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Revision as of 17:09, 25 March 2005 by 70.18.253.120 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)A comprehensive framework used to manage and align an organization's Information Technology (IT) software and hardware, people, operations and projects with the organization's overall strategy. A strong Enterprise Architecture process helps to answer basic questions like:
- Are the IT department's people, software, hardware, and networks supporting and adding value to the organization?
- How might we change our architecture so that they are adding more value to the organization?
- Based on what we know about what the organization wants to accomplish in the future, will our current architecture support or hinder that?
Ultimately, this structured process will guide an organization to make sound, targeted decisions about how to manage the IT group for maximum effectiveness. New software (such as Enterprise Resource Planning) acquisition, major hardware purchases, strategic changes in technology platforms, major software change and development projects, and major organizational changes are all supported by the architecture process.
The process of implementing Enterprise Architecture generally starts with documenting business strategy and other necessary details such as where and how a business operates. It then cascades down to documenting discrete core competencies, business processes, and how the business (or any organization, really) interacts with itself and external parties such as customers, suppliers, and government entities.
Having documented the organization's strategy and structure, the architecture process then flows down into the Information Technology components such as:
- Organization charts and process flows of how the IT Organization operates
- Suppliers of technology hardware, software, and services
- Applications and software inventories and diagrams
- Interfaces between your applications
- Intranet, Extranet, Internet, eCommerce, EDI links with parties within and outside of the organization
- Databases and supporting data models
- Hardware, platforms, and hosting: Servers, and where they are kept
- Local and Wide Area Networks, Internet connectivity
The Enterprise architecture will document the current state of the technical components listed above, as well as a desired future state.
An intermediate outcome of an architecture process is a comprehensive inventory of business strategy, business processes, organizational charts, technical inventories, system and interface diagrams, and network topologies. The inventories and diagrams are merely tools that support decision making. But this is not sufficient. It must be a living process.
The organization must design and implement a process that ensures continual movement from the current state to the future state. On a regular basis, the current state and future state are redefined to account for changes in organizational strategy and priorities, as well as external factors such as changes in technology and customer/vendor/government requirements.
Enterprise architecture is a key component of the Information technology governance process at any organization of significant size. More and more companies are implementing a formal enterprise architecture process to support the governance and management of IT.
More information
- The US Government has mandated the use of a formal Enterprise Architecture process for all federal agencies with the Clinger-Cohen act of 1996.
- There are several ways of documenting and managing an architecture process. One of the most popular is the Zachman Framework.
- Several software tools exist to document and facilitate an Enterprise architecture process: Architecture tools list