PMcrunch

[tag]Enterprise architecture[/tag] is a key consideration in [tag]portfolio management[/tag] in the IT arena.  One major issue related to portfolio management involves the issue of putting into place a process for creating enterprise architecture.  This is extremely important to the Army, CIO G6, and is extremely complex to do for a number of reasons.

One major obstacle is that it is quite challenging to get literally hundreds of programs corralled so as to gather consistent and cohesive requirements.  This requires willing participation from independent programs that, while they may have legislative pressures to cooperate, may not necessarily have the funding or internal resources to do as good a job as desired.  Also, due to the long established history of many of the programs, they may have such strongly embedded cultures and ways of doing things, that it is difficult to control effectively.

Another major obstacle involves that of developing overall enterprise architecture across all military systems.  Often other organizations within the government - more than one - produce the architecture products which as a whole represent the enterprise architecture.  This alone often defeats the purpose or object of enterprise architecture, and can make it that much more difficult to produce a cohesive whole.  Like IT organizations in industry, G6 has its challenges reining in practices outside of its organization and in the main line production organizations.

Adding to the above is the constantly shifting technology environment, which undermines assumptions all the time.  Technology shifts can occur in as little as 3 month timeframes, whereas budgeting, planning, and legislative cycles are not so rapid.  This can cause out of sync movements within the management structure of the organization.

So, the challenges involve:  [tag]management process[/tag], organization control or jurisdiction, [tag]technology change[/tag], legacy systems,…