Enterprise architecture (EA) can potentially promote a common business vision within your organization, provide guidance to improve both business and IT decision making, and improve IT efficiencies. Unfortunately many EA teams struggle to provide these benefits, often because they are perceived as ivory tower or being too difficult to work with. The adoption of disciplined agile and lean strategies that are based on collaboration, enablement, and streamlining the flow of work are the keys to EA success. Disciplined strategies that produce light-weight, yet still sufficient, artifacts are the key to your success. This presentation explores both the success factors and failure factors surrounding EA, pragmatic strategies for a lean/agile approach to EA, and how EA is supported and enhanced by the Disciplined Agile framework. This isn’t your grandfather’s EA strategy.

1. Scott W. Ambler
Disciplined Agile Fellow
scott [at] scottambler.com
@scottwambler
Agile Enterprise Architecture:
Disciplined and Pragmatic Strategies

2. Scott W. Ambler
• Pioneered Agile Modeling and Agile Database
techniques in the early 2000s
• Co-creator of the Disciplined Agile Delivery
(DAD) framework
• Executive Transformation Coach
• scott [at] scottambler.com
• @scottwambler
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
Helps IT departments around the world become awesome
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4. Four Important Questions
What is enterprise architecture?
What challenges do you face with enterprise
architecture?
How does Disciplined Agile address architecture?
How does Disciplined Agile address enterprise
architecture?
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5. What is Enterprise
Architecture?
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6. Potential Enterprise Architecture Activities
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Business-Oriented Activities
• Enable long term planning at the portfolio level
• Enable business agility
• Describe the current and future state of the business
• Align business and IT
• Guide the organization on a transformation journey
IT-Oriented Activities
• Describe the current and future state of technology
• Support IT procurement
• Control IT complexity through management of IT as an asset
Development-Oriented Activities
• Coach development teams in architecture activities
• Govern architecture activities of development teams
• Provide guidance to development teams

7. Overcoming
Challenges
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8. Potential Challenges Faced by Enterprise Architects
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Business-Oriented Challenges
• Business complexity
• Business stakeholders who don’t understand how they utilize
IT assets
• Business stakeholders who are unwilling to work with IT
IT-Oriented Challenges
• Technology changes
• Legacy systems and data sources on disparate platforms
• Operations staff who don’t understand the dependencies
between systems
Development Team Oriented Challenges
• The Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome
• Immature software engineering
• Development teams that don’t understand which systems their
solutions (should) interact with
• Developers who don’t understand which frameworks to work
with or guidelines to follow

9. Potential Failure Point: Misaligned Perspectives
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High-level,
hands off
Detailed,
hands-on
“Ivory tower” advice
“Lost in the weeds”
What view point does
the EA team take?
Solution: Enterprise architects must have a broad
understanding of the business and technology while still
retaining a grasp of the details “on the ground”.

10. Potential Failure Point: Misaligned Governance
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Rigorous
Laissez-faire
Little flexibility or
adaptability
Little commonality or reuse
How strict is the
enforcement of rules?
Solution: Enterprise architects must provide coherent,
flexible guidance and be prepared to coach and even
lead teams in its application.

11. Potential Failure Point: Misaligned Strategy
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Long term
Short term
Teams disconnect from the
vision
Organization lurches from
crisis to crisis
What is the time
horizon of strategic
plans?
Solution: Enterprise architects must develop and
communicate a long term vision while providing short
term value to their stakeholders.

12. Potential Failure Point: Misaligned Transformations
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Quick
Slow
Constant churn
Constantly growing backlog
of work
What is the speed of
change of business
models, processes,
and IT systems?
Solution: Enterprise architects must find a sustainable
pace of change that is just at the “edge of chaos”.

13. Disciplined Agile and
Architecture

14. Architecture Owner
• Guides the creation and evolution of the solution’s
architecture
• Mentors and coaches team members in architecture
practices and issues
• Understands the architectural direction and standards
of your organization and ensures that the team
adheres to them
• Ensures the system will be easy to support by
encouraging appropriate design and refactoring
• Ensures that the system is integrated and tested
frequently
• Has the final decision regarding technical decisions,
but doesn’t dictate them
• Leads the initial architecture envisioning effort
• Works closely with enterprise architecture team (if one
exists)
• Responsible for technical risk mitigation
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15. Some “Radical” Architecture and Design Ideas
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Defer
commitment
Light weight
modeling
Reduce the
feedback cycle
Model high
level ideas
Specify details
as tests
Multiple
views
Prove it with
code
Keep it
simple

16. Disciplined Agile and Continuous Architecture
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Initial Architecture
Envisioning
Stakeholder
Vision
Architecture Owner
facilitates
architecture
sessions
Spikes
Architecture
Handbook
Analysis of incoming
requests from production
Look-ahead
modeling
Prove architecture early
with working code
Spikes
Transition

17. Disciplined Agile and Continuous Design
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Stakeholder
Vision
Test-Driven
Development (TDD)
Spikes
Consider design issues for incoming
requests from production
Look-ahead
modeling
Spikes
Look-ahead
modeling
Explore design during
iteration planning
Mob
programming
Transition

18. Disciplined Agile
and Enterprise
Architecture

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20. Principles for Performing Enterprise Architecture
Agilely
1. Evolutionary collaboration over blueprinting
2. Communication over perfection
3. Active stakeholder participation
4. Enterprise architects are active participants on
development teams
5. Enablement over inspection
6. High-level models
7. Capture details with working code
8. Lean guidance and rules, not bureaucratic
procedures
9. Have a dedicated team of experienced, enterprise
architects
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21. Collaboration Strategies for Enterprise Architects
• Work closely with stakeholders
• Be an active member of a delivery team
• Enterprise 2.0 strategies
• Support delivery teams via a Kanban approach
• Provide working examples of candidate
architectures
• Provide high-level models
• Provide detailed models
• Provide white papers
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Most
Effective
Least
Effective

22. Agile EA: High-Level Process
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23. Enterprise IT Team Example:
The Architecture Ownership (AO) Team
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• Responsible for
developing the
architecture/technology
roadmap for your
organization
• Delivery teams will
determine who the
architecture owner (AO)
is, and that person
becomes part of the AO
team
• The AO team meets
regularly to evolve the
roadmap based on the
hands-on learnings from
the AOs
• Often called the
enterprise architecture
team

24. Principles for Capturing Enterprise Architecture In
An Agile Manner?
• Organizations are complex systems
• Complex systems cannot be managed at a fine
grained level, but only at a meta level
(management by rules)
• Documentation for complex systems should be
coarse (high level)
• Describe how things work in principle
• Predictions should be fuzzy and described as
ranged probabilities
• It is more important to strengthen a system’s
resiliency than it is to document
• Accept some disorder and ambiguity
• Working examples are more valuable than
documents
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29. Top 7 Enterprise Architecture Success Factors
1. Active involvement of business leaders
2. Active involvement of IT leaders
3. Enterprise architects are active participants on project teams
4. Enterprise architects are trusted advisors of the business
5. Flexible enterprise architects
6. Having a business case for EA efforts
7. Continuous improvement/evolution of EA artifacts
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Source: Dr. Dobb’s January 2010 State of the IT Union Survey

30. Top 7 Enterprise Architecture Failure Factors
1. Insufficient time provided
2. Project teams didn't take advantage of the EA
3. Too difficult to measure benefits
4. Enterprise architects perceived as "ivory tower“
5. Development teams couldn't wait for enterprise architects
6. No perceived benefit of EA program
7. No executive endorsement
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Source: Dr. Dobb’s January 2010 State of the IT Union Survey

31. The Prime Directive
for Enterprise Architecture Success
Deliver real and visible value
to your organization
in the short, medium, and long term
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32. Thank You!
scott[at] scottambler.com
@scottwambler
AgileModeling.com
AgileData.org
Ambysoft.com
DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org
DisciplinedAgileDelivery.com
ScottAmbler.com
Disciplined Agile Delivery
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33. Disciplined Agile Delivery
(DAD) is a process decision
framework
The key characteristics of DAD:
– People-first
– Goal-driven
– Hybrid agile
– Learning-oriented
– Full delivery lifecycle
– Solution focused
– Risk-value lifecycle
– Enterprise aware
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34. Shuhari and Disciplined Agile Certification
At the shu stage you are beginning to
learn the techniques and philosophies of
disciplined agile development. Your
goal is to build a strong foundation from
which to build upon.
At the ha stage you reflect upon and
question why disciplined agile strategies
work, seeking to understand the range
of strategies available to you and
when they are best applied.
At the ri stage you seek to extend and
improve upon disciplined agile
techniques, sharing your learnings with
others.
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35. Would You Like This Presented
to Your Organization?
Contact us at ScottAmbler.com
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36. Scott Ambler + Associates is the thought leader behind the Disciplined
Agile Delivery (DAD) framework and its application. We are a boutique
IT management consulting firm that advises organizations to be more
effective applying disciplined agile and lean processes within the
context of your business.
Our website is ScottAmbler.com
We can help
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