Enterprise Architecture Inside Salesforce

Enterprise Architecture — How We Do It Internally

The two words, “Enterprise Architecture”, elicit various reactions — everything from “we tried that and it doesn’t work” to “we need that!” to “we have an effective EA practice”. Unfortunately it is possible (even easy) to do Enterprise Architecture incorrectly, with an approach that is lethargic, technology-first and theoretical — the classic ivory tower.

(In Salesforce, the internal IT group reporting into our CIO is called “Business Technology” so you’ll see me use BT to refer to Salesforce IT)

I lead the Salesforce Enterprise Architecture team within Business Technology and I’m often asked the following questions:

• how does Salesforce do Enterprise Architecture?
• why do you need Enterprise Architecture?
• how do you shift the conversation to business capabilities?

Illuminate — The “How” of Salesforce Enterprise Architecture

Let me start with the “HOW” first. Within Salesforce BT, we use an Enterprise Architecture methodology we call Illuminate. This is a seven step methodology that I created and evolved over many years at many companies.