When you step back and look at everything an EA does, I wonder at its core, is it all about that “infamous” roadmap?

I love the attached YouTube video – the word Enterprise Architecture isn’t mentioned once.

It’s all about the what, how and why of roadmapping.

When you step back from all the technical jargon and perspectives that many “architects” have – the one overriding aspect that the executive team benefit from most is the overall and multiple roadmaps that the work of an EA creates.

It’s the core artifact that

* provides context to enable multi year planning decisions to be made from a critical, creative and strategic perspective;

* enables the multi year plan to be looked at from multiple points of view – people, data, technology.

* provides a baseline that can be used to run scenarios and support risk assessments

* gives everyone across the business a view of the “what will need to change “ to deliver on the annual and multi year plan.

Watching the YouTube video – what strikes me is how inclusive and collaborative the pulling together of a roadmap should be … maybe in the past the EA could have been viewed as too insular and too specialist and not engaging enough.

The roadmaps are not at the solution level, they are at the “direction of travel” level.

From an EA perspective the roadmap should show the complexity and scale of the changes implied within the different roadmaps with the consequences and risks that will need to be addressed.

There is an absolute need to include operational managers and technical solution architects to provide assessments of complexity and effort to be able to execute on the roadmap but Id suggest you don’t need the detailed solutions at the roadmapping stage.

The more an EA is seen as the facilitator to drive the participative and engaging sessions with business experts, to join up the dots and to pull out the different points of view to identify the sweet spots for change the better.

How many roadmaps are you tracking across the business right now?