Enterprise Architecture Management and its Role in IT Governance and IT Investment Planning

Introduction

In many companies the role of architecture management amounts to nothing more than drawing up plans of the actual IT landscape and putting them at the disposal of target groups like IT management, project leaders, or IT steering committees. Sometimes there is also the role of a project- or solution architect, who designs appropriate architecture concepts for single projects. Thus, architecture management concentrates on the modelling of the actual status and, through project support, on the accompanying of change processes evolving from the business.

Yet, are there no other big opportunities for a more comprehensive version of architecture management?

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  Could the actual model not serve as the basis for a target-oriented evaluation with which weaknesses in the grown IT landscape can be identified? (s. section 5.2, Figure 8)

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  Could this as-is model not also serve a better controlling of a company´s IT investments? (s. section 5.2, Figure 9)

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  Could there be standards and guidelines for transformation processes evolving from the business which guarantee an efficient development, maintanance, and safe operations? (s. section 5.3.1)

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  Finally: is it not possible to cross-link the work of solution architects with planning tasks more tightly? (s. section 5.4)

By dealing with these questions this chapter tries to show approaches for the development of a more comprehensive enterprise architecture management