Smart Enterprise Architecture
We provide an IT vision with supporting enterprise IT architecture building blocks to enable your business strategy and architecture
Technology has become a key enabler in all organisations and it often provides a competitive advantage. Your organisation should therefore have an IT vision of how technology will complement your organisation and assist future differentiation. This should be based on a strategic scenario plan of the IT in your organisation, in the future.
Our Smart Enterprise Architecture approach is used to work with IT departments assisting them to create an agile IT vision and supporting IT Strategy. We can also advise and assist the organisation with technology, product selection and managing their application and product portfolios. This has led to cost savings for many of our clients.
Create an agile IT vision
Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are expected to deliver cost effective IT services to their organisations. This is a challenging responsibility in an environment of constant change and disruption, caused by new technologies and innovation. It has become imperative for CIOs, to apply visionary thinking, and understand how IT will ensure effective support and sustain an organisation’s competitive advantage into the future.
We work with CIOs to create an agile and potential disruptive IT vision. We assess the current data, applications and technology building blocks as well as the required future building blocks. We assist in creating a one-page view of the future, simplifying the management of the IT department.
YOUR BENEFIT
Reduce the growing disconnection between business and IT and ensure alignment of business and IT in innovation cycles.
Government IT Strategy Development
Knotion has extensive experience in the application of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) Outline for ICT Plan, Implementation Plan and Operational Plan development, as well as the Government Wide Enterprise Architecture (GWEA) Framework and Implementation Guide, dating back to the inception of the GWEA in 2010.
As such, our methodology represents a tight integration of the two standards. High level guidance provided in the DPSA Outline, is complemented by detailed guidance in terms of the documentation of EA, provided by the GWEA.
The approach highlights the importance of maintaining strong alignment between key components of the ICT Strategy, namely the ICT plan, the ICT Implementation Plan, and the ICT Operational Plan. This alignment is achieved by reviewing the strategic articulation and prioritisation for each component.
The approach also supports the principle of progressive elaboration. For each component of the ICT strategy, relevant elements are elaborated to enable increasing accuracy and detail as time horizons become shorter. For example:
- Requirements-based prioritisation in the ‘ICT Plan’ component is elaborated to project-based prioritisation in the ‘ICT Implementation Plan’ component
- Conceptual architecture developed in the ‘ICT Plan’ component is elaborated to logical architecture in the ‘ICT Implementation Plan’ component
The GWEA is integrated into our approach by illustrating how the TOGAF ADM is relevant to each component and element of the DPSA Outline.
YOUR BENEFIT
Knotion has developed a complete set of GWEA artefact templates, tested and refined through multiple applications on projects performed for the South African government.
Application and Technology Portfolio Management
Over time, sustainability of applications and technology becomes compromised due to age and technology advances, combined with changing business needs.
They may no longer support business goals and objectives and may no longer be cost-effective to operate or maintain. This may lead to exposing the organisation to the high risk of failure with serious consequences.
By implementing Application Portfolio Management (APM) and Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) the cost of operations is reduced and applications are used more effectively. This also increases visibility of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of applications and technology.
YOUR BENEFIT
Reduce total cost of application and technology ownership, reduce cost of IT operations, and use applications more effectively.
Technology Product Selection
To select suitable technology in support of the organisation, a functional requirements definition approach needs to be followed. A top-down, strategically directed approach to the definition of functional requirements, results in two main execution cycles:
- 1st cycle: Define high-level strategic requirements
- 2nd cycle: Define detailed operational requirements
This is important as it ensures business buy-in and confidence is strengthened across organisational levels, from high profile managers and decision makers (with key involvement in strategic requirements definition), to technical experts (with key involvement in operational requirements definition).
Our approach incorporates stakeholder consultations to support the readiness of the organisation for change, and to induce business buy-in and confidence.
YOUR BENEFIT
The eventual and holistic success of the technology implementation in your organisation.
