Enterprise Architecture at Sysco Foods
Session 2301
This session was directed solely at Enterprise Architecture (EA). The Speaker, E. Suarez, did an excellent job at telling us what they were doing with EA at Sysco, so if you are new to EA and need a clear example of what they are starting to provide their business, the value and return on the investment, this session pretty much summarized all of that. WARNING! It gets quite technical with some detailed architecture examples and discussion around features that are good and bad and what tools they use.
So, to give you a more complete summary, I took some notes during the session:
With only 6 architects, they cannot reach everyone and all applications, which number over 5000, if you include all the little excel apps that are used to manage small departments.
Business transformation group helps reach business SME’s, and note the use of the title. They are doing EA from a BT group. Very important to get sponsorship and meetings with other areas.
Functional teams work in isolation, so finding and meeting with them is a challenge.
Strategy is key component that is produced from their effort. What happens when you change X? How does that affect the business and processes?
Need connections defined between groups, process, as a quick starting point so it is easier to derive impact of processes and generate user interaction.
Business transform needs to align and drive IT transformation, not the other way around. They will hopefully move hand in hand, but if IT drives or leads too far, then the business will not see the full value.
architect generates artifacts… Models give single view of artifacts
Pick a framework that integrates with methodology transformation will use. They used TOGAF, well, a subset called EAF from ARIS.
Migrated from system architect to arris for tooling due to a business decision to align with the SAP Solution Manager for process evaluation and simulation.
They focused on infrastructure diagrams at first and needed a process tool to support SAP development.
Leveraged excel app list with Visio integration to show an end to end business model.
Only tried to capture 60% of highest impact apps in org.
Discovered need for mdm and need for data distribution control due to sharing with Customer and supplier systems.
Connect a design object to an excel row to create more detail. This spreadsheet flows around the organization more readily.
Quick wins and sufficient views are critical for the areas you are interacting. If they do not see something regularly and you show progress, their support can be lost.
Think about maintenance and usability to help drive strategic management
Reports are mainly excel lists of apps, process and artifact state
Coloring coding from models flow to reports
Some very detailed TRm diagrams for package mods for SAP ecc changes
ran out of time, keynote is starting this morning.
Hope this helps, have a great day!