EA CoP Remit
The EA CoP brings together people from across the UK HE and FE sector with an interest in Enterprise Architecture and related disciplines of Business, Application, Data, Technology and Solutions Architecture. The EA CoP seeks to promote and develop sector adoption of Enterprise Architecture through the sharing of knowledge, experience, case studies and examples of good practice.
There are over 250 subscribers to the ucisa-ea mail group representing over 100 different institutions. Although not all of these subscriptions may be active the mail group does provide an active discussion forum.
The EA CoP is supported by a committee of five, including the chair. The value stream diagram below summarises the value statement of the EA CoP and outlines the key activities and tasks that the committee have identified as objectives for 2020 and which are further outlined in this Annual Plan.
The Enterprise Architecture ‘group’ operates as a Community of Practice rather than a formal constituted group and as such has had a less formal governance structure. However, the EA CoP wouldlike to align to the ucisa annual planning cycle and are therefore submitting an annual plan.
The committee have identified the following as objectives for 2020:
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Conduct EA CoP survey and publish results
A survey was designed and circulated to the EA CoP group during September 2019 to better understand Enterprise Architecture practice across the sector and to assess the level of involvement and of maturity of EA. The response rate was good with 38 responses from 37 different Universities. Work is now ongoing to evaluate and analyse the responses and we aim to present these back to the ucisa membership by the end of December 2019.
It is the intention that the EA Survey will become an annual activity to identify and track changes across the sector. To help increase the response rate in 2020 the CoP would like to propose a small incentive next year and are proposing to place respondents in a prize draw for £50 donation to a charity of their choice. - Promote and Administer mail group / discussion forum
The ucisa-ea mail group serves as the primary communication channel and discussion forum for the CoP. The committee have a responsibility to administer the mail group, including approving new requests to join, and also have a responsibility to promote and encourage use of the mail group as a discussion forum.
The EA CoP are keen to adopt the use of Microsoft Teams as a communication and collaboration channel for group discussions and sharing of information. The CoP would be happy to be early-adopters or to help pilot the use of Teams once the ucisa Microsoft 365 tenancy is set up. - Promote and administer webinars
Webinars are an important channel for sharing examples of good practice and interesting work. There CoP have hosted two webinars so far this year which have been well attended and a further webinar is scheduled for later this month. The EA CoP committee have committed to continue to promote and host webinars and to encourage members or third parties to volunteer to present and share their experience with the group. The CoP will aim to host three webinars through the year. - Promote and develop the Capability Model
The ucisa HE Capability model was published around 18 months ago. The EA CoP seeks to understand how the model is being used across the sector and to collate examples which can be used to promote the model and encourage its use. The EA CoP survey contained a number of questions relating to the Capability Model and it is hoped that these will provide useful insight.
As well as promoting the capability model there is an opportunity to develop it further.
There is an opportunity to develop and extend the data model that was published with the capability model. The EA CoP committee are currently liaising with colleagues at the University of Leeds who are developing a local data model based on the ucisa models. It is hoped that this can be shared with the CoP members, potentially as a webinar. This could then be a catalyst to developing and extending a generic UK HE data model.
It is envisaged that a community / working day approach could bring together interested parties from the CoP to develop a data model. This approach would also benefit from facilitation and support from consultant/s experienced in the field, which would require funding in the region of £3000, equating to 2-3 days of consultative support. -
Develop content for new ucisa website to promote the EA CoP
Content on the ucisa EA CoP and Capability Model web pages is in need of review and rework to ensure that it is current and relevant to promote the community of practice and encourage new members. There is also an opportunity to bring the CoP and Capability Model websites together.
The committee have already provided some new text for the new EA CoP group holding page to support the launch of the new ucisa website. The committee have also agreed to spend time at the next face-to-face committee meeting in January 2020 to further work on reviewing and planning content for the EA CoP web presence. - Summarise, collate and publish examples of good practice
The committee would like to harness shared knowledge and develop good practice or starter guides for the community that can be published on the website. For example, where there are significant conversations or forum chatter it may be possible to review and collate in order to produce a summary best practice guide, or blog.
The committee intends to collate and publish a summary guide related to architecture governance practices during this planning cycle. -
Support needed to implement the plan
All actions in the plan require volunteers from the committee to take forwards. Additional ucisa admin support will be needed for the following
- Help to upload new content to the ucisa website / EA CoP subsite
- Access to a Microsoft Teams site that can be used by the EA community as a collaborative working platform
- Help in organising a community day / working group to develop the HE data model
- £50 charity donation to encourage participation in the 2020 EA CoP survey
- £3000 for consultancy support to develop the HE data model
