{"id":824,"date":"2014-09-15T14:20:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T18:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/acts\/?p=824"},"modified":"2019-02-26T16:32:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T21:32:47","slug":"enterprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/2014\/09\/15\/enterprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Enterprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"enterprise_1920x1200\"<\/a>It\u2019s goal setting season and everyone is reviewing the organization\u2019s FY15 goals. Understanding the organizational goals is important because we all want to be sure to be in line with the direction of the organization.<\/p>\n

#4 on the top 10 is \u201cEstablish an enterprise IT architecture\u201d. This is a phrase that I\u2019ve never fully understood. So I\u2019ve been asking people to define \u201centerprise\u201d, I get all sorts of answers. \u201cbig\u201d \u201cimportant\u201d \u201cjava \/ oracle \/ peoplesoft\u201d \u201csomething that \u2018can\u2019t\u2019 fail\u201d \u201cfinance\u201d \u201cHR\u201d \u201cbusiness\u201d. (Important was my favorite.)<\/p>\n

People use this word constantly. There\u2019s even groups in my organization that are called the \u201centerprise groups\u201d. I was told recently that there\u2019s \u201cless dysfunction in the enterprise groups\u201d. To which I had to ask \u201cwhich groups are those?\u201d (Answer: They\u2019re the ones that have significant business value.) But the fact that I can\u2019t find someone to give me a coherent definition is a warning sign that it has become a meaningless buzz word.<\/p>\n

But business is the right answer. Enterprise seems to be anything that encompases the entire organization (or a significant portion of it) or something that has significant business value.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s neither here nor there. What I think someone was trying to say with \u201centerprise IT architecture\u201d is a standardization of technology across the organization — often a pipe dream. And I think this goal tends to draw extra attention to the groups that are already considered the \u201centerprise\u201d groups.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m begging a deeper question here. Shouldn\u2019t everyone be considered enterprise? If enterprise is just a fancy word for business. If you\u2019re not providing significant business value to your organization, then maybe you need to rethink what it is you\u2019re doing. If you\u2019re not considered enterprise, then someone doesn\u2019t think you\u2019re providing business value, effecting enough people or having enough impact.<\/p>\n

So when \u201cestablishing an enterprise IT architecture\u201d, I\u2019m taking that to mean communicate with other groups, figure out what they\u2019re doing and share what you\u2019re doing. Meeting that goal is potentially impossible with a large silo\u2019d organization. But working toward that goal is ambitious and requires a lot of time. Working towards that goal is just implementing good collaborative practices. Simple but not easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s goal setting season and everyone is reviewing the organization\u2019s FY15 goals. Understanding the organizational goals is important because we all want to be sure to be in line with the direction of the organization. #4 on the top 10 is \u201cEstablish an enterprise IT architecture\u201d. This is a phrase that I\u2019ve never fully understood. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4571,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1061,111277,13060,13089],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-architecture","tag-buzz-words","tag-enterprise","tag-goals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/acts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}