Today, large companies have ever-larger information technology initiatives. These projects can stretch on for years and across multiple releases. They can have huge development and maintenance teams and piles of pending enhancements. Eventually, they can take on a life and momentum of their own.

More often than not, at some point, these critical systems begin a process of evolution. Enhancement decisions get made on the basis of cost, politics, and estimated effort versus available resources. These systems continue to grow and change, but with minimal influence from a master plan or overall business strategy. Instead, we often see management-by-squeaky-wheel syndrome. Funding decisions follow at the item or enhancement level, causing a loss of strategic control and direction. In short, as companies ask themselves how many enhancements they can implement for a given budget, while trying to satisfy key executives or internal organizations, they can gradually lose control of the strategic direction of their systems and related business processes. The system loses its destination vision and takes on an evolutionary random walk.

A business architecture project may by your solution to regaining control of the strategic direction of your business processes and supporting systems. By developing a business-architecture framework, you can spark the appropriate strategic discussions among your senior executives to define an agreed-upon direction and vision for the relevant business function, for example, billing, claims, policy issuance, customer information, etc. From management's directives, priorities, and insights, your organization can better define and plan system releases and rollout schedules. Over the long run, your systems will more closely correspond to your strategic objectives. And, you can more easily demonstrate IT project success.

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Personius & Company Business Architecture Services provide a valuable tool to align information technology investment and direction with business strategy and management objectives. The typical business architecture project takes about a month, but its benefits last for years.

Personius & Company can help you successfully plan and conduct a business architecture project. Our approach blends facilitation with creative participation and is designed to spark serious strategic discussions among top management. Your results depend on what you put into the effort, but the potential benefits are immense.