Brett Colbert - Enterprise Architecture & Business

  Enterprise  Architecture Inside Salesforce Enterprise Architecture — How We Do It Internally The two words, “Enterprise Architecture”, elicit various reactions — everything from “ we tried that and it doesn’t work ” to “ we need that! ” to “ we have an effective EA practice ”. Unfortunately it is possible (even easy) to do Enterprise Architecture  incorrectly , with an approach that is lethargic, technology-first and theoretical — the classic ivory tower. (In Salesforce, the internal IT group reporting into our CIO is called “Business Technology” so you’ll see me use BT to refer to Salesforce IT) I lead the Salesforce Enterprise Architecture team within Business Technology and I’m often asked the following questions: how does Salesforce do Enterprise Architecture? why do you need Enterprise Architecture? how do you shift the conversation to business capabilities? Illuminate — The “How” of Salesforce Enterprise Architecture Let me start with the “HOW” first. Within Sales...

  5 Key Components of a Successful Enterprise Architecture Function 5 Key Components of a Successful Enterprise Architecture Function Creating and managing a successful Enterprise Architecture function requires a variety of different hard and soft skills. In addition, each company is different and the Enterprise Architecture function needs to calibrate and align itself to the specific company. However, there are five common features of a successful Enterprise Architecture function that are applicable to all companies. 1. Governance Enterprise Architecture (EA) requires governance, however not in the form of complex documents, forms or processes.  Definitely avoid EA being seen as the policy-enforcement team — people will avoid EA if the perception is that EA is a blocker.  The best governance starts with a simple, recurring dialogue across multiple functions facilitated by EA. I am always amazed at how valuable it is just to get cross-functional teams to  talk . Pick...

  Illuminate — Business Model Exploration One of our world-class Salesforce Enterprise Architects, Jonathan Laudicina ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-laudicina/  ) has done amazing work on Business Model Exploration. I want to highlight some of his work and I think you’ll find it useful. As a reminder, Illuminate is the Enterprise Architecture Methodology that we use inside Salesforce as well as with our customers. The overall Illuminate methodology is depicted below. You will notice that Business Model Exploration is the first step in Illuminate. Business Model Exploration is the methodology we use with customers to articulate: External Forces pushing on the business Internal Forces pushing on the business Customer specific Business Model Canvas At the heart of Business Model Exploration is the Business Model Canvas. It is the place in which you capture key factors about a company’s specific value proposition, partners, customer segments, cost structure and revenue str...

  Why Does a Company Need IT Enterprise Architecture (EA)? A simple analogy… When I present to companies about “Why does a company need an IT Enterprise Architecture team?”, I like to start with the following picture. I pose the question “Does this work?” to the audience… which of course elicits many responses. The typical responses are as follows: — Yes it works but it’s dangerous because of fire/electrocution (security), it probably has poor reliability (downtime), unclear how many more connections it can handle or needs to handle (scalability/reliability), who actually knows what’s hidden behind the wall (end to end architecture) and finally who is allowed to plug into this outlet (governance). I like this as the next slide in the presentation… this is of course an outcome that could occur! For a company, IT Enterprise Architecture has responsibility for many of these areas — extensibility, governance, scalability, maintainability, usability, availability and security (remember ...