Research

Publication Date: 4 April 2008

ID Number: G00155260

Integrate EA and IT Governance Initiatives

Betsy Burton, R. Scott Bittler, Cassio Dreyfuss

In many organizations, we find that IT governance (ITG) initiatives and decisions are
defined without a link or even knowledge of enterprise architecture (EA), and vice versa.
Integrating these efforts will have a significant impact on driving more-consistent
behaviors and decisions in line with the chosen strategic direction, thus increasing
business value.
Key Findings

"Enterprise architecture" is the process of translating business vision and strategy into
effective plans for enterprise change. "IT governance" is how the enterprise will direct
and control resources to get there. They are two aspects, or instruments, of the
enterprise's strategic plan and actions toward its business objectives.

The EA process and an ITG process should be closely linked, and both efforts should
leverage the work and results of the other.

Ideally, ITG builds on a highly effective EA initiative. However, we find many

organizations supporting EA and ITG at different levels of maturity.

Recommendations

If you have an effective EA initiative and an effective ITG initiative, the first critical step is
to ensure that the common inputs and artifacts (such as business context, principles and
models) between each of these efforts are aligned.

If you have an effective EA initiative but don't have an effective ITG initiative, a best
practice is to leverage EA practices (such as requirements, principles and models) to
create the ITG model and ensure that your organization's EA and ITG efforts are
focused on the same business-driven goals and objectives.

If you have an effective ITG initiative but don't have an effective EA initiative, leverage
your governance model to help develop the business case for an EA program to create
more actionable, prescriptive content with which to direct the organization and use in
governance.

If your organization does not have an effective ITG initiative or an effective EA initiative,
it is critical that you determine the level of investment and costs associated with
supporting EA and ITG.

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Analysis ............................................................................................................................................. 3
1.0 EA and Governance Are Different, but Highly Related .................................................. 3
1.1 IT Governance................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Enterprise Architecture ...................................................................................... 4
1.3 The Intersection Between EA and ITG.............................................................. 4
2.0 Integrating EA and ITG................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Organizations With an Effective EA Initiative and an Effective ITG Initiative.... 5
2.2 Organizations With an Effective EA Initiative and an Ineffective ITG Initiative . 5
2.3 Organizations With an Effective ITG Initiative and an Ineffective EA Initiative . 6
2.4 Organizations With an Ineffective ITG Initiative and an Ineffective EA Initiative6
3.0 Bottom Line .................................................................................................................... 6
Recommended Reading.................................................................................................................... 7

Publication Date: 4 April 2008/ID Number: G00155260

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 2 of 7

ANALYSIS
In many organizations, we find that IT governance initiatives and decisions are defined without a
link or even knowledge of EA, and vice versa. IT management is working on IT governance and
on partnering with people in the business on IT projects supported by a governance model.
Meanwhile, enterprise architects are somewhat separately focused on EA processes and
practices, and engaging business leaders to ensure that the evolving enterprise architecture
reflects and supports the business strategies and goals (see "Myth Busting: What EA Is Not").
Defining an enterprise architecture and an IT governance model should be closely linked, and
both efforts should leverage the other's work and results. In addition, both enterprise architecture
and an IT governance model should be used in the definition of an IT strategy plan. However, a
lack of business and IT leadership vision, political issues (for example, "stovepiped"
organizations, ownership and control of "turf" issues, and communication challenges), lack of a
commitment to EA and/or governance, and the inability to execute well on either EA or
governance cause a schism between EA and governance teams. The result is:
1. Duplication of many of the common and base practices
2. Disjointed and incongruent decisions
3. Overly complex allocation of roles and responsibilities
These issues, in turn, can have a huge impact on business effectiveness and competitiveness
and the perception of the value of IT, and cause a drain on limited IT budgets and resources.
So, how can EA and governance teams work together to support their respective efforts, and
leverage each other's work? There are two key interrelated initiatives. The first key initiative in
starting to integrate EA and governance efforts is to understand how advanced (or limited) the EA
and governance initiatives are today and to identify strategic areas where they can work
together. The second key initiative is to identify possibly conflicting roles, responsibilities, and
reporting channels between EA and ITG. In this research, we look at four scenarios and outline
specific best practices for how these teams can work together to help the organization work
through this process.

1.0 EA and Governance Are Different, but Highly Related

1.1 IT Governance
Although there is broad interest in "IT governance," we find that there is also a lack of a wellaccepted definition (see "CIOs Reveal Their Issues With IT Governance"). Gartner defines ITG as
"the processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to
achieve its goals." ITG is created in support of an IT strategic plan and is composed of processes
with the inputs, outputs, roles and responsibilities that are inherent in a process definition that
enable organizations to make decisions on how to allocate and prioritize the IT resources and
spending (see "A Primer for Strategic IT Plans").
One of the models we use to represent ITG is the Gartner IT Governance Demand/Supply Model
(see "Defining IT Governance: The Gartner IT Governance Demand/Supply Model"). The model
illustrates the role of an IT governance strategy relative to demand governance (for example,
what should the IT organization work on?) and supply governance (for example, how does the IT
organization do what it does?).

Publication Date: 4 April 2008/ID Number: G00155260

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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When most organizations focus on implementing effective ITG, several key elements must be
agreed on and put in place. First, the business strategy and initiatives are used to drive the
definition of principles and policies that align IT to business initiatives and objectives and guide
the usage of IT in the organization. Second, the domains of IT governance must be identified
(that is, areas of activity and responsibility subject to ITG). Third, management must have clear
and agreed-on goals for ITG. Fourth, the business organization's structure and style must be
clearly identified and defined, including who has the responsibility and accountability to make the
appropriate decisions consistent with the agreed-on principles for each domain.

1.2 Enterprise Architecture

Not unlike ITG, there are varied definitions and understandings of what enterprise architecture
means and its impact on the organization. Gartner's definition of EA is that it is "the process of
translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating,
communicating and improving the key principles and models that describe the enterprise's future
state and enable its evolution" (see "Gartner Defines the Term 'Enterprise Architecture'"). A
holistic enterprise architecture has a minimum of three viewpoints consisting of the business,
information and technology viewpoints. They intersect into the fourth EA dimension the
enterprise solution architecture.
The goal of EA is to provide actionable, prescriptive guidance for business-initiative-level decision
making (programs or projects) that is consistent with executing a transition plan toward a
described, future-state architecture that aligns to the business strategy. EA is a form of strategic
planning, but it is often not seen as being the "IT strategic plan." The IT strategic plan often
addresses content beyond the EA, such as the list of planned project initiatives. So, EA and ITG
are complementary efforts that must be coordinated and integrated but they are not the same.

1.3 The Intersection Between EA and ITG

Both EA and ITG provide respective frameworks for supporting better and more effective decision
making (such as proposing trade-offs, building agreement and resolving conflicting priorities). In
addition, neither practice proposes to "boil the ocean" by dictating all details; this is left to the
different practice areas (for example, security, compliance, project management and application
management).
The critical point is that there are several key overlapping intersection points that both EA and
ITG are driven by, including business strategy, principles and models. In fact, in the Gartner
definition of EA, we describe that enterprise architects compose holistic solutions that address the
business challenges of the enterprise and drive the governance needed to implement them.
In addition, part of the overall EA process includes a subprocess for the EA assurance process.
This is, in essence, a governance process the IT aspect of which must be integrated with the
broader IT governance process so as not to create confusion and to minimize process
redundancy. The EA assurance process is essential to the success of EA, because without it, EA
material can go unused and simply sit on a virtual shelf.

2.0 Integrating EA and ITG

In the best-case scenario, IT managers should use the artifacts of EA (such as business context,
principles and models) to develop a business-driven IT governance strategy. However, the
challenge is that ITG and EA efforts are often developed in parallel and/or independent of each
other. Furthermore, in informal client discussions, we tend to find that approximately 20% of most
Global 1000 organizations have and utilize a well-defined enterprise architecture.

Publication Date: 4 April 2008/ID Number: G00155260

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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So, given that organizations may be in different places with respect to EA and ITG, how can they
integrate and link the two efforts to the benefit of both practices? We offer guidance to enterprises
in the four categories discussed previously.

2.1 Organizations With an Effective EA Initiative and an Effective ITG

Initiative
If the enterprise has an effective EA initiative and an effective ITG initiative, the first critical step is
to ensure that the common inputs and artifacts between each of these efforts are aligned
aligning EA and ITG artifact creation. The second critical step is to ensure that role assignment,
responsibilities and reporting channels are aligned in the two initiatives. The enterprise should
evaluate the efforts to ensure that the EA principles, common requirements vision (including
business strategy and IT response), current state, future state, and business context are aligned.
If these are not aligned, particularly the common requirements vision and principles, the
organization risks a major divergence between the vision of the enterprise and the vision of the IT
organization. The EA team should take the lead, but needs to work with the governance team to
resolve these differences. The enterprise should leverage established EA models for the anchor
model, the current state and future state, principles, and the business context as the basis for
representing these common inputs and artifacts.
If these common inputs, artifacts and people are aligned, the IT governance should use the wellestablished enterprise architecture to prioritize the supply-side and demand-side project and
resources as part of the program and portfolio management process. Equally, the EA team
should leverage the IT governance model when defining the EA organization and defining
working groups with business leaders. The specific assignment of governance roles and
responsibilities for each IT domain should orient the creation of those EA working groups for
decisions in each of the domains. Enterprises should strive to eliminate any overlapping decision
processes between the EA assurance subprocess and the IT governance process.

2.2 Organizations With an Effective EA Initiative and an Ineffective ITG

Initiative
If the enterprise has an effective EA initiative and doesn't have an effective ITG initiative, a best
practice is to leverage EA practices and content (that is, requirements, principles, models,
governance and measurement) to create an ITG model, because this will save time and
investment, and ensure that the organization's EA and ITG efforts are both focused on the same
business-driven goals and objectives. In many respects, this is an ideal model, as the enterprise
moves from charting the map (EA) to steering the journey (ITG) toward a business objective.
To accomplish this, the EA team (including IT architects, IT practitioners and business leaders)
should have defined broadly agreed-on EA principles, common requirements vision, the current
state and future state, and the business context. These common artifacts can be used to set the
direction, define priorities and identify gaps. In addition, the different architecture viewpoints may
have defined and represented their respective architectural components, domains, patterns and
services. Furthermore, the different architecture viewpoints have represented their artifacts, which
can be used as a starting point for both the efforts of business (that is, demand) and IT (that is,
supply). Enterprises should take the EA assurance (that is, governance) subprocess and expand
it to address the other IT areas where governance controls are needed (such as project
management, budget and spending, and resource control).

Publication Date: 4 April 2008/ID Number: G00155260

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 5 of 7

2.3 Organizations With an Effective ITG Initiative and an Ineffective EA

Initiative
If the enterprise has an effective ITG initiative and doesn't have an effective EA initiative, it should
leverage the governance model to help focus on the need for EA and/or create an EA assurance
subprocess for the EA program. If this is the scenario, chances are the IT organization has tried
its best to work with business leaders and senior executives to define IT governance goals and
the strategies of stakeholders/customer groups, and to define the principles and policies to guide
the usage of IT in the organization. However, this type of interaction is often "grassroots," defined
by IT leaders with a vision for getting their IT organization off a "tactical treadmill"; this can be
frustrating and exhausting for IT and business leaders. However, this effort can be used to
highlight the need for a higher-level EA effort.
Enterprises should use the defined business strategy and governance goals to go back to senior
management and business leaders to begin an EA discussion, such as defining a functional
model viewpoint and a business anchor model. The enterprise may find that the principles that
were initially defined to drive the ITG effort are good candidates as some of the EA artifacts. Also,
the enterprise should ensure to include the ITG team and to leverage the work done by the ITG
team to define the business strategy and principles. Enterprises should understand that, when
one EA effort gets started, ITG base definitions may need to evolve to align with the enterprise
architecture.

2.4 Organizations With an Ineffective ITG Initiative and an Ineffective EA

Initiative
If the organization has neither an effective ITG initiative nor an effective EA initiative, then there is
a good chance that the enterprise has little support (or awareness) at a senior executive level for
a business-driven IT organization and for creating an enterprise architecture. The enterprise
needs to make a decision as an organization as to its level of investment and focus what it wants
to put into EA versus ITG. As mentioned above, ideally, the ITG initiative would result from a solid
EA effort. However, many organizations are unwilling or unable to make an investment in EA, and
need to just solve their IT organizational and governance issues; so enterprises should determine
their immediate and longer-term goals. Enterprises should determine their readiness and ability to
support EA (see "Enterprise Personality Profile: Defining and Interpreting Dimensions and
Descriptors").
In addition, Gartner provides an interactive tool that can help enterprises assess their own EA
program maturity (see http://gitl.gartner.com/ea/survey.aspx ). Once the enterprise determines
its primary-focus EA and/or ITG, it should leverage the tools and methodologies in EA (such as
requirements, principles and models) and ITG (such as goals, principles and domains) to help
define common artifacts, which can then be used to support both EA and ITG in the short term
and the long term.

3.0 Bottom Line

Regardless of where your organization is with respect to its EA and ITG efforts, you must ensure
that your EA and ITG teams are closely aligned. EA and ITG are two different efforts that should
be integrated and linked based on a common base business, process, people, and organizational
goals and objectives. Best practices include:

Involvement of EA and ITG people from respective teams

Regular status updates and ongoing communication and collaboration sessions

Publication Date: 4 April 2008/ID Number: G00155260

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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Open publication of base common artifacts

Even rotation of assignments between EA and ITG teams

RECOMMENDED READING
"Myth Busting: What EA Is Not"
"CIOs Reveal Their Issues With IT Governance"
"A Primer for Strategic IT Plans"
"Defining IT Governance: The Gartner IT Governance Demand/Supply Model"
"Gartner Defines the Term 'Enterprise Architecture'"
"Enterprise Personality Profile: Defining and Interpreting Dimensions and Descriptors"
This research is part of a set of related research pieces. See "Organize Your Enterprise
Architecture Effort: Planning for EA Success" for an overview.

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Publication Date: 4 April 2008/ID Number: G00155260

2008 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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