Large projects often fail due to a combination of complex factors. A study by Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, of 16,000 major projects—from large buildings to bridges, dams, power stations, rockets, railroads, information technology systems—reveals a massive project-management problem. In fact, only 8.5% of those projects were delivered on time and on budget, while a mere 0.5% were completed on time and on budget and produced the expected benefits. In other words, 99.5% of large projects failed to deliver as promised. The common thread across these projects is a lack of planning. The purpose of this article is to offer solutions to help your organization join the 8.5% of companies that successfully deliver projects on time and within budget.
Planning success with enterprise architecture
Enterprise architecture is key to the success of large IT projects. As the name implies, enterprise architecture adopts the principles of architecture and applies them to business. A useful analogy for understanding enterprise architecture is city planning. A city planner formulates a comprehensive plan of where people will live and the services they will need. The plan must comply with regulations – such as zoning laws – and be mindful of the city’s current state and its infrastructure. For example, did you know that Montreal's master plan mandates that building heights must remain below the height of Mount Royal? Due to their scope, cities tend to have many moving parts that operate in coordination with each other. However, any attempts to change or expand the city can go awry if the proper considerations have not been made for all areas of the city.
The same is true for a poorly planned organization - employees find it difficult to collaborate, establish efficient processes, and align projects with business strategy without the proper infrastructure in place.
By providing a strategic view of an organization’s business, data, solutions, and technology, enterprise architecture helps to identify opportunities for optimization and innovation. Effective enterprise architecture can significantly reduce IT complexity and costs, while improving security and fostering improved collaboration between business and IT teams, two divisions which notoriously struggle to communicate. The implementation of a robust enterprise architecture plan can contribute to an organization's agility, efficiency, and resilience, positioning it to better respond to evolving market demands and regulatory requirements.
Execution and governance
Enterprise architecture requires a well-defined vision and solid guidance to ensure effective execution and governance. Also, it implies continuous innovation to ensure the program stays on track. However, many organizations still struggle to manage projects in Excel or PowerPoint, which can’t provide multidimensional views to optimize all resources and operations.
Alithya and Bizzdesign: empowering the future of enterprise architecture
Recently, a strategic partnership between Alithya and Bizzdesign, a leader in enterprise architecture, has been announced. This collaboration brings together Alithya’s deep expertise in enterprise architecture services with Bizzdesign’s innovative and robust solutions, to support organizations through an enterprise-architecture-as-a-service approach and drive their digital transformation. Together, we offer a comprehensive suite of services designed to help organizations navigate complex IT landscapes, optimize business processes, and accelerate their digital journeys.
In a world where companies must constantly adapt to rapid changes and market demands, having a comprehensive view of enterprise architecture is essential. This is where Bizzdesign comes in—a complete platform for enterprise architecture modeling and optimization. Designed to help organizations align their strategies with their processes, Bizzdesign is a key solution for leaders and architects looking to navigate the complexities of change effectively.
Built to empower organizations with robust and actionable insights, Bizzdesign helps bridge the gap between ambitious goals and day-to-day operations, creating a cohesive and agile business architecture.
With its intuitive interface and powerful features, it enables users to visualize, analyze, and transform an organization’s structure. Bizzdesign stands out for its visual modeling tools and its ability to align various departments within an organization toward common objectives.
Bizzdesign’s main features and benefits for your organization
Modeling
This tool enables your organization to simplify complexity by leveraging an intuitive modeling environment that allows you to visually represent key aspects of your organization. It utilizes comprehensive modeling capabilities across strategy, architecture, processes, data, and decision-making to create a holistic view. It captures the current state of your business, designs multiple future scenarios, and develops detailed roadmaps that outline the necessary steps and milestones to bridge the gap from the present to the desired future state. This approach ensures alignment and clarity throughout your transformation journey.
Data integration and management
This platform enables you to establish and maintain high-quality, consistent data, supporting faster, multi-dimensional decision-making across the organization. By using the Open API, your organization can seamlessly integrate data from various systems and external sources, allowing for automated processes that provide richer and more actionable insights. Intuitive and people-centered data policies ensure data is easily accessible and usable for all stakeholders. Additionally, guided data entry functionalities enhance engagement and streamline data collection, simplifying the process for users while ensuring greater accuracy and consistency in data input.
Analytics & visualization
Bizzdesign offers a range of customizable reporting and dashboard functionalities that empower stakeholders to continuously monitor the overall health of the enterprise architecture. This platform provides insights into performance, tracks progress against established goals and presents real-time data-- enabling stakeholders to make well-informed, strategic decisions that align with organizational objectives and drive informed action across the enterprise.
Multi-disciplinary collaboration
Architecture teams can work together and with other stakeholders. They can access, modify the characteristics and metrics of IT assets and configure access management for IT assets. Bizzdesign also consolidates the efforts of all architects—enterprise, business, solution, and application—into a single platform, fostering unified collaboration and alignment across all architectural disciplines.
Multidimensional source of truth
The Business Insight Graph is a central repository with extensive support for a wide range of standards, frameworks, and techniques; including ArchiMate, TOGAF, AMBER, BPMN, UML, ERD, DMN, PESTEL, and Kanban. This feature establishes a single source of truth for all architectural information across the organization, providing comprehensive traceability from high-level strategy to detailed architecture. Because of the graph-style setup, it also allows users to understand relationships between elements.
Get support to accelerate the creation of a strong enterprise architecture foundation
The challenge for any organization is structuring the enterprise architecture framework by identifying the assets to be managed—ranging from strategy to technology—and understanding the relationships between them. Alithya can help organizations overcome this challenge by providing expertise in organizing and aligning these assets, ensuring seamless integration across strategic, operational, and technological layers. Through a tailored approach, Alithya’s experts help map out and optimize the enterprise architecture referential, facilitating better decision-making and ensuring that all elements work together towards the organization’s goals.
Alithya’s enterprise architecture experts get to know your needs and unique organizational culture. The goal is to empower your architecture to evolve and thrive in a fast-changing digital landscape and hit your business targets.
Contact us today to learn more about Alithya’s enterprise architecture practice and how your organization can benefit from our partnership with Bizzdesign.