Key organizational items to grow Enterprise Architecture

I am increasingly thinking about what needs to be in place for an organization to be successful with Enterprise Architecture (EA). What I am focused on now could be considered pre-EA items, I believe good architecture can begin (and bring value) at any time within an organizations life-cycle. I also believe EA will be more effective if supported, and initiated, with the following items in place;

• A Project Management Office (PMO) - good project management goes a long, long way to ensuring project success. What is also important for EA in relationship to a PMO is how well the project portfolio (PPM) is managed. And how early in the project discovery the architect is engaged. The earlier the better.

  

  The Project Portfolio Management bicycle.

• A strong voice at the senior management table - for enterprise architecture to have an impact across the organization it needs an advocate and technically knowledgeable voice in the senior management group. This will increase the success (and reduce the costs) for all IT initiatives.
• Processes that encourage (even force) engagement by ALL project stakeholders - early engagement by ALL stakeholders is good! Seek them out! enough said.
• A mindset to reduce duplication wherever is reasonable - look broadly across the organization and identify IT process, software applications, infrastructure, and practices that are duplicated. Work to reduce this duplication. Sometimes... different business domains have different requirements and duplication makes sense, this should be the exception.

I do recognized there is much much more to Enterprise Architecture, but I believe these are a few of the important practices that need to be in place sooner than later when encouraging a solid enterprise architecture practice.