Enterprise Architecture, Strategy and Governance

This paper discusses IT governance strategies and the process in which they help an enterprise to grow. It also highlights the reasons for the failure of the implementation of IT governance and the challenges faced by IT governance. The stakeholders' role in IT governance and the practitioner skills required for IT governance are also discussed.

Running head: ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE, STRATEGY AND GOVERNANCE
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE, STRATEGY AND GOVERNANCE
Name of the Student
Name of the university
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Introduction
IT governance serves as a vital part in case of enterprise governance and comprises of
the organisational structure, leadership and processes that assure that firms’ IT sustains and
also extends the companies strategies and objectives. The IT governance is not limited to the
IT domain or its function rather in a broad aspect it has evolved as an element of the entity of
the governance but specifically aims at improvising the managerial tasks and at the same time
controlling of the Information Technology in order to benefit the stakeholders those are of
primary importance. The organizations Board of Directors are responsible to assure that the
IT along with the associated complex activities is governed at an adequate basis. The
implementation of the IT governance is not new but the structural framework of the
organization is an essential parameter to decide whether the process can be executed in the
premises (De and Van 2015). The new form of the governance focuses on directing IT
endeavours in order to ensure the achievement of the objectives of the organization through
the IT’s performance. The organization needs to analyse the benefits that the IT governance
can have on it and the various opportunities that it can provide. Rational use of the resources
of the IT is a main concern in the implementation process. The risks associated with the IT
must be known to the organization, which is required in case it falls victim to any
vulnerability. In this paper the IT governance strategies will be discussed and the process in
which they help an enterprise to grow will also be discussed (Wu, Straub and Liang 2015).
The failure of the implementation of IT government is also a big concern and shall be
discussed. The theme of IT governance is integrating the leadership skills to the delivery of
capabilities of the business by making use of the goals, strategies and the objectives of IT.
The IT governance deals with strategic alignment in between the goals and the objectives
related to the business and utilizing the resources of IT (Jnr and Pa 2015). The need for the
changes and the interest that is growing marketplace related to the IT governance is the

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outcome of numerous social and market-driven occasions that in turn has resulted in
increasing awareness of the corporate and the personal risks that are associated to the
executives (Al and Rusu 2015).
The traditional ways in which the authors have dealt with IT governance are:
1. COBIT: It is a management framework that was developed by ISACA in order to help
the enterprises grow with successful implementation of the IT strategies in the governance. It
was released for the first time in the year 1996 and in its first stage it was developed as
certain set of control objectives of the IT that helps in the financial audit community to help
enhance the growth of the environment (Couto, Lopes and Sousa 2015). The updated version
of COBIT is developed in a way to evolve in a constant manner consisting of regular updates
based on ISACA
2. ITIL: It provides the best guidelines of practice on all the aspects of the end to end
services management. It covers a complete set of people, products and processes and makes
use of partners. ITIL aids the business managers and the IT managers deliver the services to
the consumers in an effective way and thus gain the trust of the customers. ITIL plays an
important role in the business and strategic planning, to integrate and align business goals and
the IT (Jäntti and Hotti 2016). This helps incorporate continuous improvement by acquiring
and at the same time retaining the resources.
3. Zachman Framework: This framework addresses the information of the subsystem in an
enterprise. It is limited to model the components of the framework associated to the
framework of architecture. The scope of this is extended to take into its cover the various
aspects form the last version with the updated ones. The extension and the formalization is a
good combination regarding the emergence of the various modeling methodology and its way
of contributing to the enterprise architecture (Masuda, Shirasaka and Yamamoto 2016). The

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Framework for Enterprise Architecture that applies to the enterprises is a logical framework
classifying and organizing the theoretical representations of a firm that are important to
manage the Enterprise as well as helpful in the development of the firm’s system and manual
as well as the automated system.
4. TOGAF: TOGAF provides various methods and tools involved to assist in the production
and maintenance of the enterprise architecture. It depends on a process that is iterative model
and is supported by the best practices of the existing architecture assets (Wahab and Arief
2015). It helps in organizing the process involved in development via a systematic point of
approach that is focussed at decreasing the errors, maintaining the timelines still maintaining
the budget and aligning the same with the IT and the business units to obtain qualitative
results.
Reasons for failure of the implementation of the IT governance
The lack of understanding and the vision is a main drawback of the system. It
requires the people of the organization to share a common understanding and they must be
well aware of the concept. The work force should aim on questions based on Why rather than
on How. The future planning should be clear and vivid and it should be easily communicable
and appealing to the stakeholder (Benaroch and Chernobai 2017). Building the business case;
being clear about the drivers of the business and gaining agreement from a broad section of
the stakeholders that include business partners, where improvement is required and
necessary. Identifying the clear and measurable objectives for the effort of the IT governance.
Building an understanding of something what is already in place and the gap might not be as
huge as it seems. Lack of the support of the executive is another major cause of the failure of
the governance (Dawson et al. 2016). It is not possible to achieve the targets without

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executive sponsorship and leadership. The leaders need to understand their role and work
according to it towards achieving the target of the organization.
IT governance as known sets the framework which the organizations follows to
ensure alignment of business strategies, IT accountability and control systems are
commensurate with the organization’s dependency on IT and with the risks involved. It
governance is a rising approach in the implementation of IT tools and services in an
organization (Tiwana and Kim 2015). Proper IT governance enables organizations to make
and implement better IT decisions faster. It governance has major issues and challenges. The
issues which are highlighted are IT risk management, teamwork of the organization, delivery
of value through IT tools, cloud computing continuous assurance and auditing, active
information system security sector, establishing a government framework. The challenges of
IT governance affect the working of the system. IT governance enables the companies to
utilize organizational resources and restructure the resources to improve services of the
organization (Gesing et al. 2015). IT tools like ERP o enterprise resource planning and also to
remould the boundaries of the company through participation in the global digital market
place. Organizations are under constant pressure to run and become an achiever in the ever
competitive digital market. The investment of the organizations in IT tools and services not
only raises issues in the internal system of the company but makes the company prone to
several cyber threats and attacks. It therefore becomes imperative to have the right auditing
processes in place in order to minimize exposure to these threats while safeguarding the
managerial and accounting benefits of IT investments.
Corporate Governance is the overall operations and the control system of the
organization. The system promotes improvement of the organization’s collective interest and
provides the organization with timely and accurate information about the external and the

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internal ambience (Wu, Straub and Liang 2015). It governance involves the intervention of
the management. IT Governance is a joint responsibility of the Executive management and
Board of Directors. IT governance comprises organizational framework, leadership, process
planning for organizing the system, acquiring, implementing, supporting and delivering and
lastly monitoring the IT performances. The chief objective of IT governance lies in helping
the executives to ensure proper IT infrastructure and flow of information. The goal of IT
governance is in sync with the objectives and goals of the organization. IT governance is
done to identify issues in the system and plot out scheme to mitigate the incurring risks and
threats (Gailing and Röhring 2016). The roles of the stakeholders in IT governance have
become crucial and complex in the recent days. The evolution of responsibilities takes place
from the level of estimating the impact of specific technology issues within an enterprise to
the level of IT governance as the main source for achieving organization’s objectives. It is
important for the directors and the executive to be aware of the role relating to IT governance
as their task is completely dependent on the data they acquire. The relationship between the
practitioner and stakeholder matters for the better implementation of the IT tools and process
and lastly to govern the IT tools to achieve company goals. The existing approaches help
develop better opportunities for the organization.
Stakeholders are involved in strategic planning for the success of the organization.
The stakeholders of an organization includes unions, customers, employees, vendors, clients,
shareholders, suppliers, management body, community members and others who serve the
organization. Each stakeholder holds unique status a respective for the growth and
development of the organization as a whole. Building support and commitment for an IS/IT
initiative amongst stakeholders is a key ingredient for the success of the organization.
Communication is the key to improve the overall relationship and the working of the stake
holders. Sharing of consistent and purposeful data is the initial step. The stake holders should

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know the goals and objectives of the organization to provide support and align their motives
with the organization. The growth roadmap of the company should be clear and the IT/IS
service needs to be clearly implemented for the proper functioning of the company. The
employees of the organization should be present in the planning process of the organization
builds ownership. The planning process should be in sync with the objectives of the
company. The contribution of the stakeholders is chief asset to the organization in addition to
IT/IS governance. The plans need to be internalized and discussed. The executive of the
organization is the man who authorizes the assignment of resources and enforces decisions.
The stakeholders can build or damage the success of the business project. The running of an
organized company involves high practitioner performance (Chou and Liao 2017). The skills
required for a practitioner are caring and compassionate nature, team player and an efficient
team member, working in high pressurized and technical zones, excellent organizational and
problem solving skills, excellent communication skills, conscientious approach at work,
quick adoption to new environment, adjusting to changes and working efficiently in a
confined environment. The practitioner skills can be instilled in an individual by several
means. Universities all around have several techniques and schemes to teach practitioner
skills. Universities can put up events and set group tasks to involve people to participate in
the group activities. Participation in group activities improves team player skills and
improves team management. Additionally the universities can organize activities where the
payer has to submit a task in a pressured environment and in a stipulated amount of time.
This enhances time management and pressure handling skills in an individual. The university
can introduce such activities in the curriculum of the course and the students can be graded
based on their performance (Dawson et al. 2016). The university should set certain clause in
the participation process so that the students cannot skip such events and there is complete

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participation. This will improve the practitioner skills in the participants and make them a
game player in any crucial and complex environment.

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