Why do Architecture Maturity Assessments regularly?

Charles — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 10:12:45 +0000

What shape is your Architecture practice in?

Do you know what shape your company’s Architecture team are in health-wise? You should test your team against some form of Industry or third-party benchmark. Architecture Maturity Assessments should be like clock-work. Once a year.

These maturity assessments tend to be expensive, time consuming and get in the way of day to day business. So assessments are not done often enough to keep track of progress or regression. So practices muddle on without much realisation about what needs to improve.

What is Architecture maturity?

Based upon the premise that all Architecture Practices have some form of life-cycle. Much like a human goes though from foetus, to baby, to childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood. Starting from very immature ⇒ very mature.

Architecture practices start off being non-existent nor recognised as a capability. A few good people fighting the good fight.
Then practices become more formal and recognised but still reactive. A team where individuals each do their best to fight the good fight.
Then practices become proactive, functional and repeatable. A team which do their best according to their method to align the architecture.
Then practices move towards better integration with other structures. With better communication to more stakeholders. A team which do their best according to their method and integrations to other teams to align architecture.
Finally they become ubiquitous. They drive out business value outcomes as part of the daily function. A team whose raison d’etre is understood and their methods and business alliances make a massive difference to the efficient and effective business operation.

Measuring your Architecture maturity

So how would you like to find out where you stand once a year? In a series of 10 minute surveys by each of your Architects. For Free. And what the next best recommended steps should be, to improve this situation. You’ll also get a Radar chart like this one to show you your assessment for this year. Looks like this model below.

It’s always easier coming from a 3rd party than from within, even if you know what to do. Once an area of weakness is identified, there are more detailed health checks to get into detail if required.

Benefits of doing an assessment

It’s quick – 10 minutes of each assesee’s time.
It’s easy – Minimal questions to cover your entire architecture capability.
It’s free – Avoid expensive audits that by the sheer cost only happen once in a blue moon.
It’s impartial – Get a 3rd party impartial view of your architecture practice.
It’s based on industry standards – BAMM, TOGAF, Gartner, etc.
It’s repeatable – Because of the above it’s easy to do once a year and keep a track of progress

Want to take it further and do the free assessment?

If you are interested, read up more on this free health-check Architecture Maturity Assessment service.

References

The post Why do Architecture Maturity Assessments regularly? appeared first on Agile Enterprise Architecture.

Calculating Enterprise Technical Debt

Charles — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:37:59 +0000

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple mechanism for calculating the Money Future Value of Enterprise Technical Debt (ETD) showing a simple worked example, so that the business people can understand the financial implications of their Tactical versus Strategic technical architectural decisions.

Download

Version 0.02 can be downloaded here: Calculating Enterprise Technical Debt v0.02.pdf

The post Calculating Enterprise Technical Debt appeared first on Agile Enterprise Architecture.

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