Ross & Weil - Chapter 9 (Take Charge)

Question 1

What are the six steps of rethinking your foundation for execution?

Answer 1

1. Analyse your existing foundation for execution
2. Define your operating model
3. Design your EA (only the particular elements that compose the essence of your business)
4. Set priorities (Management/Project focus)
5. Design and implement an IT engagement model
6. Exploit your foundation for growth
   (Funding for training and development, align incentives, encourage and reward creativity

Question 2

What are 10 principles for creating and exploiting a foundation for execution?

Answer 2

1. Commit to the foundation
2. Initiate change from the top and remove barriers
3. Feed the core - experiment
4. Use architecture as a compass and communication tool
5. Don’t skip stages
6. Implement the foundation one project at a time
7. Don’t do it alone - outsource
8. Invest in your people
9. Reward enterprise-wide thinking
10. Empower employees with the foundation for execution.

Question 3

What is meant by 3. Feed the core - experiment ?

Answer 3

Sometimes strategic bets can not leverage an existing foundation for execution. Companies should pursue them separately from their core business.
Small experiments might discover emerging business

Question 4

Why is it important to invest in your people?

Answer 4

Automating core activities and providing useful data can release the creativity of the company’s
people. A FfE presents both an opportunity and a requirement to develop and capitalize on people’s
capabilities. Invest in IT education and training and project postimplementation reviews (critical
feedback). Leading firms link their postimplementation reviews to individual performance
assessments and incentives.

Question 5

What is meant by empower employees with the ffe?

Answer 5

A FfE is where people, systems, and processes converge to make companies more effective. Employees
should be empowered to make decisions, provide clear objectives or guidelines for their behaviour,
and give them powerful systems to guide those decisions. At the end of the day, they should find
satisfaction in their accomplishments. The promise of the FfE is that people will do more value-added
work – and the company will perform far better as a result.

Question 6

What is Enterprise Architecture in the end?

Answer 6

Not a blueprint of systems, data and technology but a business vision.

EA begins at the top, with a statement how a company operates, and results in a
foundation of IT and business process capabilities on which a company builds its competitiveness.
Establishing a FfE is a joint responsibility of business and IT executives

Question 7

Which pressures will increase the importance of having a good foundation for execution?

Answer 7

1. Customers increasingly demand high service levels at low cost;
2. Companies encounter greater technology-related risk and growing regulation
3. Companies will increasingly partner to enter new markets and create new industries
4. Vendors will increasingly provide industry-standard business processes for the same or lower cost than companies can do themselves