Scott Ambler, IBM
The technology is there when it comes to enterprise architecture, but it’s the people issues that make or break the strategy, according to Scott W. Ambler, the practice leader of Agile development at IBM Corp. who expounded on a recent study he penned at the Enterprise Architecture Symposium in Toronto earlier this week.
“The main takeaway of that survey was the people issues are the critical ones for success factor,” Ambler told InfoExecutive. “We looked both into what was working and what wasn’t working and invariably, the execution is the critical thing: are the enterprise architects working closely with development teams? Are they working closely with the business? Are you taking a business-driven approach to enterprise architects?”
Ambler’s research also suggested that the organizations that struggled most with EA were those who created their own frameworks. “I suspect what happened in those organizations is they spent too much time on bureaucracy and paperwork as opposed to actually adding value,” Ambler surmised.
Nevertheless, there is not a one-size-fits-all EA solution for all organizations because different teams create different dynamics within enterprises. “You’ll follow a different flavour of your process, different tooling, different organizational structure and this can be frustrating for management,” Ambler added. “It’s a challenge. You need to be flexible … I like to focus on people results, not on repeatable processes or repeatable procedures. I think that’s a critical thing.”
Mulling over the idea of whether “Agile” enterprise architecture is an “oxymoron or saviour”, the topic of his keynote, Ambler didn’t have an easy answer. In his role supporting IBM’s Agile software development (its focus is to help businesses organize the context in which they’re doing agile delivery), Ambler has seen the gamut of organizations deploying EA under different environments and he does see one trend that tends to lead to successful outcomes.
