Blog 1 of 4: Enterprise Architecture Optimises Business Design

In the first of four blogs, I’ll share why architecture is so important. If you’re a manager, it’ll help you to consider whether your organisation’s architecture could help you implement controlled change towards your optimal business design. For fellow architects, it’s an interesting story to use in your own professional environment.

My name is Victor Akkersdijk, principal business consultant at Novius, a company of Royal HaskoningDHV. To me, enterprise architecture is about connection. It’s connecting all kinds of people – from systems, process, and product people to customers and partners – and figuring out how to align all those perspectives and interests around the same strategic organisational goal. That’s my passion, and I achieve it using the Novius Architecture Method.

Enterprise architecture: answering the ‘why’

Managers are always redesigning their organisations. They have to – because today's successful organisations may suddenly become irrelevant tomorrow. Customers are more demanding, compliance with laws and regulations is increasingly challenging, and disruptive technological innovations follow each other in quick succession.

As a result, organisations are faced with a huge range of change tasks. They’re developing innovative new products, exploring new markets at home and abroad, making far-reaching adjustments to satisfy new regulations, introducing efficient new work processes, and co-operating with new partners in new ways.

In short, companies are constantly on the move. The pace of change is high, and the ones who are successful are the ones who can adapt.
To make these complex, interrelated changes successfully, you need to make agreements about the situation you want to achieve. If you express these agreements in the form of principles and designs, that’s enterprise architecture.

Architecture brings change with control

Enterprise architecture sets the broad parameters for the change you want to see, but gives flexibility over how you achieve it.

You could compare it to a city’s zoning plan. Well thought-out zoning results in a high-quality city which distributes the limited amount of space optimally across functions like living, working, recreation, traffic, and the environment. It also takes account of expected changes such as population growth.

Like a zoning plan, enterprise architecture only provides the broad outlines, and leaves sufficient space to respond quickly to developments in your environment. That’s important, because flexibility has become a significant competitive factor; organisations that have honed their capacity for change will be the survivors of tomorrow.

In enterprise architecture, you agree on the business structure you want, and which will help realise your strategic objectives. We record these agreements as architectural principles, which architects can use to steer your organisation towards that target. So in a complex environment, enterprise architecture helps you achieve controlled change.

Architects see the bigger picture

When an enterprise architect looks at an organisation in its environment, we need to combine various perspectives so we can bring coherence to the design.

This means unifying specialist business disciplines like marketing, service, sales, product development, process design, personnel policy, control, information management, technology, asset management and quality assurance, among others. Where the business has been divided, we glue it back together to create a single picture. In this way, enterprise architecture reduces complexity.

Looking at your business organisation in this integral, holistic manner can reveal possibilities for strategic cooperation. A coherent common vision brings the potential to make changes concrete and thus to change in a controlled way.

A target architecture that supports strategic objectives can also be used to manage projects. For new projects, an integral scope is agreed in advance. Architecture makes the impact clear, so it’s easier to compare scenarios and potential solutions.

In the coming blogs in this series, I will share more about the added value that enterprise architecture can have for an organisation. I’ll describe how Novius has successfully applied enterprise architecture within companies for years. And I’ll reveal how you can use architecture to manage complex changes.

I’ll also explain how to organise the architecture function itself – including the skills that, in my view, architects should ideally have.

Next: Steering with enterprise architecture

We’ve discussed the existential question “Why enterprise architecture?” – in the next blog in this series, I will answer the “How?”

I will start with our vision for using architecture to steer your organisation. I’ll also discuss how you can make practical use of market standards, applied craftsmanship, and trusted advisors.

Would you like to speak to one of our experts or find out what you could do as a business consultant at Novius and Royal HaskoningDHV? We'd love to hear from you!