Translating Business Strategy to Enterprise Architecture

I recently concluded a consulting assignment to define Future (after M&A) enterprise Architecture for a health insurance company, who acquired another company with considerable overlap in business.

While it was ‘relatively’ easier to come up future IT architecture by analyzing future needs and system overlap, it was quite challenging to present to executive board (completely non-technical with attention span of max 5 mins) and explain how exactly it maps to their business strategy. We had generated loads of detailed EA artifacts, however, challenge was to put all this together in just couple of slides and create a strong business case to move forward.

I found TOGAF’s Content Metamodel very useful in creating this linkage. I identified strategy business themes and for each business theme, and developed a view similar to content metamodel to link business strategy to required business services first, and then further to changes required in business process & IT systems.

A quick glance at artifacts is as shown -