So what does the Enterprise Strategy and Architecture Department do for Wells Fargo? Sherrie Littlejohn. The Enterprise Architecture Group is actually intended to be a bridge between the business, the technologist and the CIOs to defi ne what their business strategies are, and then to take that business strategy and create an architecture or a business solution that takes into account whatever technologies we want to bring to the table. Not just that, but bring solutions that are pragmatic, timely, cost effective and look to see if there is some opportunity for synergies across other opportunities. So, using something like service oriented architecture as a mindset for how we might solve business problems is a way in which we’re doing enterprise architecture these days. It is essentially a strategic planning organization. What’s your background and how did you get into the department? SJ. My career started about 30 years ago, where I worked in the networking side of companies from the laboratories to AT&T to Pacific Bell and back to AT&T. That was my journey, and my career life. I also did soft ware development, architecture, operations, network engineering, the whole nine yards, even application supporting networks in terms of operation support systems. I came to Wells Fargo about eight years ago and I ran the network for seven years. I have only had this position for the last year. There was a merger and as a result, I wanted to go do something else that was coming to the bank. I grew up with the technology and at networking companies, so it did not matter what facet of it you were in, you were still part of a networking organization; you thought networks. As I was in a bank, I wanted to learn how to do other things, and when we had the merger, my organization - which had the network suite to nets architecture, engineering, operations, telecom expense management, the firewalls – when we merged, it made more sense to split those pieces up so we could have an operations department, and an infrastructure department where the network engineering and architecture is in one department. I decided this was an opportunity for me to go do something else, and when I was asked if I would take on enterprise architecture, because I tend to think more strategically, it seemed like a natural thing to do. When I had the network organization in the Pacific Bell, I actually had architecture which was system architecture, network architecture, application architecture, data architecture. So, I had the mix of what architecture was all about in a previous life and had subsequently created architecture groups throughout my career. So, it was a natural extension, except that now I am looking at it in the context of banking and fi nancial services solutions as opposed to just networking solutions.
I think we can mitigate spending wastefully and part of that is back to us being invited to the table and understanding what the business is really trying to accomplish
What, for you, are your most valuable metrics? SJ. With the Enterprise Architecture Group, what we have done is measured how many architecture assessments we do, how many technology assessments we do and how many vendors we talk to for emerging technologies that we translate into real business solutions. What I would like to evolve us to is to look at what the impact is we have had on the business in terms of bringing new solutions to them, stopping something that should never have gotten started or redirecting something because we have found a more efficient way to do it. We determined there are three business lines that could actually take advantage of this. One of the things that I think is most important in an organization like this where it is more of an investment to assure that you are managing risk is to assure that you are doing the right things and managing costs. Those are the things that we’d like to be known for. For me, it is really about what is the impact for the business, and, quite honestly, how often is
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