Organizational Need
There are many major factors that any company needs to consider from an organizational perspective. Some of those include need, size, complexity, budget, structure and the list goes on. It all starts with what are you trying to solve. As I’ve already said, it’s critical to use the right tool to facilitate the right solution. There are common problems that the solutions are facilitated by tools, but are not solved by tools This is an important principle to reflect on when selecting a tool.
The Institute for Enterprise Architecture sets a baseline for evaluating tools against a few critical parameters. These parameters are scored on a Likert scale taking into account the critical roles within the organization against desirable factors that the tool would provide.
Additionally there are other factors to take into account. Those include cost and interoperability, whereas it is important that the tool selection does not drive the how it is used. The cost of a product in an enterprise setting can and does drive how it is used, like how many people can access the models, is there a viewer, etc… This can become limiting to your EA initiatives and the capabilities that you are seeking to leverage for communication.
There is another angle to evaluate EA based software and that is against any frameworks or operational methodologies that are ingrained in the practice. Inherent support for these frameworks and/or methodologies is crucial. TOGAF and Archimate are common frameworks that tools tend to address, but when seeking to facilitate a solution in one aspect, causing another by having to codify your business into a tool can be another and daunting at that. All in all, choosing the right tool for the enterprise is more than selecting a known commodity and is best approached keeping the complexities of your organization and goals in focus.
