Coherency Management is about gaining agility, assurance and alignment and these gains are closely linked to the maturity state of the architecture of the organization. All organizations have an architecture the question is how matured it is.
It is therefore desirable for most organizations to one way or the other to identify, mature and monitor the process. Before the identification takes place then the various characteristics of the architectures have to be dealt with.
The Architectures
In this section I will shortly deal with the architectures that are presented by Doucet et al. (Doucet et al. 2009)
The architecture that hasn’t been exposed to Enterprise Architecture and as a result of this the management or other actors in the organization are not aware of how the organization, its processes and its various layers are designed and interacts. This includes that the organizations isn’t aware of how their IT is used to support the various business processes.
The Foundation Architecture is an architecture that has been exposed to Enterprise Architecture; however this has only been applied for the IT side of the organization to bridge the gap between business processes and IT. In this state the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the IT department has a great influence on how the Coherency Management tools are applied though this a downside and that is that the rest of the organization rarely understands the idea of Enterprise Architecture.
The Extended Architecture is bit more mature in the context of applying Enterprise Architecture. In context this means that other departments in the organization have identified that Enterprise Architecture tools can be made use of to improve the ability of the organization. In relation to who is in charge for the Coherency Management implementation then it is likely that this has passed from the CIO.
The Embedded Architecture is the so far the most mature level an organization can reach by applying Enterprise Architecture tools and change management. This means that the entire organization make use of Enterprise Architecture tools identify, initiate and implement new processes. This means that the organization has enforced a framework that has to be taken into consideration when new processes have been applied.
In addition to the above mentioned architectures the Balanced Architecture (Doucet et al 2009 p. 224) can be added. This is a future state within the Coherency Management concept.
I will therefore discuss the tools that can be applied.
Why Should Architectures be Matured?
When an architecture matures then the organizations that make use of them also become more agile and better in the sense that the organization easily can implement new processes, flows, systems etc.
This means that the organization can gain value for its stakeholders if the organization apply Enterprise Architecture tools to mature its architecture.
The Tools
There are several tools that can be applied to identify and monitor the state of the organization architecture. I have chosen to make use of Barnard & Grasso (Doucet et al. 2009) that have written a chapter which deals with how Enterprise Architecture can be matured.
According to Barnard & Grasso then these factors are useful to measure:
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Enterprise Budget & Procurement Strategy.
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Strategic Governance.
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Extended Enterprise Architecture Architecture Results.
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Extended Enterprise Architecture Developments.
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Extended Architecture Program Office.
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Business Units Involvement.
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Executive Management Involvement.
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Extended Enterprise Involvement.
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Business & Technology Strategy Alignment.
The above mentioned indicators can be used to identify on what state the organization is on. If the organization is pre-dominantly in the un-mature part of the scale e.g., that the organization has an un-mature architecture. If the organization in any way has indicators that indicates that the organization is on a better level than the sublevel then the Coherency Architect should assume that the organization is maturing its architecture (perhaps implicitly).
There are methods that can be used to mature the architecture. For this the EAAM approach can made use of. The EAMM approach deals with how the Coherency Architect can measure and audit the architecture of the organization.
Control
As with all plans then it is a necessity to work with auditing and control which deals with controlling if the various goals used in the EA programs have been realized. This process is mandatory for every Enterprise Architecture project as it is for every strategic approach.
For this an Enterprise Architecture Audit Program should be established. According to Barnard & Grasso there are to forms for such a program. The first form is the light edition that consist of one to two persons who audit the EA programs in the organization. The analysis of the organization is build upon a superficial (high impact) analysis. The other is the advanced program where two to five persons go through a complete analysis of the EA program.
Sources
Gary Doucet et al., Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance (International Enterprise Architecture Institute, 2009).
Further Reading
Extended Enterprise Architecture Model (E2AMM v.2.0) (www.enterprise-architecture.info)
The Coherency Architect 