A Leadership Approach to Successful Digital Transformation Using Enterprise Architecture

Abstract

Digital transformation has been a focus of public and private sectors to both improve and sustain business value by leveraging rapidly evolving technology. Digital technology is ubiquitous and inter-connected, changing the face of business, government and society through the creation of new industries, with automation replacing two thirds of existing jobs. The challenge is that most digital transformation efforts fail, mainly due to inadequate leadership and management as well as failure to accept that it is a multi-disciplinary problem. Another challenge is to distinguish between digital transformation (DT) and digitization where the former is based on a customer-centric value proposition and the latter focuses on cost-cutting and operational excellence. This difference also highlights the business/technology divide where the former is mainly DT and the latter is mainly digitization. The challenge addressed in this thesis is how to obtain management acceptance that digital transformation is multi-disciplinary and to make recommendations with respect to how best to achieve DT goals. The research methods followed is a blend of participatory action research (PAR), case study analysis and literature analysis. The principal research findings are that there is no single, management methodology that can increase the chances of DT success but that a modified form of enterprise architecture (EA) that collaboratively interacts with the other management frameworks can likely provide a solid foundation to effectively achieve DT. The thesis consists of an assessment of the current methodologies, four articles that each discuss an area to support effective DT, followed by a request for change (RFC) to up-date the TOGAF 9 EA framework standard. TOGAF was selected due to its pervasive usage globally (80% of Fortune 50 and 60% of Fortune 500). The RFC accommodated both the concepts raised in the articles and other innovations highlighted in the literature review and assessment. The thesis concludes that enterprise architecture is a key business technique that al-lows the sharing of core decision support information across the enterprise, enabling all management frameworks, especially those on the technology-management divide, to collaboratively realize digital transformation.