Enterprise Architecture: It's All About Relationships

Computerworld - Sometimes the best way to define an original IT initiative is to invent a new word. Stratactical is the word the enterprise architects at San Mateo, Calif.-based Con-way Inc. created to describe their work.

We use it all the time, says Maja Tibbling, lead enterprise architect at the freight transportation and logistics company. Our team takes into account both the strategic and the tactical.

The enterprise architecture (EA) team at the Portland, Ore., offices of Con-way Enterprise Services has been together for two and a half years. When the company consolidated the IT operations of its freight and logistics divisions, CIO Jackie Barretta created a centralized EA group, believing that a team of 15 architects could develop a road map for Con-ways 700 IT employees.

The architecture had grown up informally and gradually in the freight division, and it was a challenge to justify a formal EA team to the companys leadership, Barretta recalls. I had to explain what it leveraged, she says.

She argued that a strong EA team would be a catalyst for business growth, with its service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach reshaping how information flowed through freight service center operations.

Yet like other EA groups, the team at Con-way has struggled at times to gain the acceptance of business units and application developers. I felt like we werent making progress for a while, Tibbling says.

Con-ways logistics group had experienced false starts with EA in the past. Some employees sensed that enterprise architects had an ivory-tower mentality. It was viewed as added cost and waste, Tibbling says.

Theory to Practice

How well EA teams and CIOs at companies such as Con-way bridge the gap between the theoretical and the practical is crucial to their survival, according to consultant Brenda Michelson, a former chief enterprise architect at L.L.Bean Inc. in Freeport, Maine.

EA teams were first created to rationalize what was going on in IT, she explains. Their initial work may have been as basic as coming up with approved product lists. But now architects take a more active role, often leading major initiatives such as SOA implementations. They are more involved in substantive things  helping project teams do their jobs, Michelson says. But theres a downside. Historically, some have been guilty of seeing the architecture as an end, as something they create and then hand off, she adds.

For instance, EA is mandated within the federal government, so EA plans are being produced  but they arent always used, Michelson says.