The Open Group Conference, Toronto
23rd Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference

Highlights of the Plenary, Day 1
(Monday July 20)

The Open Group’s 23rd Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference kicked off on Monday, July 20 in downtown Toronto at the Eaton Center Marriot. Industry leaders from around the world convened to share their insights on the evolving role of enterprise architecture, exchange best practices related to using TOGAF™, and examine emerging trends such as the relationship between architecture and cloud computing.

Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group kicked off the “Architecture in the Enterprise: EA & Business Strategy” plenary session with a keynote address about his organization’s use of TOGAF: “Drinking Our Own Champagne: Using TOGAF to Architect The Open Group's Systems”. Allen began his presentation with an overview of the key business drivers for embracing TOGAF and the unique challenges experienced along the way as a small organization – namely not having the resources to hire an enterprise architect or purchase the standard implementation tools. As a result of its size, Allen joked that there’s not a single individual within the organization who isn’t aware of the fact that The Open Group has standardized on TOGAF. In addition, he illustrated how The Open Group has incorporated the Operating Model from the book "Enterprise Architecture as Strategy", and how they also used OMG's UML. Indeed, Allen set the bar high for other members in the Architecture Forum to produce additional real-world TOGAF case studies.

Following the keynote, Alain Perry, Treasury Board Secretariat, Chief Information Officer Branch, Canada delivered his presentation: “Enterprise Architecture in the Government of Canada”. Alain prefaced with the collaborative nature of the Canadian Government’s EA program which spans 130 different agencies and 350,000 people. He provided a comprehensive overview of the Canadian Government’s Reference Model for enterprise architecture, which he and his team are building as the basis for EA throughout the entire country. He also explained that Canada has standardized on TOGAF 9, and has already begun to see benefits from the standard by developing a common taxonomy for enterprise architects agency-wide and among the Canadian Government's IT service consultants.

After the morning break, Jane Varnus, Enterprise Architect for Bank of Montreal and Navdeep Panaich, Enterprise Architect for Capgemini, UK presented results from The Open Group’s TOGAF 9 Survey. Jane and Navdeep conducted the survey to identify a baseline of common patterns across different Open Group member organizations that are using TOGAF 9. The majority of nearly 100 respondents represented IT consulting companies or very large enterprises, spread across 17 countries. For a summary of findings, you can view the survey report here.

Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and ZDNet Blogger moderated the closing plenary session of the day: “Architecture’s Scope Extends Beyond the Enterprise”. Panelists included: Dr. John Gotze, President of the Association of Enterprise Architects; Tim Westbrock, Managing Director, EAdirections; and Sandy Kemsley, Independent Analyst and Blogger. The panelists debated and dissected the issues related to the architect’s changing role and their influence on how IT services are used as the profession matures. Here are some highlights from the lively discussion:

• "During this recession, we’ve seen the chief executive essentially play the role of an enterprise architect."
  John Gotze
• "One of the good transformative steps I’ve seen in EA is its expansion beyond the technology. However, business architecture is nowhere near mainstream yet."
  Tim Westbrock
• "There’s a struggle between IT architects and enterprise architects around cloud computing and other IT services. If you don’t get enterprise architecture outside of IT, these problems are going to become unmanageable."
  Sandy Kemsley
• "It’s time to move on from business/IT alignment to a more coherent enterprise."
  John Gotze
• "I don’t think that the expectations for most enterprise architects are to enable business transformation. Most expectations are much more tactical and solutions-focused. This needs to change."
  Tim Westbrock
• "I don’t see the business clamoring to take over enterprise architecture anytime soon because it’s seen as primarily IT."
  Sandy Kemsley

After the lunch break, Open Group Fellow Walter Stahlecker introduced the parallel stream: “Holistic Enterprise Architecture and the Role of Business”. One of Walter's primary research observations is that architects more often than not focus inward on their distinct discipline and neglect alignment with other disciplines. He argued that the future of true business architecture is dependent upon architects to look at the bigger picture and align their efforts with the work of other enterprise architects, IT leaders, and business stakeholders within their organizations.

Next, Dr. John Gotze, International President of the Association of Enterprise Architects delivered a presentation based on the key themes and recommendations outlined in his new book: “Coherency Management and the Future of Enterprise Architecture”. John prefaced the presentation by arguing that EA is really about enabling organizations to explicitly design, measure, manage, and enhance their coherency. As the role and influence of EA grows beyond its traditional technology boundaries, John believes it has the potential to emerge as a meta-discipline providing an over-arching approach to organizational coherence. He concluded that TOGAF 9 is a major leap forward in achieving greater coherency, but that there’s still a great distance to go.

In the “EA Implementation and Business Transformation” stream, Refaat Shulaiba, CIO, Midwest Health Plan and Dorin Andreescu, Founder of Elinco SA and General Project Management Systems and Solutions co-presented a case study about enterprise architecture at Midwest Health Plan. The case study examined the healthcare organization’s unique business and IT challenges resulting from multiple uncertainties related to regulation, the size, and the nature of the business, and presented innovative ways in which these challenges were addressed. For example, the organization used a lightweight architectural approach inspired from several leading standards, including TOGAF, COBIT, IEEE 1471, ISO 12207, ISO 15288, APQC, and the Baldrige National Quality Program.

After the afternoon coffee break in the “EA Implementation and Business Transformation” stream, Paul van der Merwe, COO for Real IRM, South Africa delivered an enterprise architecture case study on business transformation, which shared the experience of the EA team at a large energy company. By understanding the various stakeholders within the company and their respective viewpoints, the team was able to generate views out of their architecture repository that enabled legitimate business transformation.

Closing out the “EA in Complex Organizations” stream was an expert panel moderated by Jason Uppal, Chief Architect at QR Systems. The panelists and audience members tackled a range of questions related to what makes an organization complex, the process of creating an enterprise architecture practice, and how to demonstrate the value of your EA projects.