Enterprise Architecture

Technology Radar for a subsidiary of a large chemical production company

rwassen — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 09:26:53 +0000

In this assignment it became clear to me in which a relatively small organization with a tremendous heritage in technology and innovation can be a great innovator for years.

When you know technology can help you to innovate and reach critical and competitive advantage in your market place but you are overwhelmed. Which technologies will really help, what would be best to start with? How do you best adopt new technologies ensuring your investments will ensure added business value?

In this example a technology radar had been setup. In this governance framework, the adoption lifecycle had been determined and documented. A very clear visualization of the actual state of the different technologies, their adoption status and their added value had been established.

As a result, the innovation agenda became a weekly discussion where there is an aligned and jointly business prioritized view to technology adoption.

The Technology Radar methodology

Software products from Monolith to Microservices enabling SaaS Service offering

rwassen — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 19:51:54 +0000

For a UK Based software company, an old monolithic a commercial software product need a more future ready Architecture. At the same time, the solution was intended to be transitioned from local on premise deployments to dedicated cloud deployments to ultimately a customer shared software as a service product offering. The transition from a traditional monolith to a Cloud capable architecture had been established with an interim state. The ultimate state required a transition to microservices based architecture. The Architecture was compromised of independent microservices, a gateway service and a service mesh in order for these services to be aware of each other.

The required capability in order to facilitate multiple logically segregated customer deployments in a commercialized SaaS offering required an architectural and surrounding services amendment. Additionally the microservices architecture intended to facilitate unique AI/ML features which should be available on specific customer requirements.

Enterprise Architecture & Architecture Framework for large chemical production company

rwassen — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 11:47:37 +0000

For one of the largest chemical production company in the world, assigned as Lead Enterprise Architect for a subsidiary focused on providing services in the entire vegetable value chain. This assignment established the target operating model documented through an Architecture Framework. The implementation of the TOM was successfully initiated resulting in a more focused business and IT alignment.

Establishing business drivers, business goals and objectives and linking them to business capabilities dramatically increased the transparency of current and desired state. Which capabilities are most strategic, what is their current and desired maturity level represent the tangible expression of ambition.

For the most strategic capabilities whit a low maturity level, it then became clear which IT or Business initiatives were required. Linking the application portfolio to the business capabilities, it became transparent which capabilities had good strategic application support and where there were too many different technologies in use.

The ability to manage these concepts in a decentralized manner ensuring these concepts are not remaining theoretical but come to live in many people’s day to day jobs, an integrated Enterprise Architecture solution had been implemented.

The reporting dashboards and reports provided great progressive insights in order for the business and IT to take discissions and come to an agreement on domain driven roadmaps and strategic projects.

IT Business Management at the fourth largest logistical service provider in the world

rwassen — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 11:44:54 +0000

In service of improved Business and IT alignment, this organization had been struggling for quite some time to ensure IT initiatives would match the business ambitions and growth opportunities. As a team member of the Enterprise Architecture discipline, initiated and managed the business capability mapping exercises. Eventually we achieved improved strategic alignment of IT initiatives with corporate strategies.

As a result, the application portfolio had been reduced with 35% focusing on core business capabilities. Data centers had been consolidated and closed down where possible as a result. Cloud adoption had been increased supporting the data center transitions as well as the application consolidation efforts.