EA learning day 4/30 - Crafting the Future: Enterprise Architects at the Crossroads of Cloud and AI

[jacobcherian]

Day 4/30 of EA learning was earlier posted by Paul Kurchina -  The Cloud & AI Frontier: Navigating Strategy, Architecture, & Migration

 

Here are my takeaways from Jason Porterfield's keynote at the NextGen SAP EA Forum. 

Spotting Top EAs:

Communication skill is one of the greatest assets an Enterprise Architect (EA) should have. What EAs do, and how they translate that into something that business partners care about, is incredibly important. The best EAs tell the best stories on how to bridge the gap between business and IT. Highly successful enterprise architects are the ones who are called in to help solve hard problems, not just the technical ones.

EA Advancement:

Leaders, while supporting various business lines at SAP, need to earn a spot on each of those senior leaders' boards of directors. You are a highly successful Enterprise Architect when they also call you in, when they've got a really hard nut to crack and they need somebody who's smart, who thinks differently!

EA Opportunity:

Tech may be an EA's superpower, but that should not be the only reason EAs are called in. When EAs earn trust with stakeholders, then they get pulled upstream, into those business strategy discussions. Enterprise Architects have a fantastic opportunity to set the business strategy because they understand everything that works to make the business run.

EA Visibility:

Enterprise Architects gain visibility outside of the IT world when they learn how to tell good stories and when they earn a seat at the leadership table.

EA Tasks:

Architecture roadmaps are meant to be living documents and should be flexible enough to pivot because business never stands still. Enterprise Architects should be aware of the reality that a transformation project never ends; it morphs into another new project. Part of an EA’s work is to embody the visionary foresight to figure out what the next wave of project work is. Enterprise Architects should provide thought leadership to the C-suite, keeping them informed about upcoming developments. Being a visionary secures a seat for EAs at the leadership table and elevates the EA team.

EA Tools:

EA Tools are evolving with time, becoming a lot smarter and more valuable than their predecessors. The brilliance of EA tools such as Signavio and LeanIX lies in their ability not only to facilitate transformation but also to effectively manage for the long term.

EA Priorities:

Value statements and outcomes should always be narrated to stakeholders. AI and Cybersecurity should be two top items that are addressed by EAs from a threat perspective.

EA Role:

There is tremendous value in the EA role for business stakeholders. Business leaders will regret if EAs are not engaged to solve business problems. EA engagement by business partners is the key to efficient services and reducing technical debt. The role of an EA becomes critical in managing all those legacy and latest technology stacks on the landscape. Analyst predictions indicate there is a scarcity for Enterprise Architects, SAP skills, and SAP Architects.

EA experience:

Time is the sole dimension through which an EA improves. A seasoned EA requires time to develop intuition through learning from past failures and experiences. Experienced EA’s consider Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) and factor them into their design. Carve out an hour a day of learning new skills to ensure EA expertise remains on the cutting edge and staying current. Look at the horizon beyond your current technology stack to embrace what’s out there.

EA Superpowers:

Enterprise Architects can take a highly complex topic, simplify it and put it in front of an executive. Showcasing a highly complex landscape to a CIO/CFO can be laid out using this talk track, “We have a highly complex landscape. After doing our analysis, everything in red goes away, everything in blue still needs some additional research, everything in black stays.” Now an EA is telling a simple story on how we can reduce current complexity and reduce cost as we transform.