Last week I finally published the third document in the collection "EA Involvement In IT Governance": "Integrate EA With ITIL Service Portfolio Management." It follows the two previous documents "Integrate EA With Project Portfolio Management Governance" and "Integrate Enterprise Architecture With Application Portfolio Governance."

I say "finally" because most of the ideas for these documents were collected during the research Diego Lo Giudice and I did for Forrester's EA Forum 2010, nearly one year ago. If the ideas are quick to come, they sometimes take a long time to be realized in a document! I apologize to the customers who were waiting for the final document.

The goal of this collection of documents is to demonstrate typical EA involvement in IT governances — an area that is usually more or less "beyond" EA's scope. We also said in the EA Forum presentation that these potential involvements are not mandatory and highly depend on your particular EA objectives. EA involvement in IT governance should remain in line with the recommendation we made in Forrester report "Avoid The EA Governance Versus Agility Trap" and in which we still continue to believe: Governance is a lever to obtain nonshared (or even diverging) objectives. When objectives are shared, then governance is not required, and the approach should remain agile.

The question I am asking now is: Is there a need for additional coverage to connect EA with the rest of the IT decision-makers involving governance? For example:

·         EA and IT procurement?

·         EA and IT finance?

·         EA and IT security?

·         EA and risk management?

·         Other?

If yes, which one makes the most sense for you? Which one are you using, and does the connection require a reference model like the ones we published in the three previous documents? Which one would you be interested in? Would you agree to conduct an interview with us?

This project is for Q3/Q4 this year. If I do not receive any comments, I have many new subjects to address.


Henry