Tuesday, October 23, 2007 | 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

Making the Most of Your Architects

Sally Bean, Independent Consultant

Enterprise architecture is an emerging craft, rather than a fully-fledged profession. It's a real challenge to identify the best approaches for selecting, developing and deploying people with the right talents, skills and experience to tackle this new and complex discipline. Large global organizations often create a networked ecosystem of architecture teams, each one populated with a number of different types of architect, and drawing on resources outside the team as required for specific activities. Reliable connections must be forged between enterprise architecture teams and those engaged in the actual delivery of business and IT change projects and programs. In this session, Sally Bean will draw on her extensive experience with architecture groups in the public and private sector to examine the key architect roles that are required, the competencies needed to fulfill them, and ways of organizing architecture teams for maximum effectiveness.

Key Issues
• How many different types of architect do you need in your organization and how do you work out which team structure will be most effective?
• What is the expected distribution of competencies (soft and hard) and responsibilities across the different architect roles?
• What are the career development paths for architects?
• What are the characteristics of high-performing architecture teams?

Tuesday, October 23, 2007 | 3:15-4:30 PM

Greater Lawrence Family Healthcare Case Study: Integrating Business Strategy with IT from the Beginning

Michael Kimball, EA Team Leader, Greater Lawrence Family Healthcare

Dean Cleghorn, Director of Quality Management and Research, Greater Lawrence Family Healthcare

Having the support and involvement from top-level management from the very beginning of an EA project opens doors for phenomenal success. In an ideal world, strategic analysis will form the foundation for EA, which would lead to a cycle of improvement on the strategic and operational levels. Michael and Dean will describe how the EA team started working with top management in their clinical healthcare organization by doing SWOT analysis in the strategic domain to guide the rest of the EA modeling process. This approach allowed for early, immediate improvement projects to be implemented that affect the entire enterprise. They will share lessons learned as a result of their combined technical and business experience with particular note to the struggles with improvement projects, funding, and personnel availability that are indicative of both the non-profit sector and a mid-size community health center.

Key Issues
• Doing EA with a strong relationship between top management and information systems
• Using EA to stay ahead of the curve
• Fitting EA into the strategic domain
• The pros and cons of a small EA team
• Observations & methodologies used

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 | 11:15 AM-12:30 PM

The Capital Group Companies Case Study: Implementing EA at Lightspeed

David Hall, Director Shared Technology Services, The Capital Group Companies

EA programs are often characterized as long running, low value academic exercises fit only for large bureaucratic institutions. This session will describe the birth of an EA program at one of the world's largest and most successful investment management firms, a firm that eschews bureaucracy, hierarchy, and theory in favor of pragmatism and time to market. From conception through initial delivery and value add in ten months, the session will explore how to successfully engage the business, use the program itself to drive adoption of core constructs, balance strategic and tactical needs, develop successful roadmaps in the face of uncertainty, provide immediate benefit, and leave the business clambering for more.

Key Issues
• Strategic versus opportunistic approaches
• The business as partner and sponsor
• Organizing your program for success
• Eating your own cooking
• Architecting in uncertainty

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 | 2:15-3:30 PM

The Science & Art of Powerful Communication

Kellie Scott, Principal Strategist, Logical Leap, Inc.

Webster's dictionary defines communication as the sharing or exchange of information. Easier said than done. That's why we have union negotiators, ambassadors, lawyers and plenty of leadership development programs. Every book store has at least an aisle devoted to effective communication, so what makes us think that we should automatically know what to say and how to say it? Individuals are not successful based on what they know but on how they communicate what they know to influence others. To create followers we need the ability to translate ideas into words, and words into action. We also need the ability to listen with empathy, make others feel acknowledged, and disagree reasonably. This session is devoted to developing the communication skills you need to influence your peers, managers and business customers.

Key Issues
• Seeing the current reality
• Holding accountability and purpose
• Respectful confrontation
• The "Me" factor
• Breaking problematic cycles

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 | 3:45-5:00 PM

Getting There & Enjoying the Trip: Using Roadmaps to Turn EA into Results

David Baker, Partner & Chief Architect, Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, Inc.

You've recently completed an Enterprise Architecture plan and have proudly displayed all your beautiful Future State diagrams. What do you do next? How do you plan to get from your Current State to that Future State? The answer is Transition Planning, sometimes referred to as Road Mapping. Roadmaps provide a high level, prioritized approach to realizing your EA objectives. They are crucial for ensuring that both business and technology stakeholders are on board, engaged, and part of the transformational team. They are a key input into your annual budgeting and portfolio management processes. Without roadmaps, your EA diagrams might just be the most expensive wallpaper you ever purchased…

Key Issues
• Learn the process steps to create a roadmap
• How transition plans mitigate risks in your architecture plans
• Learn how a transition plan is different from an implementation plan
• Why roadmaps should not be concerned about costs or resources

Thursday, October 25, 2007 | 11:15 AM-12:30 PM

California Franchise Tax Board Case Study: A New Governance Culture

Carl E. Engel, Enterprise Architect, California Franchise Tax Board

Through many years of incremental change, the California Franchise Tax Board's IT environment evolved into "stovepipe" systems with a highly complex technical environment. It has become progressively difficult and costly to support and maintain. In order to achieve FTB's new goals the department needed a pro-active, strategic, enterprise IT approach that would address these pressing challenges. This started with the creation of enterprise business and technological governance, with a hierarchical to federated structure consisting of a Governance Council (GC) and Action committees whose members crossed the traditional organizational boundaries. Combined with a revamped Enterprise Architecture that embraced ECM, BPM, SOA and detailed architectural definition, the governance mechanism was the foundation for an IT Strategic plan linked to procurement efforts, vendor negotiations and project prioritization. This alleviated the guesswork in project work and insured progressive and beneficial Architectural advancement.

Key Issues
• Creating effective governance structures
• Motivating and promoting "Enterprise thinking"
• How to overcome cultural and communication barriers
• Corporate Strategic planning (Executive, Architectural, Legal, and Business area involvement)

Thursday, October 25, 2007 | 1:30-2:45 PM

Panel: What Does it "Really" Mean to be an Enterprise Architect

Moderator: George Paras, Managing Director, EAdirections

There are few roles more nuanced than that of enterprise architect. Practitioners must operate in both the strategic and tactical context, while addressing holistic enterprise concerns within and between the various EA portfolios, without alienating the owners of projects, initiatives and business units. They must also demonstrate value to all levels of stakeholders in the enterprise. How they do depends largely on how well they understand the tasks they must perform every day, how well they interact with the rest of the enterprise, and how well others understand their role. Join a diverse panel of EAC Faculty for a lively panel discussion where they will share their opinions and answer your questions.

Key Issues
• What, exactly, are the EA roles and who do they serve?
• What soft skills are required?
• How should we address confusion about the EA role?
• Is it possible to keep everyone happy? - striking the right balance among all perspectives