IT Strategy Assessment

• Quality of service criteria
• Baseline of Change – understanding the drivers of change and how they may effect the IT strategy
• Gap analysis between existing IT strategy and Business Strategic Plan
  
  • What functions currently support the plan
  • What additional functions may be required
  • Changes to scale and scope
• IT Architecture Assessment to determine:
  
  • New Business Service component requirements
  • Business Service components needing modification or updating
  • Potential performance or architectural impacts
  • Technical impact
  • Mapping of the business architecture to the IT service components – to establish the interdependency relationships

1. Project Establishment: Conduct the necessary procedures to secure enterprise-wide recognition of the project, the endorsement of corporate management, and the support and commitment of the necessary line management.
2. Business Principles, Business Goals and Business Drivers: Identify the business principles, business goals, and strategic drivers of the organization.
3. Architecture Principles: Review the principles under which the current architecture is to be developed.
4. Scope: Define what is inside and what is outside the scope of the current architecture effort. In particular, define:
   • The breadth of coverage of the enterprise
   • The level of detail to be defined
   • The specific architecture domains to be covered
   • Time horizon
   • The architectural assets to be leveraged, or considered for use, from the organization's Enterprise Architecture Continuum
   • Assets created in previous iterations of the ADM cycle within the enterprise
   • Assets available elsewhere in the industry (other frameworks, systems models, vertical industry models, etc.)
5. Constraints: Define the constraints that must be dealt with, including enterprise-wide constraints and project-specific constraints (time, schedule, resources, etc.).
6. Stakeholders and concerns, Business Requirements, and Architecture Vision: Identify the key stakeholders and their concerns and objectives, define the key business requirements to be addressed in this architecture effort, and articulate an architecture vision that will address the requirements, within the defined scope and constraints conforming with the business and architectural principles.
   • Business Scenarios are an appropriate and useful technique to discover and document business requirements, and to articulate an architectural vision that responds to those requirements.
7. Statement of Architecture Work and Approval: Based on the purpose, focus, scope, and constraints, determine which architecture domains should be developed, to what level of detail, and which architecture views should be built. Estimate the resources needed, develop a roadmap and schedule for the proposed development, and document all within the Statement of Architecture Work. Secure formal approval of the Statement of Architecture Work under the appropriate governance procedures.