I always like to think of it as architecting with giants. ERP systems or any large corporate-wide applications have the potential to over-run and destroy the architecture of any organisation. As an enterprise architect in organisations with these giants you have to work out how fence them in – like in Harry Potter – keep them in the mountains on another continent. Contained and the risks reduced – they are happy and you are safe.
The biggest challenge is to understand what functionality should be delivered by these systems and what should not. The tendency is to keep loading up the functionality (allowing the giant to hunt and feed in the lowlands just leads to problems) and next thing you know, your organisation has no flexibility and the whole organisational value chain is completely dependant upon the ONE system (and it’s vendor). This can introduce considerable risk and what is often overlooked - the value proposition for including functionality is not well clarified. Is it really the best choice and the best value?
As an enterprise architect you must 1) build you skills and knowledge (often via the architectural certification for your giant – i.e. SAP) in the enterprise-wide system. 2) Don’t loose architectural control by delegating responsibility for architecture to the team/service provider responsible. 3) Make some clear future state statements about what is core to the system and what is not and push for real detailed analysis about whether to increase the functionality. 4) Keep an eye on change and release management – often the “rats and mice” types of changes and inclusions can make a big difference to the viability of an enterprise system.
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