Enterprise Architecture Maturity & Competency Development for a Succesful Digital Transformation

A Digital transformation initiative’s success extends beyond technology. It would require an enterprise wide culture change within the organisation and its people to extend its digital capability. To succeed in this journey, organisations should address its people, process and technology towards a digital savvy workforce that is aligned with the intents of EA in realizing the goals and objectives.

As depicted in the Competency Development Framework diagram, the centre focus for successful transformation lies in the competency of the Enterprise Architecture team that covers the holistic engagement to innovate and disrupt, measure and driving continuous transformation and deliver measurable outcomes.

Figure 1: Competency Development Framework

The first step is to assess the performance of its EA maturity based on the enterprise dimension factors. This will determine the appropriate action plans to be implemented to bring organisations towards a higher maturity level. The assessment further will provide recommendations that will focus on improvements, and benchmarking against relevant organisations and industry. An overall EA Assessment is also necessary to identify the current state of the digital transformation adoption which will cover the organisation that includes but not limited to Investments, Finance, HR, Governance, Risk & Compliance, IT, Legal and Secretariat, so as to develop a strategy to best execute the digital initiative and address any opportunities or gaps. The aim for this engagement is to realise the outcomes of a digitally connected enterprise from Strategy to Business to Information to Application and Infrastructure and vice versa.

The EA Maturity Assessment comprises of an assessment framework with methodology to measure the EA Maturity level using both the qualitative and quantitative assessment method as well as the actual conduct of a diagnostic survey.

Figure 2: The EA Maturity Assessment Process 

The assessment will include the digital competency to identify performance gaps and learning measures in upskilling the team competencies in the areas of business, data, application, technology and solution architecture development. To achieve this and base on the results of the assessment, appropriate digital skillsets program should then be identified based on global EA best practices from TOGAF® Architecture Skills Framework together with the IT Architecture Body of Knowledge (ITABoK®) Skillsets to upskill a practical development and achievable target for achieving a higher performance level for a digital savvy workforce.

For EA to be effective, it must have measurable KPI to deliver business values and communicates them using business outcomes to make better decisions. For example, the figure shows the outcomes of key performance metrics for performing technology rationalization with the target of 70% for rationalization decision that fit with Future State EA and 90% for stakeholder’s approval decisions.

Figure 3: EA Key Performance Metrics Example

The ability to be able to develop the right EA Maturity & Competency models will lead to a greater digital capability where it can assist organisations to identify the right element along with the right time to increase IT approaches in digital transformation initiatives. Through EA Maturity & Competency Development, the digital transformation journey will be much clearer due to the fact that the organisational needs are taken into consideration. Every organisation should consider taking this ‘health check’ to ensure the digital initiatives taken are operating efficiently.

Author: Aaron Tan Dani

President of Singapore Computer Society EA-Chapter aarontan@scs.org.sg
Founder and Chairman of Iasa Asia Pacific aarontan@iasahome.org
Chief Architect of ATD Solution aarontan@atdsolution.com

Related websites:
Join the EA activities in Singapore and learn how you can implement Digital-Business-driven EA in your organisation.
Computer Society EA-Chapter: http://www.scs.org.sg/Chapter/ea-homepage

Learn more about ITABoK (IT Architecture Body of Knowledge) skillsets and about the roles, scopes and impacts of EA Specializations.
IASA: www.iasahome.org

Acquire successful Digital Transformation adoption with ATD Enterprise Architecture consulting and training services.
ATD Solution: www.atdsolution.com