Enterprise Architecture Technical Debt Classification Model
This tool allows to visualize the impact of Technical Debt on Enterprise Architecture (EA) level on the business and IT landscape of your organization. This tool is based on the research done during my master thesis on technical debt and Enterprise Architecture in order to obtain the degree of Master of Science in Enterprise Architecture at the IC Institute.
The different types of Enterprise Architecture Technical Debt (abbreviated as EATD) are grouped per EATD domain (Technology, Systems, Processes, Information and People & Organization). And are further per EATD category (Duplication, Integration, Lifecycle Management, Quality, Shadow IT and Strategic Misalignment). There is a slider for each EATD type that allows to indicate the impact on your organization ranging from 0% to 100%: 0% means no impact while 100% means that your organizing is completely impacted by this type of EATD.
The tool will based on the values you provide with the sliders assess to which extend your organizations business and IT landscape is impacted by EATD. It will also assess the domains and categories in which you are the most impacted by EATD.
In case you are looking for strategic advice and guidance on the subject of Enterprise Architecture Technical Debt, don't hesitate to get in touch with me. You can contact me through my LinkedIn profile:
| ID | Domain | Category | Label | Description | Severity | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TECH.01 | Technology | Lifecycle Management | Legacy Infrastructure Components | The use of infrastructure components that are marked as 'legacy'. | Medium | |
| TECH.02 | Technology | Lifecycle Management | Use of no longer supported infrastructure components | The use of infrastructure components that are no longer supported by their vendors. | High | |
| TECH.03 | Technology | Lifecycle Management | Use of old open-source infrastructure components | The use of older versions of open-source infrastructure components that are no longer supported by the open source community | Medium | |
| TECH.04 | Technology | Lifecycle Management | Dependency on niche infrastructure components | The use of a niche infrastructure components or components from niche vendors | Low | |
| TECH.05 | Technology | Lifecycle Management | No fit-for-use use of infrastructure components | The 'abuse' of infrastructure components for features that they were not intended for. | Medium | |
| TECH.06 | Technology | Duplication | Overlapping Infrastructure capabilities in the Infrastructure catalogue | Multiple capabilities in the infrastructure catalogue that offer the same or very similar capabilities. Lack of standardization. | High | |
| TECH.07 | Technology | Shadow IT | Non-IT managed (cloud) Infrastructure Components | The use of infrastructure components that not being managed by the IT department. | Low | |
| TECH.08 | Technology | Strategic Misalignment | Hard to decommission centralized critical infrastructure foundations | Infrastructure components on which a large part of the rest of the IT Landscape is dependent, or makes use of and whose replacement effort is high per component and at least O(n) with the number of components depending on it. | High | |
| TECH.09 | Technology | Strategic Misalignment | Chokepoint centralized critical infrastructure foundations | Centralized Infrastructure components with many requests to be connected with and where the effort to connect is high while the number of people to manage is low, leading to long and unpredictable implementation durations. | High | |
| TECH.10 | Technology | Quality | Use of obscure technologies not well supported in the market | Technologies with limited skills and support in the market in areas with high impact. | Medium | |
| TECH.11 | Technology | Quality | Lack of documentation | Implementation without documentation creating immediate servicing and evolution risks. | High | |
| TECH.12 | Technology | Strategic Misalignment | Lack of insight into vendor roadmaps | Lack of insight into product roadmaps can lead to wrong assumption about a product's status. | Medium | |
| SYS.01 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Legacy Applications | Applications that are no longer actively used by the end-users, but that are not yet decommissioned. Or applications of which a majority of the capabilities were migrated to new applications, but not yet all capabilities. | Medium | |
| SYS.02 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Legacy Development Technology | The use of legacy programming languages, frameworks and tools to build new applications. | Medium/High | |
| SYS.03 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | No Longer supported Application Development Technology | The use of programming languages, frameworks and tools to build or maintain application components that are no longer supported by their vendors. | High | |
| SYS.04 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | No longer supported Software Packages | The use of applications that are no longer supported by their vendors. | High | |
| SYS.05 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Dependency on niche application development technology | The use of a niche programming languages, frameworks or tools to build applications. | Medium | |
| SYS.06 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Dependency on niche software packages | The use of a niche software packages or software packages from niche vendors | Medium | |
| SYS.07 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Dependency on niche SaaS | The use of a niche SaaS software or SaaS software from niche vendors | Medium | |
| SYS.08 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | No fit-for-use use of SaaS | The 'abuse' of SaaS for features that they were not intended for. | Medium | |
| SYS.09 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | No fit-for-use use of Software Packages | The 'abuse' of packages for features that they were not intended for. | Medium | |
| SYS.10 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | No fit-for-use use of Development Technology | The 'abuse' of development technology for features that they were not intended for. | Medium | |
| SYS.11 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Heavy customized Software Packages | Packages that are heavily customized to support very specific requirements | High | |
| SYS.12 | Systems | Lifecycle Management | Heavy customized Development Technology | Development Technology (such as frameworks) that are heavily customized to support very specific requirements | Medium | |
| SYS.13 | Systems | Strategic Misalignment | Heavy custom development for business capabilities that are not considered strategic differentiators | A heavy focus on custom development for capabilities that are not identified as strategic differentiators | Medium | |
| SYS.14 | Systems | Strategic Misalignment | Improper mapping of Business Capabilities to Applications | Application components that contain capabilities that are not a good fit with the other capabilities offered by the application component | Medium | |
| SYS.15 | Systems | Strategic Misalignment | A heavy focus on tactical fixes instead of more long-term oriented solutions | Degrading quality of application components due to a heavy focus on tactical fixes above long-term fixes | High | |
| SYS.16 | Systems | Duplication | Applications with overlapping Capabilities | Multiple applications that have overlapping capabilities. The applications can custom build, software packages or SaaS | Medium | |
| SYS.17 | Systems | Duplication | Development Technology with overlapping capabilities | A wide variety of technologies within the landscape to support the development of application components; maybe too much technologies? | Low/Medium | |
| SYS.18 | Systems | Quality | Quality of an application not on par with the expected base level | The quality of an application that is below the allowed minimum quality level of the organization or for the specific domain to which the application belongs. | Medium/High | |
| SYS.19 | Systems | Shadow IT | Applications developed outside of the IT organization | The development of applications outside of the IT department, that subsequently have to be supported by IT after the first operational issues arise. | Medium/High | |
| SYS.20 | Systems | Shadow IT | Software Packages managed outside of the IT Organization | The hosting, configuration and management of software packages outside of the IT department without sufficient contractual, quality, confidential, regulatory, security or other guarantees that is required by the organization. | Medium/High | |
| SYS.21 | Systems | Integration | Proprietary Integration Protocols | Integrations between application components that are happening over custom build solutions. Making the integration with packages and SaaS applications more difficult | Medium | |
| SYS.22 | Systems | Integration | Legacy Integration Protocols | Interfaces to integrate with application components that are marked 'legacy'. Making the integration with modern technology more difficult. | Medium | |
| SYS.23 | Systems | Integration | Complex application integrations | A spaghetti mix of unmanaged point-to-point integrations between different application components. | High | |
| SYS.24 | Systems | Strategic Misalignment | Incoherent evolving IT landscape | Selection & implementations of new systems in a way that satisfies the immediate underlying business need but doesn't take the IT Landscape holistically into account leading over time to a misaligned and hard to evolve environment. | High | |
| SYS.25 | Systems | Strategic Misalignment | IT Landscape evolution lag with the organization | The IT Landscape does not follow the organizational changes leading to large inefficiencies in its usage by the evolving organization | High | |
| SYS.26 | Systems | Quality | Lack of documentation | Implementation without documentation creating immediate servicing and evolution risks. | High | |
| PRO.01 | Processes | Duplication | Duplicate or overlapping business processes | Multiple similar business processes. A situation potentially arisen from mergers or acquisitions. | Medium/High | |
| PRO.02 | Processes | Strategic Misalignment | Business Processes not "fit" for digitalization | Current existing Business Processes that are difficult to digitalize or that don't make sense to digitalize in their current form. | High | |
| PRO.03 | Processes | Quality | No formal defined business processes; the application code defines the business process | There are no formal defined business processes; the implementation within the application basically defines the business process. | Medium/High | |
| PRO.04 | Processes | Strategic Misalignment | Business Processes not in line with the needs of the organization | Business processes being in use that do not (enough) match the current needs of the organization. | High | |
| PRO.05 | Processes | Strategic Misalignment | Heavyweight IT processes | The IT processes are heavyweight and slow. They are slowing down the implementation of new systems. | High | |
| INF.01 | Information | Duplication | Duplicate Master Data Systems | Multiple Master data systems in charge of the same data sets. A situation potentially arisen from mergers or acquisitions. | Medium/High | |
| INF.02 | Information | Integration | No proper Master Data Systems | No proper 'master' data system. Multiple systems work on the data. | High | |
| INF.03 | Information | Lifecycle Management | Unused Data Sources and reports | Databases that are still running and reports are created but of which is expected that they are no longer used or aren't used in actuality. | Low | |
| INF.04 | Information | Quality | Lack of quality of the data | The quality of data that was polluted in the past or is still being polluted. Resulting in a degraded value of the data. Often manual input where it could be machine generated or predefined. | High | |
| INF.05 | Information | Quality | Inconsistent or improper defined information concepts | Information concepts are not properly defined resulting in more complex data integrations. | Medium/High | |
| INF.06 | Information | Quality | Suboptimal persisted data | Data that is not stored optimally for its purpose. For example relational data that is not store sufficiently normalized. Or trying to store unstructured data into a relational database. | Medium | |
| INF.07 | Information | Shadow IT | Data being managed by end-users without proper IT systems | Data that is only being managed in end-user controlled tools without any support of the IT organization | Medium | |
| INF.08 | Information | Strategic Misalignment | No proper strategy on the importance and usage of data. | Data is an important asset of the organization that should be handled with care and could be monetized with a proper vision and strategy. No clear strategy leads to scattered pieces of data, whereas consolidated data will lead to better information and insights. | High | |
| INF.09 | Information | Lifecycle Management | Lack of data governance and ownership | Lack of ownership of data results in a focus on only project-related quick-wins which are not necessarily better for the overall organization | Medium | |
| INF.10 | Information | Quality | Lack of documentation | Implementation without documentation creating immediate servicing and evolution risks. | High | |
| INF.11 | Information | Integration | Unclear boundaries and responsibilities between operational and informational data | Informational (BI/Data warehousing) and Operational systems are not closely governed, resulting in abuse of one or both systems. Eg. operational systems/process have wrong dependencies on informational data or reporting/information is done on top of operational systems (which are not up for this task). | Medium | |
| ORG.01 | People & Organization | Strategic Misalignment | An organization culture that is not fit to realize the business strategy | The culture of the organization that is preventing the efficient realization of a specific business strategy. | High | |
| ORG.02 | People & Organization | Strategic Misalignment | Lack of skills and competences | Not enough people in the organization with sufficient knowledge on the technologies, systems, processes and information used and processed. | High | |
| ORG.03 | People & Organization | Lifecycle Management | No proper knowledge available to provide support to the business process and systems | Often knowledge on older technologies disappear together when the older generation leaves the organization | Medium | |
| ORG.04 | People & Organization | Strategic Misalignment | No proper sourcing foreseen to tackle future investments | Next to a vision on future investment a proper sourcing methodology should follow the technology strategy. This can be linked to your first line in people and organization, but sourcing is different from culture | High | |
| ORG.05 | People & Organization | Strategic Misalignment | Lack of a proper alignment culture between business and IT | No proper alignment culture between business and IT: IT is not sufficiently prioritizing on the needs and the strategy of the business and/or business is not able or willing to describe their needs in a proper way to the IT. | High | |
| ORG.06 | People & Organization | Quality | Loss of institutional knowledge | Attrition of critical in-house knowledge (retirement, leaving) leading to decline in service quality, responsiveness, ability to change, progressive brittleness and prolonged service outages). Goes hand-in-hand with poor documentation. | Medium/High | |
| ORG.07 | People & Organization | Strategic Misalignment | Lack of knowledge to challenge suppliers and vendors | Not enough knowledge available within the organization to challenge the solutions and the cost of suppliers and vendors. | Medium |
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