Living Architecture Overview

The majority of successful enterprises have a clear blueprint of how their businesses operate. From bricks and mortar right the way through to IT and communications, investments, requirements down to the people within. However, very few treat this blue print for success as a living entity. Decisions are made about structures and investments, documented and simply filed away to gather dust. As soon as something upsets the balance of the business many find themselves scrambling to address the unknown.

Just because the business may have changed over the last decade doesn’t necessarily mean that everything it has been founded on is now defunct. There is a need to maintain and evolve the business’s requirements and needs by taking a more proactive approach to operations, the portfolio, customers and the future through capability led planning. It’s about creating a living architecture that can cope with the potential impact of the unknown.

A living architecture enables the business and its stakeholders to plan ahead, invest and create an enterprise that can cope with the critical events that are yet to impact it. For example, mergers and acquisitions can severely impair operations across both organisations as clashing IT architectures and approaches fail to fuse together yet some simple foresight into make the right and most adaptable investments will ensure that business is dynamic enough to remain effective and efficient despite any unforeseen changes.