Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture

Chapter 2. Key Strategy Objectives

So far, you’ve read that a strong, effective enterprise architecture practice provides the north star, or strategic direction, to define an organization’s technology roadmap through a series of architecture decisions. It may not come as a surprise, then, that a strategy is also needed to guide and establish an effective enterprise architecture practice itself.

If you’re asking, “How do I get started?” you’re in luck, because that’s precisely the question this chapter answers. All strategies start by defining their objectives, so this chapter discusses the objectives of an effective enterprise architecture strategy. Although details of implementation may vary and will be tailored based on unique characteristics of your organization, the objectives will, I hope, resonate with you.

Overview

To share the key objectives of an effective enterprise architecture strategy, I have found that the objectives and key results (OKR) framework—which was defined in the 1970s and popularized by Google—is very helpful. What I find special about the OKR framework is that rather than just defining transparent and aspirational goals, the OKR framework includes measurement as a key characteristic.

It is measurement that is novel to architecture. Traditionally, architectural outcomes are perceived in terms of artifacts or deliverables, such as those described in Chapter 1. As a result, it is difficult to qualitatively (let alone quantitatively) tie architecture work ...