SWOT's wrong with our EA?

In order to evaluate the potential benefits of an EA approach at Bristol, it's important to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats imposed by our current information systems (data and applications) landscape (the As Is).

The following SWOT analysis is based upon my perception of our As Is position for data and applications. However, this analysis needs to be confirmed by a much wider stakeholder group.

Note that the following is draft and incomplete, and is only available to University of Bristol. All comments welcome:

SWOT for As Is architecture (UoB only)

FSD & STG

Met with Alex Hawker, programme manager for the JISC Flexible Delivery Programme. The programme is of interest and relevance because:

"This £2M programme aims to advance the agenda in architectural agility within and across institutions is higher and further education and to build alignment between institutional needs and its underlying technologies. "

With more defined aims:

1. Help universities and colleges to understand their evolving administrative and academic processes and requirements so they are able to make better use of their current systems, and fully understand the impact, cost and risk of change, and thereby identify what issues need to be addressed to better integrate their systems and to move to more appropriate and flexible modes of service delivery
   
2. Help universities and colleges proactively engage with suppliers of administrative and academic systems to identify FSD solutions to these evolving institutional/consortia/sectoral needs
   
3. Work in collaboration with suppliers of administrative and academic systems, informing them of the commercial advantages in offering SOA compliant systems to the sector, and to develop open systems and interfaces, and carry out pre-competitive R&D in collaboration with the sector so that their products are fit-for-purpose

One of the first activities for the programme has been to introduce sector involvement and establish the Strategic Technologies Group (STG) - the bringing together of representatives from individual educational institutions, and across institutional consortia, who wish to share, explore and invest in technical solutions that support improved and flexible ways of planning and providing administrative and academic services.

Joining the STG has many benefits:

• A community in which to collaborate; to share experiences, knowledge, lessons learnt, common issues and challenges, and good practice solutions with others
• A framework in which to form cross-institutional partnerships
• Managed engagement and partnering with suppliers of administrative and academic systems to maximise the market potential for their systems and services
• Improved understanding of your administrative and academic areas of concern and requirements for supporting ICT systems, and of the impact, cost and risk of changing technical systems, supporting better use of current systems and more informed purchasing decisions for new ones
• Access to support, guidance and training
• JISC funding

Initially, I will look to join University of Bristol as an Explorer Member, which will give us access to the programme's community and activities, and £5k of funding.

In return, I have agreed to investigate the creation of a 'cluster' group to explore the 'Business Case for EA' and how to communicate to this to senior management.

IT Governance - A prerequisite to EA

It's clear that moving towards the coordinated development of integrated, service-oriented information and application systems, will require decisions about IT systems development to be made in a coordinated way.

Bristol has suffered in the past from a disconnected decision making process which for has resulted in piecemeal application development, little thought towards infrastructural software (Identity Management, Document Management, etc.), and tactical system integration.

However, things are changing for the better - A new IT Governance framework has been designed and (mostly) implemented:

This is very timely as we are embarking on a Support Process Review (BPM) exercise that will most likely introduce some significant new systems to support any new organisation and changed processes.

In the new IT Governance framework, the Programme Management group has the role of coordinating business cases and managing dependencies. It will be this group that advises the Programme Executive on architectural matters, ensuring that decisions aren't made in isolation from the information systems landscape of the University as a whole (the enterprise).

The Programme Management group will itself be supported by the ISYS Applications/Systems Development group, which will have responsibility for technical direction for data and applications to support the emerging business change requirements, whilst also feeding technology requirements to the ISYS Infrastructure group.

My aim before moving forwards with EA, is to line-up the objectives and communications paths of the ISYS Applications/Systems Development group with the new Programme Management group and the ISYS Infrastructure group.

Why?

This blog has been created to keep track of the University of Bristol and my exploration of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) approach.

The vision is that an EA approach will support the creation of an efficient, innovative and agile University, through the coordinated development of integrated, service-oriented information and application systems.

This vision will be achieved by assessing the University’s evolving organisation, administrative and academic processes and requirements, and developing an EA for data, applications and technology (infrastructure). Thus enabling the University to make better use of its current systems, fully understand the impact, cost and risk of change, and identifying what issues need to be addressed to better integrate its systems and to move to more efficient and flexible modes of service delivery