Review of Enterprise Architecture, Strategy, and Governance Concepts

This report provides a thorough review of the IS governance literature, with a specific focus on enterprise architecture, strategy, and governance. The student analyzes the importance of effective governance strategies in managing systems and aligning business activities, emphasizing stakeholder engagement and decision-making based on IT and IS strategies. The report examines the traditional and modern approaches to IS/IT governance, including ITIL and COBIT frameworks, and discusses the reasons behind the failure of EA initiatives, such as lack of sponsorship and poor communication. It also highlights the problems faced by practitioners and emphasizes the significance of stakeholder management in ensuring successful project outcomes and improved organizational performance. The report concludes by suggesting strategies to enhance practitioner abilities and improve stakeholder engagement, ultimately aiming to strengthen community connections and foster long-term positive relationships within the organization.

Running head: ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE, STRATEGY AND GOVERNANCE
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE, STRATEGY AND
GOVERNANCE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Review on IS governance literature
IS/IT governance
The main aim of having an effective governance strategy is that it offers effective way off
managing the system and ensures that the organization can perform all the activities efficiently
within the time. Information system governance helps in aligning the structure of business
activities. This helps in maintaining a proper strategy throughout the organization. Moreover it
becomes easy to manage the stakeholder’s engagement within the organization. The main focus
of IS/IT governance is to ensure that decision is made based on evaluating the use of IT and IS
strategy within the organization for the purpose of supporting the organization. In addition to
thin an effective governance strategy helps in implementing a better policy for the purpose of
achieving the plans. The main reason of having a proper IS governance is that it helps in making
effective decisions and will support the major investment of organization so that they can
achieve the goals set by the organization. With the help of an effective IT investment strategy it
becomes easy to determine whether the developed strategy is able to add value towards the
organization or not. Apart from this, it becomes essential for IS governance to focus on three
areas that are governance that will be able to make effective decisions for the purpose of
supporting the strategy implemented by organization and the goals that are set by organization
(Simon, Fischbach and Schoder 2014). Secondly the IS governance needs to have a proper
process for identifying the right people that will make decision for development of the process
within the organization. It is important to ensure that proper governance framework is being
implemented within the organizational structure so that it can ensure proper enforcement of roles
and responsibilities associated with decision making process. Information system also plays a
major role in storing the data within the organization so that it can be accessed by the employees

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of organization. The data that are stored within the information needs to be maintained
effectively so that it can ensure a reliable way of maintaining information within the
organization. This will help in decision making process and will ensure a better way of storing
the data within the system. With an effective governance strategy the leadership qualities of the
employees also increases and hence it ensures better working of the system. Apart from this the
elements that are associated with effective governance is that it will have effective way of
performing better communication. This also ensures better way of standardizing the data and
providing better transparency towards the information stored in the system. IS governance helps
in measuring proper results and responsibilities within the system so that it can offer better
support towards the organization (Van Grembergen and De Haes 2018). Apart from all these it
can be stated that the measurements associated with planned review has the ability to determine
the governance practices for ensuring better value towards the organization. The main purpose of
reviewing the concepts of IS governance is that it ensures better performance throughout the
organization.
While managing the IS/IT strategies it becomes essential to manage the governance
activities. This helps in developing a better relationship between the stakeholders and
practitioners. It becomes essential to maintain a proper relationship with stakeholders as these
plays a crucial role in managing the IS/IT strategy of the organization. It becomes essential to
ensure that the stakeholders are being identified effectively so that they can be assigned with
their roles. Involvement of stakeholders plays a major role in handling the IS/IT strategy
(Hermano and Martín-Cruz 2019). Once the stakeholders are being identified than it becomes
essential to keep the stakeholders updated about the changes that are made within the IS/IT
strategy of the organization so that they can perform better activity for the organization. In

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addition to this it is important for the management team to ensure that each concept is being
discussed with the major stakeholders so that they can perform the activities based on the needs
(Eskerod and Jepsen 2016). The main reason behind having main stakeholders is that it helps in
managing the activities performed by each members present within the organization.
Traditional way for dealing with IS/IT governance
According to the author earlier the IS/IT governance used to implement the strategy by
discussing the plans with team members. However this tends to be a time consuming process as
it involves getting proper approval from the supervisors and head of the organization. Apart from
this with the ITIL strategy management it becomes easy to perform the activities. The main
objective that is offered within this strategy is that it helps in assessing the services that are
offered for the purpose of enhancing the capabilities so that they can deliver a better strategy
towards the customers. The sub processes that are included within the ITIL strategy management
is having a proper control over the service strategy and executing effective service strategy that
will help in enhancing the activities (Mok, Shen and Yang 2015). This improves the business
planning process and also offers a better way of managing the strategy within the organization.
The COBIT strategy of managing IT/IS within the organization is based on five core principles
that helps in managing the stakeholders so that it becomes easy to manage the needs of the
stakeholders, covering integrated framework for the purpose of implementing within the
organization. This also enables a holistic approach and separates the functions of governance
from management. This also helps in providing better framework towards the organization that
helps in enhancing the performance (Karaman and Kurt 2015). The main difference between
ITIL framework and COBIT framework is that ITIL offers a framework for enabling the IT
services on the other hand the main purpose of using COBIT framework is to provide a better aid

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towards the enterprise of IT governance for the purpose of adding more value towards the
business process. With the help of these strategies within the organization it will become easy to
manage the task (Eskerod and Jepsen 2016). This will also ensure a better support towards the
users with the help of proper aiding methods. Thus modifying the traditional IT/IS strategy with
the present technology has the ability to enhance the performance skills.
IS/IT strategy failure
The main importance of implementing EA within the organization is to enhance the
performance of an organization. It aims at maximizing the productivity by providing better
agility towards the activities that takes place within the organization. Moreover it also offers a
better timeliness towards the products and services provided by the organization towards the
customers (Simon, Fischbach and Schoder 2014). This also helps in increasing the revenue and
reduces the cost. This has the ability to enhance the performance of an organization. However
there are several reasons that lead to the failure of EA architecture. The main reasons behind the
failure off IS/IT strategy are due to lack of sponsorship. There is a huge need to have proper
control over the supervisors so that it becomes easy to manage the activities that is taking place
within the organization. Apart from this the other reasons behind failure of IS/IIT strategy
includes promoting wrong person. This will impact the performance of the system (Rozanski and
Woods 2007). Thus it becomes essential to implement a proper knowledge for the purpose
understanding the performance. Sometimes it is observed that there is lack of communication
between major stakeholders that leads to impacting the organizational strategy. Sometimes it is
observed that there is a high lack in management process that leads to the failure of the system.
Thus the strategy needs to be developed effectively so that it can provide better results towards
the organization.

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Problems with practitioners
Stakeholder management will help in analyzing the main activities that are going on
within the organization. The stakeholders will be able to communicate effectively with other
people and will also ensure the strategy has been implemented successfully. With a better group
of stakeholders it will become easy to manage the activities. The main aim behind implementing
a proper IT strategy is that it will provide a better way of managing the performance of
organization. The solutions offered with IT strategy are to secure the performance of
organization. This offers a better way of managing the IT strategy and ensures that a proper risk
management strategy is being defined within the organization (Hermano and Martín-Cruz 2019).
The main reason behind implementing proper IS/IT strategy within the organization is that it
helps in bringing rapid changes within the organization, and helps in rapid growth of the
technologies. Stakeholder has the ability to influence the activities that is taking place within the
system. Stakeholder plays a major role in managing the infrastructure within the organization.
This also helps in making proper decision that will help performing the activities related with the
organization. Moreover the stakeholder engagement plays a major role as it helps in
strengthening the community connections by building a better long term positive relationship
between the stakeholders (Van Grembergen and De Haes 2018). This helps in managing the
activity for ensuring better performance of the organization. One of the reasons behind impacting
IS/IT strategy is that improper management between the stakeholders and practitioners.
Strategy for improving practitioners ability
Project stakeholders are important in making a project successful as it works for the
purpose of achieving its objectives and aims at meeting the expectations of the customers by
working based on the requirements (Simon, Fischbach and Schoder 2014). Stakeholders are

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basically referred to as the individuals that aims at focusing on the project objectives so that the
target set by the organization can be meet easily. In order to have an effective IT strategy within
the organization it becomes very much essential to have proper control over the organization.
Stakeholders are the main actors who are actively associated with the work of the project. The
project manager, project team members, and the managers from other departments in the
organization are stakeholders as well. The main reason behind having a proper strategy for
enhancing the functions within the organization is that it helps in managing the major activities
within the organization (Karaman and Kurt 2015). An effective IT/IS strategy will help in
managing the benefits associated with the organization thus it becomes important to have proper
value creation proves. The main objective behind managing stakeholder need is that it drives
benefits realization, ensures better risk optimization and ensures better optimization towards the
resources. The major ways in which stakeholder’s engagement can be improved are by actively
developing a relationship with the stakeholders so that they can easily achieve the target set by
organization. This is important to involve every stakeholder together so that they can perform
each activity efficiently. For every organization it becomes essential to manage the stakeholders
so that they can act accordingly for the purpose of managing the activities. This will help in
improving the system performance. The main reason behind managing the stakeholders
effectively is that it helps in removing the issues faced with managing the IT functions (Eskerod
and Jepsen 2016). However it can be stated that the stakeholders has the ability to develop a
project successfully or can break the project. The reason behind failure of a project is the
situation when stakeholder fails to satisfy the needs set by the clients. Moreover it can be stated
that the stakeholder engagement plays a key role in the management of IS/IT strategy as it helps
in strengthening the community connections by developing a better relationship between the

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stakeholders. This helps in managing the activity for ensuring better performance of the
organization. Thus after analyzing all the impacts and benefits it can be stated that proper
management of stakeholders becomes essential for the purpose of ensuring better growth of the
organization.

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References
Eskerod, P. and Jepsen, A.L., 2016. Project stakeholder management. Routledge.
Hermano, V. and Martín-Cruz, N., 2019. Expanding the Knowledge on Project Management
Standards: A Look into the PMBOK® with Dynamic Lenses. In Project Management and
Engineering Research (pp. 19-34). Springer, Cham.
Karaman, E. and Kurt, M., 2015. Comparison of project management methodologies: prince 2
versus PMBOK for it projects. Int. Journal of Applied Sciences and Engineering Research, 4(4).
Lankhorst, M.M., Iacob, M.E., and Jonkers, H. (2005).Enterprise Architecture at Work:
Modelling, Communication and Analysis. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Mok, K.Y., Shen, G.Q. and Yang, J., 2015. Stakeholder management studies in mega
construction projects: A review and future directions. International Journal of Project
Management, 33(2), pp.446-457.
Rozanski, N. and Woods, E. (2007). Software Systems Architecture – Working with Stakeholders
using Viewpoints and Perspectives. Upper Saddle River:Addison-Wesley.
Simon, D., Fischbach, K. and Schoder, D., 2014. Enterprise architecture management and its role
in corporate strategic management. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(1),
pp.5-42.
Van Grembergen, W. and De Haes, S., 2018. Introduction to the Minitrack on IT Governance
and its Mechanisms.