Page 241 - DCAP307_PLANNING_AND_MANAGING_IT_INFRASTRUCTURE

Unit 14: Enterprise Architecture

to support that initiative. Then IT develops the associated applications, data and technology Notes
infrastructure, and the process repeats itself each time another strategic initiative is defined.
Over time, the company ends up implementing separate and disconnected IT systems
without an overarching plan. Far from helping to shape the future of the company, IT
becomes the bottleneck, continually reacting to the latest strategic initiative.
Dell has overcome this tendency with its architecture-driven approach. For example, one
area where Dell identified silo-ed but well-intentioned plans was in the development and
delivery of support tools. Various product teams (e.g. notebook team, desktop team,
server team, etc.) were capturing diagnostic information for evaluation. From a customer
viewpoint, consistency in how these capabilities are delivered is very important, leading
Dell to think about its support to tools across all product lines and to use common develop/
design and support processes.
Gass believes that IT must lead the business in any type of large, transformative project. IT
is the facilitator and IT can drive accountability in the business owners and help the
various domains interlock.
A Foundation for Execution

Establishing business architecture involves capturing various “views” of the enterprise
such as the business strategy, business capabilities, business processes, knowledge, and
organization. In most EA projects, this information is used throughout the architecture
development process to:

 Identify business and IT “owners” to sponsor and participate in the architecture
review and transformation process
 Prioritize the areas in which to focus rationalization efforts

 Capture business capabilities and business process insight
 Eliminate redundancies and gaps in the applications portfolio
 Align IT initiatives with business strategies and goals
Dell has a systematic method for achieving these objectives. Every year its business
architecture team sits down with the strategy planning office to review essential capabilities
and complete a strategic plan. This plan typically focuses three to five years in the future.
Gass and her team maintain a corporate-wide map of these capabilities that depicts specific
business domains – what they call “process chevrons.” This map provides a logical model
of how Dell runs. The business architecture team looks for “capability gaps” and then
interacts with the solution architecture team, the information architecture team, and the
infrastructure team to fill those gaps. Dell’s Enterprise Architecture team maintains three-
year reference architecture for each of these domains, which they update each quarter.
Creating Business/IT Alignment

Dell prioritizes its IT investments by aligning them with the reference architecture and
identifying the capabilities with the highest return on investment. Gass and her team
enforce the technology reference models and provide an architecture review board to
govern the transformation effort. The EA team periodically assesses the degree to which
each project has realized the transition state on the way to the three-year reference
architecture.
Dell has made it clear to its managers and business process owners that they don’t “own”
an organization or that organization’s requirements. Rather, they own a capability area.
Certain assets are associated with that area, including the business architecture, business
Contd.....

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