Informed governance of enterprise transformations

Abstract

Modern day enterprises are confronted with a variety of challenges, forcing them to continuously transform themselves to better meet these challenges. The diversity of the challenges and the resulting desires to transform (parts of) the enterprise, make it desirable to align all required and desired transformations in such a way that they complement each other rather than nullifying, or even undermining, each other's effects. Therefore, mature governance of these enterprise transformations is absolutely crucial. We will argue that this requires a transformation authority, being the organisational function which is responsible for the governance of enterprise transformations. In this chapter, our driving interest is the implementation of mature transformation authorities. Judging whether a portfolio of enterprise transformations is well aligned requires insight into the desired overall result, as well as the planned and achieved effects of the individual transformations. This is what we refer to as informed governance. In this chapter we will position the discipline of enterprise architecture (referring to the architecture of the enterprise, and not just enterprise-wide IT architecture) as the core means to achieve informed governance. We will argue that mature governance of enterprises transformations presupposes the use of enterprise architecture to direct the portfolio of transformations. Our discussions we will be based on theories from management science, as well as experiences from our own industrial practices. We will also discuss two cases of enterprises involved in the implementation of transformation authorities and use these to further refine our theoretical model. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.