Making enterprise architecture actionable is something most organizations strive for but often come up short due to a lack of sponsorship, collaboration, adoption, and clear goals for the program. It’s also important to note that enterprise architecture at Fannie Mae has shed its image as being a governance function and has become a catalyst for increasing agility, collaboration, transparency, and accelerating digital transformation.
Business operations are changing faster than ever and because of this, EA programs (and the tools that support them) must facilitate agile and transformative initiatives, such as improving customer experience.
Starting with enterprise architecture governance
From its beginnings as a governance function, Fannie Mae's enterprise architecture program has grown to delivering measurable value in defining the company’s digital strategy down to its execution. Fannie Mae’s road to success has something to teach all of us about enterprise architecture best practices and how to develop an EA program that brings the most value to an organization.
Fannie Mae’s enterprise architecture program began the way so many do, with a governance-focus. The company used enterprise architecture to enforce policies, standards and procedures, to ensure compliance, and reduce risk.
Connecting enterprise architecture to business
With support from MEGA’s enterprise architecture solutions, Fannie Mae evolved its enterprise architecture program from governance-focused to enabler-focused through strategies that fostered collaboration, and increased communication. Fannie Mae invited various business user groups to have access to the software and the ability to capture their data. As more information started entering the repository, it grew richer, more accurate, and more valuable.
Today, the company’s repository is robust, with accurate data and so well organized that it’s enabled self-service which frees up time and resources. MEGA’s HOPEX software facilitated the building of interfaces between data platforms which allowed the data to be stitched together making it much easier to gain an accurate view of the company’s IT platforms, processes, and business operations. The abundance of accurate data and the increased visibility into the company’s processes gave Fannie Mae the ability to build new dashboards and reports to drive actionable work.
Leveraging enterprise architecture to make strategic decisions
Fannie Mae’s journey to enterprise architecture success has been all about integrations, collaboration, increasing visibility, and fostering a culture of inclusion and enablement. Fannie Mae was able to remove the mystery from EA by putting key information and metrics in front of decision makers, so they could see the value of the data being collected. This data serves as a good starting point for strategic initiatives by providing visibility and information to make the right decisions.
Enterprise architecture to accelerate innovation and digital transformation
Portfolio architects have become influential at Fannie Mae and are trusted partners to all who work with them on various projects. Tools and processes have been implemented allowing for better, more effective use of technologies. Because of these new tools and their automation capabilities, Fannie Mae has seen standardization and increase in digital documentation.
Fannie Mae is continuing its use of EA to facilitate innovation and digital transformation efforts and views MEGA’s HOPEX software as an enabler for future business modernization initiatives and improvements to the customer experience. It took time and determination, but Fannie Mae succeeded in developing an EA program that’s providing the company with enormous value and insight.
