Iasa helps members reach their business goals by driving the quality and impact of Architects in the organization. Iasa Engagements provide direct, hands-on support to drive the implementation of best practice complimenting Education, Research, Outreach and Communities. Iasa Engagements accelerate the changes needed to attain higher levels of “modern” technology architecture, stakeholder alignment and outcomes.
In line with the Mission Statement to “make architecture the most educated, capable, and recognized profession in the world”, Iasa is introducing Engagements; a range of for-fee offers that aim to accelerate the journey that many architects and architecture groups are on, towards business alignment, value delivery and outcome focus.
Iasa frequently finds that low-maturity architecture teams have less engagement with business leaders, produce documents and artefacts that are rarely read or referred to and often the architects themselves have limited business exposure. To complement corporate membership, training and certification, Iasa has completed the development and pilot of several on-site engagement offers, to be performed by our leading trainers and principal instructors. The engagements baseline the staff, establish the necessary process and organizational structures as well as create and drive the necessary changes. Elements of an engagement include:
- Documenting a baseline across people and process, identifying a forward-plan
- Establishing a Competence Center focused on Enterprise Architecture competencies
- Development of the Engagement Model based on the Iasa Framework
- Programs for Executive Awareness, High Potential Architects and Team Leaders
- Whole team Certification
Engagement Packages
Three offers or packages have been delivered to large organizations:
Assessment-based
A baseline assessment of people, process and culture and producing an outline plan. Intentionally of short duration, this baseline assessment investigates Architecture alignment with business outcomes. The Iasa architecture maturity model encapsulates the necessary transitions from one maturity level to the next so that the assessment provides a baseline and can be repeated as a benchmark over time.
An online survey forms part of the assessment The engagement delivers a full report that documents joint findings using a “rising-star” chart; Iasa approach is always to focus on the future state and outcomes prioritized by increasing the ability to execute and reducing the time to value. This assessment can be repeated over time and is offered only as a fixed price engagement.
Advisory Services
On-site advisory engagements accelerate the adoption and improves the engagement model through coordinated bottom-up and top-down activities that bring concepts such as collaboration, transparency and alignment to life.
The top-down activities start with stakeholder assessment and influence mapping and then focus on aligning Architecture to Enterprise performance; focusing on outcomes and communication coaching (story telling).
Built upon the concepts of change management, the bottom-up approach focuses on four areas of capability:
- Role clarity: A full review of Architecture role and level clarity so that job descriptions are aligned with career and lifecycle thinking.
- Coaching: We will establish and run a mentor and coaching program (using internal staff as well as external relationships across IASA network)
- Community: Reinforce the Architecture community and, in conjunction with IASA account manager, plan and coordinate a 12 month program and calendar of activities. We will provide support for repository integration with the community as well as conversation moderation across all Architecture forums.
- Artefacts: We will review all Architecture artefacts, building on the templates and IP available through Membership.
To socialize and communicate Architecture outcomes across the stakeholders, we participate and contribute to a series of post-project reviews as a key learning opportunity for architects. Time is included for director and executive follow-up actions. Further coaching time is included so that as we “close the cycle”, we can learn and enhance the early definition of Architecture contribution in future projects.
Finally, Engagement Governance is included and will cover the normal planning and milestones, a bi-weekly review with reporting, a mid-point quality review in addition to the engagement final review at around the six-month mark. Two check-in and tracking milestones are proposed at nine and twelve months.
Mentor-based programs
Custom co-delivery engagements include mentoring, coaching and reviewing outcomes, with a “teach to fish” approach. Iasa partners closely with all corporate members and offers longer-duration or custom engagements to further build relationship and tenure grounded with a programmatic mentor approach. Custom engagements are possible where an allocation of hours is jointly managed at a standard rate. Previous delivery engagements have covered:
- Initial Assessment Planning
- 1-2 days of onsite planning, 3-4 weeks in advance of an Assessment
- Delivers a detailed execution plan, top-level organizational model and top-level stakeholder map
- Engagement Model Development
- Iasa Framework Adoption covering
- Architecture Lifecycle definition
- Architect Roles and Responsibilities
- High Potential program creation
- Skills Analysis and Learning Planning
- IT Executive and C-Level training
- Team Certification
The three engagement offers are all based on an underlying “time is value” proposition:
- For Architects in an organization to develop skills quicker (cf. Forrester)
- For Iasa to coach and increase the capability of individual architects in an organization
- For the organization to reach an integrated Architecture approach sooner that enables business outcomes
Corporate Membership is a pre-requisite as Community and outreach is an essential part of an Architects development. By driving the attainment of desired maturity levels, reducing the time to Architecture Maturity (the desired outcome), Iasa helps organizations demonstrate the impact that IT Architecture can have on business objectives.