Scenario-based enterprise architecture - CIO’s strategy to respond to a change

Scenario-based planning is inevitable for an enterprise architect. The changing business models, organizational dynamics, and disruptive technology are some of the change agents that require enterprise architecture strategy to be agile enough to respond to these changes. The CIO.com has a post on a CIO's challenge on the enterprise architecture to respond to a possible change in the strategic direction due to a new CEO.

For CIOs, the key question is how to turn IT into an asset and a capability to support the business and not to become an IT bottleneck that everyone wants to avoid or circumvent. Strategic IT planning that is scenario-based, transparent policies, and appropriate governance could help the enterprise architecture from falling apart and build capabilities that serves the business needs and provides them with the competitive advantage.

To be tactical and strategic at the same time is what could make many CIOs successful. In my interaction with CIOs, I have found that some of their major concerns are organizational credibility and empowerment. CIO is often times seen as an inhibitor by the business people and it is CIO’s job to fix that perception. To be seen as a person who can respond to business needs quickly and pro-actively can go a long way to fix this perception. You cannot really plan for all the possible worst case scenarios but at least try to keep your strategy nimble and measures in place to react to the ones that you had not planned for and act ahead of time on the ones that you did plan for.