Enterprises need the right architect

Gartner says businesses should spend more time choosing an enterprise architect

Selecting the wrong person as lead enterprise architect, and not engaging business people are two of the biggest pitfalls organisations face when trying to establish an effective enterprise architecture (EA) programme, according to Gartner.

Gartner analysts have identified the ten biggest EA pitfalls, as well as practical advice on how organisations can avoid them.

“Avoiding the pitfalls in the first place is much easier than climbing out of a hole you’ve inadvertently tumbled into,” said Scott Bittler, research vice president at Gartner. “Applying the ways to avoid these pitfalls results in achieving EA benefits faster and reduced risk of programme failure. It will also improve the credibility of IT among business leaders.”

The ten EA pitfalls include:

1. The Wrong Lead Architect

2. Insufficient Stakeholder Understanding and Support

3. Not Engaging the Business People

4. Doing Only Technical Domain-Level Architecture

5. Doing Current-State EA First

6. The EA Group Does Most of the Architecting

7. Not Measuring and Not Communicating the Impact

8. Architecting the ‘Boxes’ Only

9. Not Establishing Effective EA Governance Early

10. Not Spending Enough Time on Communications