It is often thought that small to medium sized enterprises (SME’s) are better placed than large corporations to face the challenges of rapidly changing environments, customer demands, and deal with unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.  Smaller size is meant to make it easier for an organisation to change and adapt quickly and efficiently, but as this paper from students at the University of Melbourne shows, they often lack the technology infrastructure or enterprise architecture models to make the required changes.

The article breaks down the challenges faced by SMEs due to their size, often a lack of maturity in architecture and systems, defining each area where capability must be developed.  The second part of the article goes on to show how building an Agile Enterprise Architecture helps the SME to develop the capability in key areas to adapt not only to the ongoing pace of change in technology and service delivery, but also to survive unexpected and unprecedented events.