Watson and Swackhamer aren't alone in turning to the calculator when times get tight. Indeed, business users and IT executives alike will need to sharpen their accounting skills as they negotiate upcoming technology investments. "In the next year at least, we're going to see architecture based strictly on numbers," says Barry Lovalvo, CTO at Armeta Financial, a Dallas start-up that provides enterprise software solutions for open finance. "The [finance] people are sitting down with a hangover right now. They're doing a Sunday morning Oh my gosh, what have we done here?' routine."
The point behind discounted cash flow and other economic exercises isn't to wield ironfisted control over unruly users. It's to ensure that off-list projects are on target with corporate goals. CIOs are unanimous in saying that, this time around, business alignment is the primary litmus test for IT expenditures.
"I start by asking: What does the business case need that the current architecture can't deliver?'," Watson says. "If someone asks for Internet sales rather than brick-and- mortar, we don't say: How do we stop this?' We say: That's an interesting business discussion; we may have to adapt and see where it goes'."
That type of dialogue isn't an adjunct to architecture: it should be the architecture, says Richard Buchanan, vice president of enterprise architecture strategies at Meta Group (US). "Architecture isn't a thing; it's a process. The architecture team is the steward of the logic that describes the value of any investment in business strategic terms." In practical terms, Buchanan says, CIOs should require business units to enunciate a typical cost-benefit analysis for any new technology investment. On the benefit side, that means determining how an application will help a company gain market share from its competitors, for example. On the cost side, that means factoring in not just purchase and maintenance price, but the price of added complexity or the cost of not being able to adapt as rapidly, says Buchanan.
"When someone says: I need this application or this infrastructure capability', you need to force them through a Socratic dialogue," Buchanan says. "They need to tell the whole story: I need this application because I need this information because I need to support this business strategy because otherwise our business goal won't be achievable'." If engaging would-be architecture anarchists in a Socratic dialogue sounds like a far cry from presiding over dusty three-ring binders filled with outdated product lists, that's the way it should be, Buchanan says. "Enterprise architecture has no value in and of itself," he points out. "All of the work that's done has to be linked to business strategic goals. That's the job of the CIO."
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