IT Management as part of Enterprise Architects role

IT Management

This section is intended to describe the IT Management briefly in the context of the EA field, the historical perspective, and timeframe. The responsibility of IT Management is multifaceted, where quite a few transformational assignments are delegated since IT Management to a certain degree is considered as transformational in itself. The Enterprise Architect is commonly employed by the IT (department) domain, and by then, a member of this group.

IT Management is regularly considered as the coordinating management of the business and IT development. IT Management is intended to cope with both the present and the future to come. IT Management is often comprehended as dealing with complexity (Magoulas & Pessi, 1998). For some, the challenge comprises the complexity in the IT domain by the increased number of concurrent systems utilized by the organization (Hausman, 2011). For others, complexity in the business domain, such as globalization, is the main challenge (Baines & Ursah, 2009). For some, IT Management is mainly to monitor and to be in control (Lazic, 2013) of the supportive function within the organization with a primary focus to lower the IT related costs (Buchta et al., 2007) by issuing strategic maxims (Broadbent & Weill, 1997). For others, the IT Management is considered as a driver for a future business to come (Ciborra, 2001). IT Management is expected to be a shared responsibility among the business and IT leaders (Boynton et al., 1992). The borderline between local autonomy and centralized ownership of data is always on the agenda to be discussed while the considerations about the benefits and the costs are to be evaluated (Barton, 2003). The modern IT Management has two major assignments: a) Take care of the IT operation in an aim for sustainable efficiency and cost; and b) to assist the organization in strategic initiatives, involving guidance for utilization of affordable technology and technology as a driver for organizational and business development (Pessi, 2009).

After this brief orientation of the IT Management in general, the next subsection will position the Information Technology and its management.

Management and IT – The Information Technology evolution

The IT is a relatively new to the business domain, considering a pronounced penetration of the typical organization. New challenges in both social patterns and technology development have forced organizations to update the organizational knowledge base. In the emerging light of IS/IT impacting the society, business, and individuals, the function of EA has become more crucial than in the past, where the Enterprise Architect has a dominating position in coordinating this organizational knowledge in an evolutionary tradition and not least, the consideration of how this knowledge could best serve the organization. The architect’s work field is discovered to be frequently related to design patterns and interoperability.

The evolution of the computerized information technology has its roots in the 1960 decade where the mainframe computing were introduced to organizations of scale (Panigrahy, 2010). The organizational structure had that far been dominated by machine bureaucracy (Mintzberg, 1979). For the period to come from 1960 and on, the IT evolution could be distinguished divided into three main eras: The Data Processing era from year 1960 to mid of 1980; the IT or micro era from year 1980 to mid-1990; and the Network or Unified era from mid-1990 and on (Austin et al., 2009). Other authors assign the big data era (Wang et al., 2015) to the contemporary evolution of management of IT, anticipating a radical change in management thinking (Nie, 2014).

Figure 7. The level of impact from Information Technology in the evolutionary perspective.

Figure 7 is intended to depicture the effects of Information Technology on the organization during the era of Data Processing, IT, Network, and Big data.

Information Technology impact on the organization in an evolutionary perspective

The information technology entrance in the business has evolved for about 50 years. The initial step was faltering, and for 20 years, the impact on the organization was peripheral. If an organization had computerized capacity, this force was dedicated a delimited number of users. Since thirty years, the number of users has increased drastically, entering the IT era, where the penetration of the technology had become significant. The impact of Information Technology on stakeholder groups such as the senior management, the managers, and users within the IT domain is expecting to evolve (Aerts et al., 2003) through the eras, where this impact could be considered as core technology in most business entering the network era (Mutsaers et al., 1998).

Information Technology’s impact on	Data Processing era	IT era	The Network/ Unified era
Senior Management	Low profile, to be delegated to specialists.	The SM reveals increasing cost, but question the benefits from IT	Since ICT is regarded as core, SM is always involved in strategic IT topics.
Business domain	Low	Mid	High
IT domain	Specialists, focus knowledge about the technical artifacts	Still specialists within the IT domain. Squinting the business needs	Deep knowledge about the business and strategic IT is essential.

Table 1. Information Technology’s impact on stakeholder domains.

The ingress of the architecture in the field of IS/IT

The request to structure the IS/IT business was emerging in early 1980. Concurrently, the emerging outlook to identify Information Technology as an enabler started to grow. While the market structure was under reconstruction, splitting large units into divisions and business units, the appearance of the business process re-engineering was established (Aerts et al., 2003). The architecture in itself had been prevalent for a long time, although named differently (Perks & Beveridge, 2004). J.A Zachman published in 1987 a pioneered concept as the first release of the Enterprise Architecture in a journal (Zachman, 1987). Zachman’s vision was a holistic approach that should gain the ability for the IS/IT and to support investment aims in increased value for the business due to better business performance (Sessions, 2007).

The business and managerial impact on Information Technology in evolution and interaction

A business is built upon two important cornerstones: strategic identity and behavior (Enquist et al., 2001) and could be described as a place where humans and technology in cooperation, virtually or physically, will fulfill a particular goal (Burnes, 2009). To obtain this objective, humans and technology are delegated tasks (Enquist et al., 2001). To coordinate these tasks, a group of people is organized in teams to supervise actions taken to obtain the business’s goal. Organizational management is primarily presumed to act stabilizing on the primary target to maintain equilibrium for the organization, contrasting leadership with a certain degree of destabilizing effort to obtain a business change (Burnes, 2009). The stable organization has a substantial degree of transactional leadership, contrasting the rapidly evolving business, which has the transformational leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2006). For the IS/IT business, transformational management and leadership are essential (Cho et al., 2011), likewise for the R&D innovation teams (Eisenbeiß & Boerner, 2010). In addition, the top management style of leadership will affect and foster the organization in general in an entrepreneurial manner (Chen et al., 2014) utilizing accurate communication channels in strategic communication (Men, 2014). Miller’s (1993) research observes the successful business to be stabilized through simplicity, neglecting to explore new knowledge, which over time will revoke the business. In this light, the business identity and the managerial style will request for a suitable mix of transformational and transactional leadership (Hambley et al., 2007), obeying organizational learning (Argyris, 1977) and collaboration (Bhalla, 2011) in an effort for new inventions and innovation (Roberts, 2007), and in particularly architectural innovations (Henderson & Clark, 1990).

Business impact on Information Technology	Data Processing era	IT era	The Network/ Unified era
Senior Management	Requested on demand	Evolving	Ubiquitous
Business domain	Low	Mid	High
IT domain	Less knowledge about the business was required	Enough business knowledge to understand the inquiry	Deep knowledge about the business is vital.

Table 2. Business & managerial impact on Information Technology.

In summary of this subsection, the impact of Information Technology has increased during the last decades, which in addition have forced the business domain and IT domain, involving the senior management of the business, to evaluate and behave differently. Subsequently, the business has a certain impact on the Information Technology, requesting for new technology. This new technology will in turn affect the IT Management, which the next subsection describes.

IT Management in an Outlook

The future IT Management is expected to deal with several areas where the Enterprise Architect is anticipated to participate. Thus, the variety of the architect’s knowledgebase is considered as multi-disciplinary, complex, and challenging. Nevertheless, there is a certain need for design pattern and interoperability requested mainly from the IS/IT infrastructure, the challenges in human interactions should not be disregarded.

Some authors assess the IT domain as being assimilated by the organization itself within a close future where no clear borderline, separating the business from the IT domain, is anticipated in the future organization (Steiber, 2014). One challenge for the future organization is to coordinate the business domain and IT domain in an effort to obtain cultural assimilation (Langer & Yorks, 2013). At this state, the office politics is essential to be interpreted correctly (Armstrong, 2014) to coordinate various groups and individuals’ mindset regarding trends, ideas, shift in context and level of innovation (Langer & Yorks, 2013). As a prediction of the future IT Management to come, where the IT Management has evolved into executive technology leadership, has been envisaged by Langer & Yorks (2013) and will for example, involve the following organizational areas to be considered, described in figure 8.

Figure 8. The concluded and anticipated challenges of IT Management.

Figure 8, depicture the anticipated work field for the Enterprise Architect as a member of the IT Management in a merged and interpreted forthcoming subjects, sourced by Langer & Yorks (2013). The Enterprise Architect’s knowledgebase need to be a wide-ranging mix of knowledge and experience from technology, business, and social interactions, in an aim to drive the business forward, such as:

Technology-driven artefacts: Equipment & Infrastructure (Minoli, 2008; Weill & Broadbent, 2009); Internet of Things (daCosta, 2014); and Security and Intelligence (Bosworth et al., 2009; Shostack, 2014; Woody, 2013).

Business-driven artefacts: Legal and regulatory compliances (Larouche & Cserne, 2013; Varella, 2014); Shared Services in an effort to reduce cost/increase availability (Kris & Fahy, 2003; Mangano, 2010; Schwarz, 2014); Virtual Offices and Communications (Langer & Yorks, 2013), Strategic Information impacting sales, as BI (Laursen & Thorlund, 2010) or Big Data (Heisterberg & Verma, 2014); and Business Process Integration (Langer & Yorks, 2013).

Social interactions: Talent Management (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010); Inventions, Co-creation of innovation (Ozcan & Ramaswamy, 2014) and Architectural Innovation (Henderson & Clark, 1990); and Mobility (Andriessen & Vartiainen, 2006; Langer & Yorks, 2013).

Since IT Management is intended to transform in the future, the position of the Enterprise Architect is essential involving a shift in social interaction companioned by business and technology-driven artefacts. The next subsection will discuss IT Governance.

Goto IT Governance

References

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Andriessen, J. H. E., & Vartiainen, M. (2006). Mobile virtual work: a new paradigm? New York; Berlin: Springer.

Argyris, C. (1977). Double loop learning in organizations. Harvard Business Review, Sep/Oct 1977, Vol. 55, Issue 5, ss: 115-125.

Armstrong, M. (2014). How to be an even better manager: a complete A-Z of proven techniques and essential skills, ninth edition. London; Philadelphia: Kogan Page.

Austin, R. D., O’Donnell, S., & Nolan, R. L. (2009). The adventures of an IT leader. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press.

Baines, H. V., & Ursah, J. R. (2009). Globalization: understanding, management, and effects. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Barton, R. A. (2003). Global IT management: a practical approach.

Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership. Mahwah, N.J; London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bhalla, G. (2011). Collaboration and Co-creation: New Platforms for Marketing and Innovation: Springer Science + Business Media.

Bosworth, S., Kabay, M. E., & Whyne, E. (2009). Computer security handbook. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.