Operational Enterprise Architecture or ‘Be the Architect, not the Painter.’

[Doron Orbach]

There are many similarities between ordinary architects (in the usual sense: residential or commercial buildings) and painters. Both use their imagination to design ideas and need a strong sense of aesthetics and attention to detail.

However, while architects must consider the existing condition of the site, the topology, and the surrounding buildings, painters can work more freely in the realm of imagination and subjective expression. This fundamental difference in their approach allows architects to create functional and integrated structures, while painters can explore the limits of their creativity without being constrained by practical considerations. Unlike architects, painters' works don't have to meet functional requirements. Their creations are primarily intended for esthetic appreciation and don't necessarily serve a practical purpose. 

When it comes to enterprise architecture, your goal is to be the architect not the painter.  

Enterprise architects must consider the existing landscape of their organization and have a completely true and current picture of their true and current application and technology landscape to make decisions based on facts, not assumptions. Enterprise architect's decisions influence other teams:

• Development team: influenced by technology decisions and development standards.
• Operations team: Influenced by deployment models and infrastructure requirements.
• Security team: Influenced by security measures and access controls.
• Business teams: Focused on technology solutions to meet business objectives.
• Vendor and procurement teams: Aligned with technology standards and compatibility requirements.
• Budgeting and finance teams: They must address the financial implications of technology investments and maintenance costs.

To accomplish all of this, it's important that enterprise architects work as closely as possible with  the operational tools their colleagues are using. It's important to ensure that the data they are seeing is the same data their peers at the operations or development teams are seeing. It is also important that their decisions and interaction can occur in the same tools.

In other words, running on the same platform that manages the operational aspects of their IT organization can provide them with tremendous benefits to ensure data alignment and smooth collaboration.

ServiceNow Application Portfolio Management (APM) provides enterprise architects with features that enable them to do their jobs much more effectively. Some of these features include:

• Using the current data in ServiceNow CMDB and Asset Management - enables you to take the right technology decisions, manage your portfolio, ensure standards compliance, and avoid technology risk.
• Using the same data model (Common Service Data Model - CSDM), which is the standard for all ServiceNow products to help ensure  your communication with the other teams is smooth.
• Using the same platform as the other teams on IT, enabling easier collaboration, data and decision sharing with each of the teams, including managing the work using the ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management.
• Using data that is constantly updated, ensuring that outdated data is never considered when making architectural decisions.
• Leverages operational data from service management to provide better insight into the operational impact of the architecture on ongoing service delivery.

The recently released Enterprise Architecture Workspace (part of the APM product) enables enterprise architects to stay on top of their tasks, gain insights, and monitor the health of the portfolio from a single location, thus giving you the base for an operational enterprise architecture, allowing you to become the architect, not the painter, in your enterprise.  (Download the Enterprise Architecture Workspace from the ServiceNow store.)