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Organizational Transformation: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Enterprise Architecture Management (Version 2.0)http://www.gao.gov/Products/GAO-10-846G Effective use of an enterprise architecture (EA) is a hallmark of successful organizations and an essential means to achieving a desired end: having operations and technology environments that maximize institutional mission performance and outcomes. Among other things, this includes realizing cost savings through consolidation and reuse of shared services and elimination of antiquated and redundant mission operations, enhancing information sharing through data standardization and system integration, and optimizing service delivery through streamlining and normalization of business processes and mission operations. Not using an EA can result in organizational operations and supporting technology infrastructures and systems that are duplicative, poorly integrated, unnecessarily costly to maintain and interface, and unable to respond quickly to shifting environmental factors. To assist organizations in successfully developing, maintaining, and using an EA, GAO is issuing this major update to its Enterprise Architecture Management Maturity Framework. Its purpose is to provide a flexible benchmark against which to plan for and measure EA program maturity. To develop the update, GAO solicited comments from 27 federal departments and agencies, as well as representatives from the private sector, state governments, and academia, and it leveraged its prior experience in applying the framework. The framework consists of three interrelated components: (1) seven hierarchical stages of management maturity; (2) four representations of management attributes that are critical to the success of any program or organizational endeavor; and (3) 59 elements, or building blocks, of EA management that are at the core of an EA program. Each of the seven maturity stages reflects those EA management conditions that an enterprise should meet to logically build on the capability established at the preceding stage. As such, the stages provide a road map for systematically maturing or evolving an organization's capacity to manage an EA. The stages are: Stage 0: Creating EA Awareness; Stage 1: Establishing EA Institutional Commitment and Direction; Stage 2: Creating the Management Foundation for EA Development and Use; Stage 3: Developing Initial EA Versions; Stage 4: Completing and Using an Initial EA Version for Targeted Results; Stage 5: Expanding and Evolving the EA and Its Use for Institutional Transformation; Stage 6: Continuously Improving the EA and Its Use to Achieve Corporate Optimization. The four critical success attribute representations provide different and complementary ways to view and thus understand the 59 core elements. The four are referred to as the (1) EA Management Action Representation, (2) EA Functional Area Representation, (3) Office of Management and Budget Capability Area Representation, and (4) EA Enabler Representation. Each provides a unique perspective on the focus and nature of the framework's core elements. The 59 core elements are collectively the EA practices, structures, activities, and conditions that, when properly employed based on the unique facts and circumstances of each organization and the stated purpose of its EA program, can permit that organization to progress to increasingly higher states of EA management maturity and thereby maximize its chances of realizing an EA's institutional value.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Enterprise architecture goes agile?http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci1517057,00.html Enterprise Architecture (EA) needs to evolve to better support more agile and innovative approaches to corporate challenges, a noted author and IT researcher told attendees at The Open Group Conference this week in Boston, MA - that means going beyond documenting the "as-is" state of the enterprise, and providing new guidance that helps transform the business. This trend will see the move of enterprise architecture from the IT side to the business side, said Jeanne Ross, author of "Enterprise Architecture as Strategy" and "IT Savvy." It will prefigure a change of EA as it was formerly established, she suggested.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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10 Key Skills Architects Must Have to Deliver ValueAs the complexity of IT grows, more and more organizations are realizing the need for architecture. But the definition of what architecture is, the titles that architects have, and the role of an architect vary widely from one organization to another. Business, IT, management, and even architects don't necessarily know what a good architect does to add value in his or her organization. This Executive Report by Michael Rosen discusses the role of the architect and describes 10 activities that architects should perform to add value to projects.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Gartner Says Hybrid Thinking for Enterprise Architecture Can Help Organisations Embrace Transformation, Innovation and Strategyhttp://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1368613 Most enterprise architecture (EA) initiatives remain trapped in the IT department, and a new approach – hybrid thinking – is required to break EA out and into the wider organisation, according to Gartner, Inc. Adopting hybrid thinking is an excellent way to meld design thinking, IT thinking and business thinking, and achieve transformative, innovative and strategic changes.- Enterprise Architecture - Innovation - Strategy - |
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For EA in the Government, Just Follow the Money: Talking with Tarak Modihttp://www.ebizq.net/blogs/2010/04/ea_in_the_government_follow_th.php Podcast with Tarak Modi, an industry thought leader in IT transformation and modernization technology such as enterprise architecture, SOA and cloud computing. In this podcast, we discuss the role of enterprise architecture within the federal government.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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The right approach to developing enterprise architecture?Brian Burke , 16 April 2010: Developing an enterprise architecture can help organisations respond to change better and more quickly - and more cheaply. But different organisations require varying approaches to enterprise architecture and often need to employ a combination of methods argues Brian Burke, research vice president at analyst group Gartner.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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The Coherent Architecture in Organic EAhttp://it.toolbox.com/blogs/lea-blog/the-coherent-architecture-in-organic-ea-37844 John Wu: This is part of the research for an Organic Enterprise Architecture. Coherent Architecture is the effort to do the right architecture for the right people on the right area at the right time. The Organic EA consist of the static part of principle and primitives and the dynamic part of Coherent Architecture to adapt change by rearranging the fundamental enterprise primitives and building blocks. The area in yellow color illustrate the Coherent Architecture which include the diagnosis part on business performance measurement and gap analysis the other part is the segment architecture to close the business performance gap.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Collaborative enterprise architecture design and development with a semantic collaboration toolhttp://publica.fraunhofer.de/documents/N-119304.html Fuchs-Kittowski, F.; Faust, D.: The design and evolution of an enterprise architecture (EA) is a challenging and complex task. A participative approach to collaborative EA management is needed to support the collaboration of all individuals involved in the process of EA design and evolution. This paper presents our concept of a semantic collaboration tool for collaborative EA management. This includes the concept of a semantic, wiki-like collaboration tool for collaborative EA management and an EA ontology as a formal representation of the EA. Additionally, the prototypical implementation of the semantic collaboration environment and its architecture are described and the benefits of the approach discussed.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference Modelshttp://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/e-gov/fea/ FEA Reference Models include the Consolidated Reference Model Version 2.3 and Data Reference Model 2.0. FY10 FEA Reference Model Mapping Quick Guide.- Enterprise Architecture - Government EA - Reference Models - |
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Australian Government Architecture Reference Models (version 2.0)http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/strategy-and-governance/aga-rm/AGA-RM.html In developing the AGA we have adapted an established and proven framework based on the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) developed by the United States Government. This framework is being used in a number of other countries and some state governments in Australia. The framework and these reference models have been endorsed by the Australian Government’s Chief Information Officers’ Committee.- Enterprise Architecture - Reference Models - |
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Complexity, chaos and enterprise-architecturehttp://weblog.tomgraves.org/index.php/2010/02/19/complexity-chaos-and-ea/ Tom Graves: Courtesy of a link by fellow enterprise-architect Sally Bean, I've just spent the past couple of hours viewing and then reviewing an online seminar on complexity by one of the thought-leaders on complexity-theory and practice, Dave Snowden.- Complexity - Enterprise Architecture - |
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Challenges for the Decade, Part 4: Enterprise Architecture - Anatomy of Agile EnterpriseJanne J. Korhonen: In this series of blog posts, I have addressed some of the challenges that the emergence of extended enterprise paradigm entails in terms of strategy, governance, leadership, and, in this last article, enterprise architecture.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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TOGAF 9 Quickstarthttp://www.objectarchitects.biz/TOGAF9/TOGAF9Quickstart.html As a community service objectarchitects offers a free short book on what an entprise architect can expect from TOGAF 9. Wolfang Keller.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Gary Doucet, John Gøtze, Pallab Saha, Scott Bernard (2009)
The book introduces the idea of Coherency Management, and asserts that this is the primary outcome goal of an enterprise's architecture. With submissions from over 30 authors and co-authors, the book reinforces the idea that EA is being practiced in an ever-increasing variety of circumstances - from the tactical to the strategic, from the technical to the political, and with governance that ranges from sell to tell. The characteristics, usages, value statements, frameworks, rules, tools and countless other attributes of EA seem to be anything but orderly, definable, classifiable, and understandable as might be hoped given heritage of EA and the famous framework and seminal article on the subject by John Zachman over two decades ago. Notably, EA is viewed as an Enterprise Design and Management approach, adopted to build better enterprises, rather than a IT Design and Management approach limited to build better systems.
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Peter Weill, Jeanne Ross (2009)
Digitization of business interactions and processes is advancing full bore. But in many organizations, returns from IT investments are flatlining, even as technology spending has skyrocketed. These challenges call for new levels of IT savvy: the ability of all managers-IT or non-IT-to transform their company's technology assets into operational efficiencies that boost margins. Companies with IT-savvy managers are 20 percent more profitable than their competitors. In IT Savvy, Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross-two of the world's foremost authorities on using IT in business-explain how non-IT executives can acquire this savvy. Concise and practical, the book describes the practices, competencies, and leadership skills non-IT managers need to succeed in the digital economy. You'll discover how to: -Define your firm's operating model-how IT can help you do business -Revamp your IT funding model to support your operating model -Build a digitized platform of business processes, IT systems, and data to execute on the model -Determine IT decision rights -Extract more business value from your IT assets Packed with examples and based on research into eighteen hundred organizations in more than sixty countries, IT Savvy is required reading for non-IT managers seeking to push their company's performance to new heights.
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A Value Proposition for Enterprise Architecturehttp://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/value Boris Lublinsky: In his new post - A Value Proposition for Enterprise Architecture - Richard Veryard discusses the role of enterprise architecture (EA).- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Is your company an enterprise? The answer mattershttp://blogs.gartner.com/mark_mcdonald/2009/06/15/is-your-company-an-enterprise-the-answer-matters/ Mark McDonald, Gartner Group: People talk about the ‘enterprise’ all the time, particularly in IT. There are enterprise solutions, enterprise architecture, enterprise portals, enterprise security, etc. In this context the term enterprise is more often meant to mean all encompassing, across business units or geographies, the whole of our business operations. Just because we say something is enterprise level that does not mean that it applies to the entire company. When that happens you have to ask yourself the question - are we an enterprise?- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Griffith University Master of Enterprise Architecturehttp://www.griffith.edu.au/engineering-information-technology/enterprise-architecture To help bridge the gap between engineering, IT and management, Griffith University has created a new Masters program. The Master of Enterprise Architecture unites MBA and Masters of IT courses into a single degree. Enterprise Architecture at Griffith provides a comprehensive, modern postgraduate education in the principles and practice of Enterprise Architecture, a discipline unifying management and engineering knowledge. An Enterprise Architect has good understanding of strategy making and how strategies can be successfully implemented through a coordinated practice that harmonises business needs with the development of technology and the development of the organisation. Graduates will gain skills in analysis, problem solving, business modelling and systems architecture – both from information technology and business perspectives, as well as skills in change management, leadership and communication.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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JISC Enterprise Architectures Group Pilothttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/enterprisearchitectures JISC has funded four projects to investigate an enterprise architecture approach to service oriented development at institutional level through the application and evaluation of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). This initiative is funded as part of the e-Learning Capital Programme building on the e-Framework aspects of the programme. It is recognised that enterprise architecture has a wider applicability than e-Learning and therefore this initiative aims to address institutional architecture rather than just that of e-Learning.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Why There is Scope for More Research in Enterprise Architecturehttp://www.cioforum.co.za/publiccioforum/topic_012.htm Roderick Lim Banda: Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an evolving discipline. There is a need for ongoing research to ensure that we keep up with global trends. More importantly we need to gain a better understanding of our own local context in order to develop the architecture of the South African and African enterprise.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Why Companies Do Need Enterprise Architecture at Downturn?Konstantin Ivanov, ARIS BPM Blog: Take it or leave it, but often EA is referred as a lengthy initiative with very unclear and practically not very applicable results. Like a set of references architectures, which in practice turn to be 80% different from architectures of actually deployed solutions or a set of principles of building new data centers, which are too high-level and theoretical, so any solution built do comply with them.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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The Open Group ArchiMate 1.0 Technical Standardhttp://www.opengroup.org/archimate/doc/ts_archimate/ Architecture descriptions are formal descriptions of an information system, organized in a way that supports reasoning about the structural and behavioral properties of the system and its evolution. They define the components or building blocks that make up the overall information system, and provide a plan from which products can be procured, and subsystems developed, that will work together to implement the overall system. It thus enables you to manage your overall IT investment in a way that meets the needs of your business. To provide a uniform representation for such architecture descriptions, the ArchiMate enterprise architecture modeling language has been developed. It offers an integrated architectural approach that describes and visualizes the different architecture domains and their underlying relations and dependencies. In a short time, ArchiMate has become the open standard for architecture modeling in the Netherlands, it is also fairly well known in the international enterprise architecture community, and recently it has been brought under the aegis of The Open Group.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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The Open Group Introduces ArchiMate 1.0 Standard Language for Modeling Enterprise Architectureshttp://www.opengroup.org/press/21apr09.htm Press Announcement April 21, 2009: New Standard Paves the Way for First Truly Global Enterprise Architecture Description Language. The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium focused on open standards and global interoperability within and between enterprises, today announced that it has adopted ArchiMate version 1 as a standard global language for modeling enterprise architectures, including the industry standard architecture framework, TOGAF. Administered by The Open Group's ArchiMate Forum, ArchiMate 1.0 is a new language designed to provide enterprise architects a common vocabulary for describing, analyzing and visualizing enterprise architectures. By creating a single, common language, the ArchiMate Forum intends to help simplify the processes used within the enterprise architecture community for more effective work outcomes, as well as improve architecture tools offered by vendors.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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Pallab Saha (2008)
Over the past two decades, the government sector has emerged as the area of largest implementation of enterprise architecture - a critical success factor for all types, scales, and intensities of e-government programs. Advances in Government Enterprise Architecture is a seminal publication in the emerging and evolving discipline of enterprise architecture (EA). Presenting current developments, issues, and trends in EA, this critical resource provides IT managers, government CIOs, researchers, educators, and professionals with insights into the impact of effective EA on IT governance, IT portfolio management, and IT outsourcing, creating a must-have holding for academic libraries and organizational information centers.
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Jan A.P. Hoogervorst (2009)
Achieving enterprise success necessitates addressing enterprises in ways that match the complexity and dynamics of the modern enterprise environment. However, since the majority of enterprise strategic initiatives appear to fail – among which those regarding information technology – the currently often practiced approaches to strategy development and implementation seem more an obstacle than an enabler for strategic enterprise success. Two themes underpin the fundamentally different views outlined in this book. First, the competence-based perspective on governance, whereby employees are viewed as the crucial core for effectively addressing the complex, dynamic and uncertain enterprise reality, as well as for successfully defining and operationalizing strategic choices. Second, enterprise engineering as the formal conceptual framework and methodology for arranging a unified and integrated enterprise design, which is a necessary condition for enterprise success.
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