Why You Need A Enterprise Architect Before You Need A Project Manager
posted by Anna Mar, October 02, 2011Which came first the enterprise architect or the project manager?
Most organizations have done project management a lot longer than enterprise architecture. Perhaps this is why the opportunity to improve PM practices with enterprise architecture is often missed.
Years ago, I ran EA governance for a large organization. We reviewed projects big and small — dozens of them every month. Part of my homework was to read the project charters before the meetings.
Although the PM practice was relatively mature — the project charters left a lot to be desired. Luckily, I found that our enterprise architecture had the tools to improve them.
Project Charter Quality
It doesn't matter how good your project charter template is — when they are based on free-form text they will vary in quality.Low quality project charters leave the reader wondering:
- what business units are involved?
- what products are affected?
- what business capabilities and processes are involved?
- what applications does it touch?
- what about data and technology?
A Foolproof Project Charter
Enterprise Architecture can help to improve project charters with the magic of enterprise taxonomies.Project descriptions become clearer when you leverage taxonomies such as product catalogs, business capabilities, processes and data dictionaries.
A project description like this instantly identifies architectural impacts. It's an example of the power of Enterprise Architecture to improve communication and documentation.
The example above is illustrative. A project charter requires far more information than depicted. Free-form text is required.
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