Todd Biske: Outside the Box

In this session, Bernadette Rasmussen, Chief Enterprise Architect at Health Care Service Corporation, gave a case study discussing their efforts to establish a future-state architecture. The highlight of this session for me was the fact that a deliverable of their future state architecture was a formal communication plan, and then the actual communication activities articulated in that plan. This included large presentations for lots of people, DVDs containing an overview, development of on-line training, formal communication to senior IT leadership (who in turn had them communicate it senior leadership outside of IT), and more. I’ve had the opportunity to work on one enterprise-level effort with someone who was passionate about communication and had us develop a similar plan, and I think it was a huge contributor to the success of the effort. Developing the artifacts is one thing, but if people don’t know they exist, they won’t get used.