And… don’t forget enterprise politics!
You might be the brilliant architect in the world with firm grasp of architecture and solutions but you doomed to be failed if you will neglect the human aspect of enterprise. Yes, enterprises based on people and when dealing with people politic always involve. To success with enterprise architecture process the management support is not enough! You need key workers support, even active support, to win!
When I start new architecture process first I’m taking time to meet with workers and to find out who are the leading forces in the IT/Business enterprise world. Those people are already leaders that other workers follow, so it worth time and effort to convince them and share them in the architecture process.
My first stage is to meet them face by face and try to see how they react to my thoughts. If they seem reserved form my thoughts I pay time to try and convince them or to reach common denominator. There isn’t any practical decision involved in those discussions, just to make sure that we have the same “view”.
The second stage is to form architecture groups that will discuss and suggest business/information/system/infrastructure architecture. Architecture that suggest by group of enterprise leaders will be more easily accept and more important adopt by all other enterprise workers. Therefore identifying those key workers is one of the most important tasks when you start enterprise architecture.