How to operationalize EA in support of business transformation.

According to a recent Forbes Insight/KPMG survey of over 900 executives at U.S. based firms, over half of the respondents defined transformation as “a continuous process of aligning a business model to support strategy”. The Federal Government’s Shared Services, Future-First, and Cloud-First strategies represent wide-scale transformation across the federal government. This is in line with commercial transformation priorities, too, with academia starting to catch up.
 Alignment of agency business models in support of these particular Federal strategies requires an “operational” Enterprise Architecture (EA) that can be utilized by many people involved within the planning and business model alignment process…one that can produce actionable roadmaps in 90-day increments!
Understanding the readiness of the organization to accept change, identifying the issues, and then dealing with them in the Implementation and Migration Plans is key to successful architecture transformation.According to the Open Source Group, recommended activities in an assessment of an organization's readiness to address business transformation are:

1. Determine the readiness factors that will impact the organization
2. Present the readiness factors using maturity models
3. Assess the readiness factors, including determination of readiness factor ratings
4. Assess the risks for each readiness factor and identify improvement actions to mitigate the risk
5. Work on Implementation and Migration Plan

Sample Enterprise Governance Organization model & PMO Overview

Below is the sample Governance organizational model which encompasses various functional areas as depicted in Figure :

Figure: Governance organization model

Enterprise Architecture includes sub domain architectures like business architecture, Application Architecture, Data Architecture and also Strategic Planning. 

EA Governance organization structure includes, EA development team,  Security and Risk Management team, Capital Planning team, and Quality Control teams.

Governance defines the standards and best practices while Project Management Office( PMO)  serves as the implementation arm of the Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO).  PMO coordinators serve as single points of contact to the project teams.  PMO managers/coordinators are cross-functional and serve as coaches to the PMs on tools, processes and standards.  They also interface with OCIO Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and facilitate the flow of information through a single channel.