How do you approach, plan and design an Enterprise Architecutre for an organization.
Why is Enterprise Architecture Important ? What all factors have to be considered in this plan and how can you go about acheiving the goal ?
Good Answers (7)
Marcelo L
IT Project Manager at Louis Dreyfus Commodities
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (1), Software Development (1)
Very few systems based on software can exist in isolation. New applications must coexist effectively with other systems of the company. Therefore any Application / Business Process, should be designed and implemented without cause adverse effects on existing systems and taking advantage of existing infrastructure, considering also the future evolution of the company.
The Enterprise Architecture captures, defines, systematizes and organizes all the information necessary to build systems with these characteristics.
From this, there are various interpretations of what means an EA, and thus several definitions. One of my favorites is defined in the book "Enterprise Architecture as Strategy": "The Architecture Business is the logic for organizational business processes and IT infrastructure that reflects the requirements of integration and standardization of the operating model of the company", leaving very clear that the ultimate goal of EA is to translate the organizational strategy into operational terms.
Behind this goal, we will find significant challenges, such as:
- EA projects redefines the architecture of the total business, so it is imperative to have a good management of organizational change, and a very strong support from senior management.
- Do not improvise. Should be adopted (or developed) a methodology that takes into account both the modeling of business processes and the development of all IT components involved. The application of this methodology should facilitate obtaining an expected ROI as well as the process alignment with the organizational strategy.
- The government of the EA can become quite complicated (services, integration, composite applications, etc.). It is essential to define the life cycle of these components intimately related to the evolution of business processes.
- It is necessary to have trained people who can translate business needs in a variety of technological design view (workflows, data, components, services, security, infrastructure) to produce a coherent solution.
This is the role of "business architects", who also must have skills "soft" (communication, negotiation, etc..) because its interaction with the business.
Well...
this is just a brief overview of the topic, so you can get a rough idea of what would be the key factors involved.
I let you some links with more information, and I hope that my answer to you is helpful in some way.
Best regards,
Marcelo.
Links:
There are lots of information to be found on this topic if you search it. IT will range from good to bad, from the process to the structure to the deliverables.
One short way of putting it is:
Enterprise Architecture is a process you use to ensure that IT builds the right things at the right time for the right price.
This is a link that you might find interesting:
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/spotlight/ross.php
Regards
Leo Cutlip
Why is it important?
Enterprise Architecture plan / blueprint is fundamental to ensuring that any commitment to new systems will have long term benefits and integrate easily with the existing and planned system architecture.
What all factors have to be considered in this plan and how can you go about acheiving the goal ?
Its wise to adopt a Framework like Zachman Framework, TOGAF, etc.
Broadly the steps are:
1 Planning Initiation - Vision, Scope and Objective
2 Development of the Business Model (Organisation & Functions)
3 Document Existing Systems Architecture & Technology
4 Definition of the Data Architecture
5 Definition of the Applications Architecture
6 Definition of the Technology Architecture
7 Formulate Implementation Strategy and Migration Planning
Feel free to contact me should you need any further details.
Keith O
Sr. IT Consultant at Digineer
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (3), Corporate Governance (1)
Here are some reasons on why I think EA is important: 1) EA provides the ability to unify and integrate business processes across the enterprise. 2) EA provides the ability to unify and integrate data across the enterprise and to link with external partners. 3) EA can increase an enterprise's agility by lowering the complexities that organizations' face when trying to change. As you know, organizations are comprised of people, things, processes, goals, policies, rules, locations, etc... Trying to change something within this space and understand its impacts is tough. EA can help. 4) EA can reduce solution delivery time and development costs by maximizing reuse of enterprise models. 5) EA has the ability to create and maintain a common vision of the future shared by both the business and IT communities which help continues to drive business / IT alignment.
Keith F
Highly Experienced IT Strategy & Architecture Consultant/Effective Educator & Researcher
Best Answers in: Enterprise Software (4), Travel Tools (1), Internationalization and Localization (1), Writing and Editing (1), Non-profit Fundraising (1), Computers and Software (1), Software Development (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
G'day Pramod,
that is a very big and good question. Hmm, I would probably start with the guide from the North American State CIOs their EA toolkits & resources . That has descirptions on value, planning, frameworks, supporting governance process, organisation etc etc.
Aside from that, I am very happy to talk with about aspects but the question is a bit big to answer through a linked in response box for me...keith
Links:
Madhusudhanan A
Assistant Vice President at GCI Solutions Private Limited
Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (1), Exporting/Importing (1), Offshoring and Outsourcing (1), Telecommunications (1)
Enterprise Architecture is important because it provides a framework for the IT to build their automation efforts. Without an enterprise architecture, the IT efforts would be siloed, become difficult to maintain and improve and may result in IT becoming a drag on the business.
Enterprise Architecture is important, but difficult to achieve. Why ?
- Businesses are essentially opportunity based. Architecture is a planned exercise. Fitting an Enterprise Architecture into a Business is a difficult thing for this reason.
Some of the important factors to be considered are :
- Availability of a clearly articulated business strategy to guide in the formulation of the EA
- Identification of the value chain for the business (how the business provides value to is customer ?), the processes supporting this value chain and the key metrics for these processes
In my experience, moving towards an EA for an existing business, can at best be incremental and cannot be big-bang (the issues are various - change management, investments to be made etc.,). The pace can vary depending on the support of business / executive management.
As it has been pointed out, you may adopt well known EA models like Zachmann, TOGAF which will help you in not missing out key ingredients of an EA.
Dries V
Experienced IT Architect / Software engineer
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (1), Software Development (1), Web Development (1)
Enterprise architecture is the plan/blueprint of your enterprise. it comprises of different levels:
- business architecture: formal, standardized documentation of your business processes, goals, functions, services, ...
- application (functionality) and data architecture that support your business architecture
- technology architecture (hardware, software, middleware, ...) that support your application and data architecture.
Why is EA important ? It allows you to build a standardised, future-proof, integrated IT-environment that meets your business needs.
- standardised: using the same 'language' to represent the same sort of things
- future-proof: the impact of new or changing business needs is in your 'plans'
- integrated: you find in your 'plans' what business processes, functions, ... are supported by what applications, data and technology
- meet your business needs: EA fosters business/IT alignment: your plans show you what business processes, functions are not or poorly supported by your applications, data and technology.
Advantages of EA ?
- your 'plans' allow for faster and better dicision-making, reducing the risk of bad technology investments and increases ROI
- a more efficient & flexible IT-environment: standards adopted in your enterprise can be re-used elsewhere in your enterprise and knowledge sharing is easier due to standardisation
- build/buy/re-use dicisions are simpler and implementation is faster because a lot of information is readily available in your 'plans'
EA frameworks/approaches like TOGAF, FEAF, Zachman are surely very helpfull in achieving and setting up an EA.
hope this answers your question somewhat. You can find more information on EA on our website.
