I’ve long believed many large and mid-size organizations are missing an opportunity by not “engaging” in IT architecture. I confirmed it again the other day during an informal discussion with David C. Robertson, professor at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, and one of the authors of the book “Enterprise Architecture as Strategy”.

By engaging in IT architecture I mean dedicating a team of enterprise architects, who have a sound understanding of both business and IT, having  strong enterprise architecture governance with business and IT representatives, and having the willingness to make the architecture evolve by  committing to the transformation. Therefore it also means  having a clear operating model and a three to five  year vision for the architecture.

Some thoughts on how companies can move this forward:

Avoid the Big Bang. Architecture transformations should not be conducted through dedicated, large, massive projects unless this  is the sole option. Even so, it should only  be the sole option  for a small part of the architecture transformation. As I have been telling people, for any delivery that takes more than 6-9 months, try to re-size it so that it can be delivered in smaller chunks. In other words, avoid the   Big Bang and take an evolutionary  approach.

Encourage business simplification: Experience shows that a large part of the solution starts with simplification of the business aspects of the problem. . Most of the complexity in IT architecture usually lies with business complexity accumulated over years. This is another  good reason to engage the business and to get them to be part of the solution. The business will also capture lot of benefits by simplifying its activities. This can make offerings to customers easier to understand, for example, or  reduce work loads in call centers and back offices.

Think differently: When one looks closer at it, an IT architecture transformation requires quite of a mindset change from both business and IT. It requires accepting that things can be done differently that they are done today, it requires clearly identifying where current processes or way of doing things are a real competitive advantage vs. a pure commodity. And it requires accepting to go step-by-step and accept that first solutions that are not perfect.

Look for clear wins: An IT architecture transformation can pull many levers, for examples, rationalizing the application portfolio or deploying a new integration backbone, or consolidating product and customer databases. Taking an evolutionary approach, companies can integrate small parts of IT achitecture transformation in most of their projects.

Make it pay: Experience also shows that to ease the pain and ensure the completion of IT architecture transformations, they must self finance themselves as much as possible.