architecture and identify functions/capabilities that support it from a technology standpoint and link the existing applications to the functions/capabilities. Key recommendations were made as to overlaps or extending applications beyond their expected capability.
