Jiri’s Notepad

CIO.COM on enterprise architecture:

Bill Godfrey, CIO of Dow Jones, remembers how his first enterprise architect rode into town in 1999-confident, aggressive; one could almost hear his spurs jingle-jangle. “I started by hiring a chief architect-a sheriff with the big badge and the big chair and all the PowerPoint decks that money could buy,” Godfrey recalls.”It proved to be untenable.”

[…]

He abolished the chief architect job and, in 2001, designed a federated structure of architects from the different business units, working together to share best practices and coordinate architecture decisions across the company. Godfrey still wanted the same things, but he replaced the big badge and PowerPoint slides with cooperation and brown bag lunches.

That didn’t work either.

[…]

Last June, Godfrey, a determined man, launched Enterprise Architecture Version 3.0, which combines elements of both approaches. He created what he calls the Architecture Zoning Board, run by a vice president of IT who reports directly to Godfrey, and three architects and seven senior technologists who manage the still-developing architecture.

[…]
Godfrey has invested the group with a lot of authority. Anyone at Dow Jones who wants to spend more than $250,000 on a project must get approval from the architecture group. To get the money, project leaders have to submit to a review process in which Godfrey’s architects decide whether the project’s goals and technology fit into Dow Jones’s overall business and technology strategy.