Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviours of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. The international definition according to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations is "a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."[1]

The United States Federal Government is an example of an organization that practices EA, in this case with its Capital Planning and Investment Control processes.[2] Companies such as Independence Blue Cross, Intel, Volkswagen AG,[3] and InterContinental Hotels Group also use EA to improve their business architectures as well as to improve business performance and productivity. Additionally, the Federal Enterprise Architecture's reference guide aids federal agencies in the development of their architectures.[4]

Introduction

As a discipline, EA "proactively and holistically lead[s] enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change" towards organizational goals. EA gives business and IT leaders recommendations for policy adjustments and provides best strategies to support and enable business development and change within the information systems the business depends on. EA provides a guide for decision making towards these objectives.[5] The National Computing Centre's EA best practice guidance states that an EA typically "takes the form of a comprehensive set of cohesive models that describe the structure and functions of an enterprise. The individual models in an EA are arranged in a logical manner that provides an ever-increasing level of detail about the enterprise."[6]

Important players within EA include enterprise architects and solutions architects. Enterprise architects are at the top level of the architect hierarchy, meaning they have more responsibilities than solutions architects. While solutions architects focus on their own relevant solutions, enterprise architects focus on solutions for and the impact on the whole organization. Enterprise architects oversee many solution architects and business functions. As practitioners of EA, enterprise architects support an organization's strategic vision by acting to align people, process, and technology decisions with actionable goals and objectives that result in quantifiable improvements toward achieving that vision. The practice of EA "analyzes areas of common activity within or between organizations, where information and other resources are exchanged to guide future states from an integrated viewpoint of strategy, business, and technology."[7]

Definitions

The term enterprise can be defined as an organizational unit, organization, or collection of organizations that share a set of common goals and collaborate to provide specific products or services to customers.[8] In that sense, the term enterprise covers various types of organizations, regardless of their size, ownership model, operational model, or geographical distribution. It includes those organizations' complete sociotechnical system,[9] including people, information, processes, and technologies. Enterprise as a sociotechnical system defines the scope of EA.

The term architecture refers to fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment; and embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution.[10] A methodology for developing and using architecture to guide the transformation of a business from a baseline state to a target state, sometimes through several transition states, is usually known as an enterprise architecture framework. A framework provides a structured collection of processes, techniques, artifact descriptions, reference models, and guidance for the production and use of an enterprise-specific architecture description.

Paramount to changing the EA is the identification of a sponsor. Their mission, vision, strategy, and the governance framework define all roles, responsibilities, and relationships involved in the anticipated transformation. Changes considered by enterprise architects typically include innovations in the structure or processes of an organization; innovations in the use of information systems or technologies; the integration and/or standardization of business processes; and improvement of the quality and timeliness of business information.

According to the standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010,[10] the product used to describe the architecture of a system is called an architectural description. In practice, an architectural description contains a variety of lists, tables, and diagrams. These are models known as views. In the case of EA, these models describe the logical business functions or capabilities, business processes, human roles and actors, the physical organization structure, data flows and data stores, business applications and platform applications, hardware, and communications infrastructure.[11]

The first use of the term "enterprise architecture" is often incorrectly attributed to John Zachman's 1987 A framework for information systems architecture.[12] The first publication to use it was instead a National Institute of Standards (NIST) Special Publication[13] on the challenges of information system integration. The NIST article describes EA as consisting of several levels. Business unit architecture is the top level and might be a total corporate entity or a sub-unit. It establishes for the whole organization necessary frameworks for "satisfying both internal information needs" as well as the needs of external entities, which include cooperating organizations, customers, and federal agencies. The lower levels of the EA that provide information to higher levels are more attentive to detail on behalf of their superiors. In addition to this structure, business unit architecture establishes standards, policies, and procedures that either enhance or stymie the organization's mission.[13]

The main difference between these two definitions is that Zachman's concept was the creation of individual information systems optimized for business, while NIST's described the management of all information systems within a business unit. The definitions in both publications, however, agreed that due to the "increasing size and complexity of the [i]mplementations of [i]nformation systems... logical construct[s] (or architecture) for defining and controlling the interfaces and... [i]ntegration of all the components of a system" is necessary. Zachman in particular urged for a "strategic planning methodology."[12]

Overview

Schools of thought

Within the field of enterprise architecture, there are three overarching schools: Enterprise IT Design, Enterprise Integrating, and Enterprise Ecosystem Adaption. Which school one subscribes to will impact how they see the EA's purpose and scope, as well as the means of achieving it, the skills needed to conduct it, and the locus of responsibility for conducting it.[14]

Under Enterprise IT Design, the main purpose of EA is to guide the process of planning and designing an enterprise's IT/IS capabilities to meet the desired organizational objectives, often by greater alignment between IT/IS and business concerns. Architecture proposals and decisions are limited to the IT/IS aspects of the enterprise and other aspects service only as inputs. The Enterprise Integrating school believes that the purpose of EA is to create a greater coherency between the various concerns of an enterprise (HR, IT, Operations, etc.), including the link between strategy formulation and execution. Architecture proposals and decisions here encompass all aspects of the enterprise. The Enterprise Ecosystem Adaption school states that the purpose of EA is to foster and maintain the learning capabilities of enterprises so they may be sustainable. Consequently, a great deal of emphasis is put on improving the capabilities of the enterprise to improve itself, to innovate, and to coevolve with its environment. Typically, proposals and decisions encompass both the enterprise and its environment.

Benefits, challenges, and criticisms

The benefits of EA are achieved through its direct and indirect contributions to organizational goals.[15] Notable benefits include support in the areas related to design and re-design of the organizational structures during mergers, acquisitions, or general organizational change;[16][17][18][19] enforcement of discipline and business process standardization, and enablement of process consolidation, reuse, and integration;[20][21] support for investment decision-making and work prioritization;[17][22][18] enhancement of collaboration and communication between project stakeholders and contribution to efficient project scoping and to defining more complete and consistent project deliverabless;[19][20] and an increase in the timeliness of requirements elicitation and the accuracy of requirement definitions through publishing of the EA documentation.[23]

Other benefits include contribution to optimal system designs and efficient resource allocation during system development and testing;[17][18] enforcement of discipline and standardization of IT planning activities and contribution to a reduction in time for technology-related decision making;[18][21] reduction of the system's implementation and operational costs, and minimization of replicate infrastructure services across business units;[21][24] reduction in IT complexity, consolidation of data and applications, and improvement of interoperability of the systems;[20][21][24] more open and responsive IT as reflected through increased accessibility of data for regulatory compliance, and increased transparency of infrastructure changes;[21][25] and a reduction of business risks from system failures and security breaches. EA also helps reduce risks of project delivery.[21][26] Establishing EA as an accepted, recognized, functionally integrated and fully involved concept at operational and tactical levels is one of the biggest challenges facing Enterprise Architects today and one of the main reasons why many EA initiatives fail.[27]

A key concern about EA has been the difficulty in arriving at metrics of success because of the broad-brush and often opaque nature of EA projects.[28] Additionally, there have been a number of reports, including those written by Ivar Jacobson,[29] Gartner,[30] Erasmus University Rotterdam and IDS Scheer,[31] Dion Hinchcliffe,[32] and Stanley Gaver,[33] that argue that the frequent failure of EA initiatives makes the concept not worth the effort and that the methodology will fade out quickly.

Relationship to other disciplines

According to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO), EA interacts with a wide array of other disciplines commonly found in business settings such as performance engineering and management, process engineering and management, IT and enterprise portfolio management, governance and compliance, IT strategic planning, risk analysis, information management, metadata management, organization development, design thinking, systems thinking, and user experience design.[1][34][35][36] The EA of an organization is too complex and extensive to document in its entirety, so knowledge management techniques provide a way to explore and analyze these hidden, tacit, or implicit areas. In return, EA provides a way of documenting the components of an organization and their interaction in a systemic and holistic way that complements knowledge management.[37]

In various venues,[38] EA has been discussed as having a relationship with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), a particular style of application integration. Research points to EA promoting the use of SOA as an enterprise-wide integration pattern.[39][40] The broad reach of EA has resulted in this business role being included in the information technology governance processes of many organizations. Analyst firm Real Story Group suggested that EA and the emerging concept of the digital workplace are "two sides to the same coin."[41] The Cutter Consortium described EA as an information and knowledge-based discipline.[42]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Common Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture" (PDF). Architecture and Governance Magazine. 9 (4): 1. November 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
  2. ↑ "EA-Success". The White House. 2010. Archived from the original on April 30, 2010.
  3. ↑ Austin, Robert D.; Ritchie, Warren; Garrett, Greggory (October 5, 2005). "Volkswagen of America: Managing IT Priorities". Harvard Business Review.
  4. ↑ "FEA Practice Guidance Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office OMB" (PDF). The White House. November 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 16, 2010.
  5. ↑ "Enterprise Architecture (EA)". Gartner. Retrieved July 29, 2013.
  6. ↑ Jarvis, Bob (2003). Enterprise Architecture: Understanding the Bigger Picture – A Best Practice Guide for Decision Makers in IT. Manchester, England, United Kingdom: The UK National Computing Centre. p. 9.
  7. ↑ "Planning an EA – Purpose". Enterprise Architecture Book of Knowledge. Mitre Corporation. Archived from the original on October 1, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  8. ↑ "Business Analysis Body of Knowledge". International Institute of Business Analysis. Archived from the original on June 24, 2017.
  9. ↑ Giachett, R.E. (2010). Design of Enterprise Systems, Theory, Architecture, and Methods. Boca Raton, Florida, USA: CRC Press.
  10. 1 2 "ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011: Systems and software engineering — Architecture description". International Organization for Standardization. November 24, 2011. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
  11. ↑ Kotusev, Svyatoslav; Kurnia, Sherah (September 1, 2021). "The theoretical basis of enterprise architecture: A critical review and taxonomy of relevant theories". Journal of Information Technology. 36 (3): 275–315. doi:10.1177/0268396220977873. ISSN 0268-3962. S2CID 230545944.
  12. 1 2 Zachman, John A. (1999). "A framework for information systems architecture". IBM Systems Journal (reprint ed.). 38 (2/3): 454–470. doi:10.1147/sj.382.0454. S2CID 12191060.
  13. 1 2 Fong, E. N.; Goldfine, E.H. (December 1989). "Information management directions: the integration challenge" (PDF). SIGMOD Record. 18 (4): 40–43. doi:10.1145/74120.74125. S2CID 23939840.
  14. ↑ Lapalme, J. (November 2012). "Three Schools of Thought on Enterprise Architecture". IT Professional. 14 (6): 37–43. doi:10.1109/MITP.2011.109. S2CID 206469705.
  15. ↑ Vasilis Boucharas; Marlies van Steenbergen; Slinger Jansen; Sjaak Brinkkemper. The Contribution of Enterprise Architecture to the Achievement of Organizational Goals: Establishing the Enterprise Architecture Benefits Framework, Technical Report (PDF) (Report). Utrecht, The Netherlands: Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University.
  16. ↑ Bert Arnold; Martin Op 't Land; Jan Dietz (2005). "Effects of an architectural approach to the implementation of shared service centers". In Fethi Rabhi; Daniel Veit; Christof Weinhardt (eds.). Financecom05: Second international workshop on Enterprise, applications and services in the finance industry. Regensburg, Germany: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
  17. 1 2 3 Schekkerman, Jaap. Trends in enterprise architecture 2005: How are organizations progressing? (Report). Institute For Enterprise Architecture Developments. p. 33.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Bucher, T.; Fischer, R.; Kurpjuweit, S.; Winter, Robert (2006). Enterprise architecture analysis and application: An exploratory study (Report). Hong Kong, China: EDOC Workshop TEAR.
  19. 1 2 Nilsson, Andreas (2008). Management of technochange in an interorganizational E-government project (Report). Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. p. 209.
  20. 1 2 3 Varnus, J.; Panaich, N. (July 20, 2009). TOGAF 9 enterprise architecture survey results (PDF) (Report). 23rd Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 20, 2009.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ross, J.W.; Weill, P. (2005). Understanding the benefits of enterprise architecture (Report). Vol. V. CISR Research Briefings.
  22. ↑ Quartel, Dick; Steen, Maarten W.A.; Lankhorst, Marc M. (May 1, 2012). "Application and project portfolio valuation using enterprise architecture and business requirements modelling". Enterprise Information Systems. 6 (2): 189–213. Bibcode:2012EntIS...6..189Q. doi:10.1080/17517575.2011.625571. ISSN 1751-7575. S2CID 28199240.
  23. ↑ Engelsman, W.; Iacob, M.E.; Franken, H.M.; Jonkers, J. (2009). "Architecture-driven requirements engineering". Advances in Enterprise Engineering II (Report). Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Vol. 28. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. pp. 285–286. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-01859-6_8. ISBN 978-3-642-01858-9.
  24. 1 2 Kappelman, Leon; McGinnis, Tom; Pettite, Alex; Sidorova, Anna (2008). Enterprise Architecture: Charting the Territory for Academic Research (Report). AMCIS 2008 Proceedings.
  25. ↑ Pulkkinen, M.; Luostarinen, K.; Naumenko, A. (2007). "Managing information security in a business network of machinery maintenance services business - Enterprise architecture as a coordination tool". Journal of Systems and Software. 80 (10): 1607–1620. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2007.01.044.
  26. ↑ Obitz, T.; Babu, M.K. (2009). Enterprise architecture expands its role in strategic business transformation: Infosys enterprise architecture survey 2008/2009 (Report). Infosys.
  27. ↑ Dedic, N. (2020). "FEAMI: A Methodology to include and to integrate Enterprise Architecture Processes into Existing Organizational Processes". IEEE Engineering Management Review. 48 (4): 160–166. doi:10.1109/EMR.2020.3031968. S2CID 226351029.
  28. ↑ Günther, Wendy Arianne (August 2014). Measuring Enterprise Architecture Effectiveness: A Focus on Key Performance Indicators (PDF) (Master's thesis). Universiteit Leiden. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
  29. ↑ Jacobson, Ivar (October 18, 2007). "EA Failed Big Way!". Archived from the original on April 1, 2016.
  30. ↑ "Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit: Architecting the Agile Organization, 26 – 27 September 2007". Gartner. 2007. Archived from the original on August 6, 2007.
  31. ↑ Roeleven, S.; Broer, J. (2010). Why Two Thirds of Enterprise Architecture Projects Fail (Report). ARIS. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013.
  32. ↑ Hinchcliffe, Dion (September 3, 2009). "Fixing Enterprise Architecture: Balancing the Forces of Change in the Modern Organization". ebiz. Archived from the original on September 6, 2009.
  33. ↑ Gaver, Stanley (2010). Why Doesn't the FEA Work? (PDF) (Report). Technology Matters, Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 11, 2016.
  34. ↑ Richardson, Clay (April 12, 2013). "Design Thinking Reshapes EA For Dynamic Business". Forrester. Archived from the original on April 19, 2013.
  35. ↑ McKendrick, Joe (May 19, 2010). "Gartner urges more 'design thinking' to break enterprise architecture out of its silo". ZDNet. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
  36. ↑ Owens, Leslie (February 2, 2010). "Who Owns Information Architecture? All Of Us". Forrester. Archived from the original on February 5, 2010.
  37. ↑ Evernden, Elaine; Evernden, Roger (2003). Information First - Integrating Knowledge and Information Architecture for Business Advantage. Oxford, England, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-7506-5858-4.
  38. ↑ "Service Oriented Architecture : SOA and Enterprise Architecture". The Open Group. Archived from the original on January 10, 2015. Retrieved December 18, 2014.
  39. ↑ Kistasamy, Christopher; van der Merwe, Alta; de la Harpe, Andre (2012). The Role of Service Oriented Architecture as an enabler for Enterprise Architecture (Report). Seattle, Washington, USA: AMCIS 2012 Proceedings.
  40. ↑ Rosa, Manuel; de Oliveira Sampaio, André (December 2013). "SOA Governance Through Enterprise Architecture". Oracle. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013.
  41. ↑ Byrne, Tony (March 19, 2012). "Digital workplace and enterprise architecture -- two sides to same coin". Real Story Group. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
  42. ↑ Evernden, Roger (November 13, 2012). "Dealing with Too Much Data from an Architectural Perspective". Cutter. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
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