What are the “ Top 10 Things Enterprise Architects Need to Know and Do” in 2023 ?

[PaulKurchina]

Asking our own “SAP ChatGPT“ the  SAP Community Enterprise Architecture Group ….Crowdsourcing from our very Human SAP Community. 

What are the “ Top 10 Things Enterprise Architects Need to Know and Do” in 2023 ?

I would love your input as to what you think are are some of the key things or impactful things SAP Customer Enterprise Architect need to do or need to know to help their corporations and even themselves as they develop in their roles as Enterprise Architects and help their organizations. 

I will be folding this crowdsourced input  into a presentation that I will be building and evolving not just thru community input but from conversations at many Enterprise Architect SAP Community Meetups over the next few months. 

Plus most importantly sharing with the Community!

As further context here is my abstract for the session that I am crowdsourcing input into: 

Abstract

Top 10 Things Enterprise Architects Need to Know and Do - SAP Community 2023 Edition

The SAP Community Network is now 20 years old and is in many ways is the “ChatGPT” for a Global Peer Group of SAP Customers”. With the ever increasing pace of not just technology but business change. The need to crowdsource and leverage the power of a Global Community has never been more important for Enterprise Architects. 

During this session you will learn 10 impactful ways Enterprise Architects that are SAP Customers can drive more value from their SAP investments today and in the future.

You will leave this session not just with actionable takeaways but how to leverage your new Enterprise Architect “ChatGPT” Assistant or “ChatEAG” - the SAP Community Enterprise Architecture Group. 

In this session we will unpack the 8 C’s of this Community and help you discover how you can tap into these to help not just your organization but you personally.

Input Request

Feel free to give me your comments and suggestions that we can share with Enterprise Architect’s at SAP Customers. 

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and ideas as would the SAP Community. 

[WhyndeKuehn]

I can't wait to see the full crowdsourced list!

From my perspective, I'd like to suggest that one thing Enterprise Architects need to do is: focus on business alignment.  That includes understanding how investments and solutions tie back to business strategy, goals, and outcomes.  We can ask the hard questions and bring the strategic enterprise business perspective to conversations. 

To support that, I think some key things Enterprise Architects need to know are: a foundational understanding of strategy and business models and most importantly business architecture.  This includes an understanding of what business architecture is and is not, how it connects to the IT architecture, and how enterprise architecture and enterprise architects can help to inform and translate strategy into a coordinated set of actions and investments across an organization — working hand-in-hand with other roles and teams.

[PaulKurchina]

Thanks for the great input as always 

[Darin-Paton]

What are key mindsets that EAs need to cultivate to be successful?

https://groups.community.sap.com/t5/enterprise-architecture-blog/enterprise-architect-mindsets/ba-p/...

[PaulKurchina]

ChatGPT says these are the “Top 10 Things Enterprise Architects Need to Know and Do in 2023”

1. Embrace a cloud-first strategy: Cloud computing has become the norm, and enterprise architects should be ready to help their organizations adopt a cloud-first strategy to leverage the benefits of scalability, cost-effectiveness, and agility.

2. Focus on data governance and privacy: With the increasing amount of data generated by organizations, enterprise architects should pay special attention to data governance and privacy, especially with new regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

3.Ensure security and compliance: With the growing number of cyber threats, enterprise architects need to ensure that their organization's data and systems are secure and compliant with relevant regulations.

4. Foster innovation: Enterprise architects can help drive innovation by exploring new technologies, evaluating their potential impact, and developing strategies to incorporate them into the organization's IT landscape.

5. Collaborate across functions: Enterprise architects should work collaboratively across different functions within their organizations, including IT, business, and finance, to ensure that technology initiatives align with overall business goals.

6. Develop a robust enterprise architecture framework: A well-defined enterprise architecture framework helps ensure that IT investments are aligned with business objectives and can help identify potential issues before they occur.

7. Implement agile methodologies: Agile methodologies can help organizations respond more quickly to changing business needs, and enterprise architects should be familiar with agile principles and practices.

8. Emphasize user experience: Enterprise architects should prioritize the user experience when designing systems and applications, which can help increase user adoption and satisfaction.

9. Develop a culture of continuous improvement: Enterprise architects can help drive a culture of continuous improvement by regularly assessing and optimizing IT processes and systems.

10. Leverage emerging technologies: Emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, and blockchain have the potential to transform organizations, and enterprise architects should stay up-to-date on these trends and evaluate their potential impact on their organization.

Thanks @Darin-Paton for asking ChatGPT and for sharing!

[former_member5350]

My recommendation for 2023 is to get their head around what we are offering as part of "SAP Business Transformation Suite" - means Signavio, Tricentis and SAP Business Transformation Center powered by SAP Cloud ALM. Powerful tools and concepts, that our SAP customers can massively benefit from if considered and applied right by Enterprise Architects! 

[chrisnaab]

Here are 3 more coming from a human being:

1. Building on Whynde's comment on aligning with business: How can this practically be done by using business architecture as a medium?

• Business capabilities are great for architecture (re)planning to connect corporate strategy and IT strategy
• Business processes are the lingua franca of business and may be more useful during execution (e.g. for continuous improvement)
• Connecting business capabilities with business processes is next level business architecture
  This helps connecting strategy with execution. You don't have to start with a blank sheet: the SAP Signavio Process Explorer contains reference architectures with connected capabilities and business processes.

2. Measure the impact of architecture decisions: with connected capabilities and processes, you can relate the impact of architecture decisions to actual business outcome. You cannot measure architecture, but you can measure business processes. Creating a path to value realization. The SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite contains tools that can be utilized for that but foremost it is about methodology, organization and governance. This needs to be owned by business and the Enterprise Architect should be incubator, enabler and coach throughout the journey.

3. Check architecture principles - first and foremost: do I have principles that help me define my architecture as a guiding light for my decisions? If I do, are they still up to date? Or do I need to update them in the light of a recent update of enterprise strategy?

[ThomasA]

Standardize, govern and influence solutions and processes.  

Formalize Architecture evaluation methodology

Integration between components of solution and organization unit domain stakeholders

Track solution components and technology roadmaps

[Amin-Hoque]

Hello

For an architect working in an SAP environment, I believe they must be aware of important End Of Life milestones e.g. for SAP ECC 6 and SAP PI/PO.  There should be plans in place for projects to replace these solutions while at the same time delivering benefits to the business by exploiting new opportunities.

Kind regards

Amin Hoque

[Harald_Enzyme]

Hi Paul, nice pitch at leanix in Frankfurt. You asked about business architecture and enterprise architecture. Take a look at TOGAF and you’ll see that Business Architecture is part of their definition of Enterprise Architecture. Hope this helps.

[PaulKurchina]

Thanks for joining 

[simonpolovina1]

Hi all. Picking up on "10. Leverage emerging technologies: Emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, and blockchain have the potential to transform organizations, and enterprise architects should stay up-to-date on these trends and evaluate their potential impact on their organization." I'd add EA Automation. Thus AI and the like can also help Enterprise Architects bring computer productivity to our ongoing human endeavour. There is already some preliminary work in this regard:

Juzoń, Z., Wikarek, J., & Sitek, P. (2023). Application of Enterprise Architecture and Artificial Neural Networks to Optimize the Production Process. Electronics, 12(9), 2015. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12092015

Baxter, M., Polovina, S., Kemp, N., Laurier, W. (2022). Underpinning Layered Enterprise Architecture Development with Formal Concept Analysis. In: Polovina, R., Polovina, S., Kemp, N. (eds) Measuring Ontologies for Value Enhancement: Aligning Computing Productivity with Human Creativity for Societal Adaptation. MOVE 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1694. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22228-3_6 (And apologies for blowing my own trumpet)

I'm sure there's more out there, so if you know of any such work then please let me know. Thanks!

[Lars_Becker]

Hey!

This is my human input :

In addition to all the concrete artifacts produced by an EA, there are two other core and abstract capabilities that need to be harnessed and taken to another level. Because in today's world, changes are usually so drastic, far-reaching and influential that these capabilities are essential for everything an EA produces.

A. Define guiding principles is key number one. They are urgently needed for communications and any other work an EA does.

B. Communication is key number two. An EA needs to stand upfront and communicate strategy, vision, mission, target, roadmap and of course guiding principles to get to the future state. It's all about the why, how and what!

[BMS]

Great discussion! Let me join. Some points I would see as relevant to get a capability mindset instead of a feature mindset so instead of applying the way it was done on new technologies/innovations, understand the essential capability delivered and adapt/change the overarching business process to consume. This mindset requires a principle to lead with the process & methodology, ensuring a stronger use of the available reference architecture content and applying it together with a methodology/framework. Finally, I think it is important to understand the operational impact in hybrid landscapes linking to a previous comment in this discussion mentioning the area of ALM, how & who is operating what. Interested in your views.