Anatomy of Agile Enterprise

Last week, I presented an academic paper in the 5th European Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance (ECMLG 2009), in which my colleagues and I attempted to bring some order to the conceptual confusion and to position the notions of IT Governance and EA Governance with respect to the loci of IT-related decision-making in the organization.

To this end, we constructed an abstract meta-level governance structure -- Agile Governance Model (AGM) -- that distinguishes two aspects:

• Design, planning and support aspect that focuses on external effectiveness. Organizational functions of this type are forward- and outward-looking and promote flexibility, adaptability and innovation. It allows the organization to create new capabilities with long-term focus and to respond to changes in its environment. This aspect is about "doing the right things".


• Development and execution aspect that is focused on internal efficiency. Organizational functions of this type are backward- and inward-looking and promote predictability and accountability. It is about streamlining the existing operations with short-term focus and responding to predictable contingencies. This aspect is about "doing the things right".

In the paper, we argued that the management processes and control mechanisms of IT governance are inadequate for holistic governance of enterprise architecture. Whereas IT governance primarily focuses on running daily IT operations, EA is primarily focused on designing the future state of architecture in support of business. IT governance frameworks such as CobiT define policy development and good practice for IT control, but EA still calls for comparable governance measures. We viewed that there is a need for a distinct definition of EA governance that addresses the strategic, forward-looking aspects of EA, currently downplayed by IT governance.

Consequently, we positioned EA governance and IT governance as depicted in the figure below. The center of gravity in EA governance is on the planning side and at the tactical level, whereas the emphasis of IT governance is on the operational execution. In EA governance, the perspective appears to be organization-wide and attention to be directed toward external effectiveness. In contrast, the objective of IT governance would be that of internal efficiency.

While our distinction between EAG and ITG appears to be in line with some sentiments, there are many differing views on the matter. However, we found the positioning helpful in designing a more balanced governance structure that alleviates the inherent conflict between EA, whose main objective is to support business change, and IT, whose main objective is to minimize risk and ensure compliance.