Roger Evernden

In the late 1980s Evernden developed Information FrameWork (IFW) to describe an enterprise architect initiative at Westpac. This was later described in an IBM Systems Journal article, published in 1996. The Westpac project – known internally as CS90, or Core Systems for the 1990s – was a prototype for using enterprise architecture to create adaptive organizations or adaptive systems. The Westpac experience was described by Stephan H. Haeckel – an American management theorist and former director of Strategic Studies at IBM’s Advanced Business Institute – who developed the idea of the sense-and-respond organization as an adaptive enterprise.

The Information FrameWork (IFW) was presented in 1996 as framework for Information management, and more generic alternative to the Zachman Framework. Evernden (1996) explained:

the objectives and scope of IFW are broader than that of the original Zachman framework. IFW is described and compared with the original Zachman structure, showing the evolution, changes, and the rationale behind the changes based on experiences from within the financial services industry.[15]

In his 1996 paper Evernden also showed "how the structure of IFW has been populated by industry-wide models and supported by a distinctive methodology. A detailed discussion of each of the six dimensions of the IFW architecture is presented."[15][16]

Evernden has promoted the need for Architectural Thinking,[17] the use of a meta-framework in Enterprise Architecture,[18] and for explaining the Levels of Architectural Understanding.[19]

Evernden is co-author, with Elaine Evernden, of Information First: Integrating Knowledge and Information Architecture for Business Advantage, which was first published in 2003, expanding the concepts of Information FrameWork (IFW). Information First outlines an approach to enterprise architecture that uses eight factors common to all enterprise architecture frameworks that can be combined to create architectural tools for managing enterprise and business transformation. A second edition was published in 2015 with the title: Enterprise Architecture – the Eight Fundamental Factors.

This book deals with two important topics for enterprise management: the architecture of an enterprise and the challenge of dealing with information.

"Roger and Elaine Evernden argue that in order to address that challenge, organizations must treat information as a business resource, much like capital or labor. They require expertise and strategic thinking to use that resource as part of a business strategy, and to leverage its potential. More than just data to be used in operative processes, information must be seen as the essence of all decision-making and knowledge-building efforts in the enterprise, something that must be adapted to the people using it and interacting with it."[20]

Research at the Cranfield School of Management also suggested that there are multiple dimensions to all architecture frameworks. Working with more than two or three dimensions at a time is challenging, and potentially confusing. Analysis is therefore most constructive when any two of these dimensions are viewed together in a matrix.[21]

In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, he spoke about how enterprise architecture could be used to weather unpredictable events.[10] In 2011 he described the architectural approach to create a single integrated IT platform from two heritage banking systems following the Lloyds TSB acquisition of HBOS to form Lloyds Banking Group January 2009.[11]

In 2017 he presented a case study at Vesta Corporation describing a combination of online training and webinars in a nine-month program to build the capabilities and confidence of their enterprise architecture team.[22]

In a keynote presentation for the National Conference on Advances in Enterprise Architecture (NCAEA 2017) he described changes required by architecture frameworks in response to an increasingly connected, digital world. He said: "Although our discipline will probably continue to be known as “enterprise” architecture, increasingly it will cover the architecture of any human-designed system – which includes all social, political, economic, environmental, and cultural organisms – in addition to the domains we currently expect to find in “enterprise” architecture. Enterprises, and governments, will need to re-think governance of their EA."[23]