The Syngenta Architecture Story

Abstract

We share the experiences of an enterprise architecture (EA) practice within a young global company, Syngenta. We will see how EA within the company has evolved and matured. We will reveal our general architecture experiences, plus insights gleaned from case studies in widely differing business areas. EA nowadays aspires to cover all aspects of the enterprise—particularly business process and information. A theme that we emphasize is that architects can no longer dictate to the organization by reason of analytical/technical superiority, but need the skills to affect strategic decisions and directions by influencing. This leads to the conclusion that effective EA is as much a social activity as a technical one, where personal skills are clearly as important as analytical. In addition, we have found that considering architecture challenges through the lens of business efficiency, growth, and innovation provides a framework for a deeper understanding of the issues, constraints, inevitable trade-offs, and potential architecture solutions to particular business problems.