At Wells Fargo, technology alone does not create competitive advantage. What's more important to the company is the creativity and speed with which technology benefits the customer. Wells Fargo also recognizes that business and technology capabilities will continue to change over time. The company will need to adapt to those changes in order to sustain superior service delivery.
Established in 2004, the Living Target Architecture (LTA) is one way Wells Fargo's EA group helps ensure the company adapts to business and technology changes. LTA is defined as a set of key deliverables for the Wells Fargo Architecture Program. It clearly describes the target architecture of a business system, line of business, division, enterprise, or technology solution within the company. The LTA is comprised of key technology and architecture information necessary to describe the target model and specific business objectives this target expects to achieve within a given timeframe.
In 2009, after the Wachovia merger, Wells Fargo took a fresh look at this critical architectural asset to ensure a common approach to business and technology objectives, enabling customers to control when, where, and how they want to be served. To do so, a team was assembled from both legacy EA organizations and then divided into subteams focused on LTA content, deployment, and process. The intent was to create guidelines for the types of information needed, leaving LTA formatting and media selection to the line-of-business architects.
In addition to revalidating the value proposition -- and fostering the understanding and availability of LTAs across the architectural and development communities -- the LTA refresh resulted in several tangible business benefits. Most helpful was creating a clear "line of sight" between the business needs and strategies for the IT implementations. Architects can now describe the status and direction of Wells Fargo technology solutions as well as the underlying technology and roadmaps, all invaluable to planning and budgeting activities.
Although LTAs are primarily used within the Wells Fargo EA program and architecture community, the information in the LTAs has a broad reach: It's accessed and used by executive management, lines of business, and designers, emphasizing the collaborative efforts around the refresh project.
"This refresh demonstrates great business focus, awareness, and linkage to technology," Marsh said. "The project has good sustainability with its common approaches, standards and communication. The LTAs seem to work and are worthy of further study by aspiring EAs."
Acknowledgements
Forrester partnered with several senior Enterprise Architecture professionals, who are members of Forrester's Enterprise Architecture Council, in order to review and evaluate the Enterprise Architecture Award submissions. The Enterprise Architecture member-judges included:
Jan-Paul Buijs MSc MBA
Lead CIO Office at RWE Essent
Headquartered in Arnhem, The Netherlands
Bob Marsh
Architecture Consultant at Friends Provident
(Former Head of Strategies and Architecture at Friends Provident)
Headquartered in London, England
Doug Mutart
Chief Architect at OnStar by General Motors
Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan
This story, "The 2010 Enterprise Architecture Awards," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. See more InfoWorld awards at InfoWorld.com.
