Todd Biske: Outside the Box

This is another blog on the subject of a service-based view of Enterprise Architecture. Previous posts focused on the actual service definitions (here and here) and a general view on communications, this one focuses on the actual management of those services, specifically on the notion of reporting.

In my experience, as teams try to transition to a service-based view, a key challenge is in moving from an inwardly-focused view to an outwardly-focused view. In other words, shifting to a focus on the customer. An easy way to encourage this shift is to think about your communication to the customer. If you think of examples of great service, it goes beyond the communication associated with service execution. As a simple example, think about your credit card. There are credit cards that simply allow you to make your purchases and then send you a bill. Some cards, however, send you a report every year that gives you information on how you’ve used your credit allowing you to make better financial plans. So, how can we take this same approach to the EA (or any other) service offerings?

The simple part of this is to make a commitment to communication with your customers. At a minimum, think about reporting to your direct customers and their management. In all likelihood, you’ll need to add two additional audiences to this. First, is senior management over EA. Depending on where EA sits in the organization, this could be senior IT leadership or it could be senior enterprise leadership. Second, is the group most people are used to dealing with, and that’s internal management of EA. The more complicated part of this is figuring out what to report and how frequently to report it. I hope to cover this in more detail in a future post, but for now, think about how you can add additional value to the relationship. Rather than simply reporting status of engagements, provide additional value through an analysis of activities, added information from EA research services, or some transparency into the activities occurring within Enterprise Architecture.