Book extracts: An Enterprise Architecture Development Framework - Presentation Transcript
An Enterprise Architecture
Development Framework
The Enterprise Reference Maps, Single Page Architecture, Metamodel
SOA Design, Business Case and Strategic Planning for your Enterprise
3rd Edition
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Adrian Grigoriu
practicing architecture for a very long time
“I enjoyed reading this book. It was as if Grigoriu had laid out all the business and
IT elements that make up an enterprise on a table and then played around until
he could fit them all together into a single cube – an ingenious effort at puzzle
solving…
I would happily recommend this book to anyone who is already an experienced
enterprise architect. This book is an excellent “graduate review” that will force you
to think through lots of issues and consider how you might address them in your
own architecture.
I would also recommend this book to someone who was interested in the issues
involved in building a business case for an Enterprise Architecture effort – the
sections on benefits and costs are excellent and comprehensive –
and I’d also recommend this book to someone who wanted to learn more about
how to classify stakeholders. The section on strategy and stakeholders is
outstanding”.
For the previous edition, Paul Harmon, the Executive Editor of Business Process
Trends (www.bptrends.com), a recognized BPM analyst and consultant and the
author of Business Process Change.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.ABOUT THE BOOK ............................................................................................................................................................
WHY THIS BOOK ........................................................................................................................................................................... 15
OUTLINE ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 17
AUDIENCE ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 25
REVIEW CHECKLIST .................................................................................................................................................................... 26
2.EA PROVIDES A COMPETITIVE EDGE TO THE ENTERPRISE ............................................................................
REVIEW CHECKLIST .................................................................................................................................................................... 29
3.THE PROBLEM AND DRIVERS FOR CHANGE ........................................................................................................
THE PROBLEM ................................................................................................................................................................................ 31
BUSINESS TRENDS...................................................................................................................................................................... 33
BUSINESS NEEDS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 35
WHAT BUSINESS CONSTANTLY REQUIRES FROM IT ............................................................................................. 35
WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SECTOR EXPECTS FROM IT ......................................................................................... 36
REVIEW CHECKLIST .................................................................................................................................................................... 37
4.ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE, THE SOLUTION .....................................................................................................
EA, THE SOLUTION TO THE ENTERPRISE PROBLEM................................................................................................. 39
WHAT IS ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE (EA) ................................................................................................................. 40
EA definitions
Own EA definition
REVIEW CHECKLIST .................................................................................................................................................................... 44
5.ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE BENEFITS.................................................................................................................
GOVERNANCE BENEFITS (G) .................................................................................................................................................. 45
Enables Business Modelling
Improves Decision Making
Aligns Technology to Business Processes and Goals
Enables Agility, Faster Business Change
Enhances Project Planning and Prioritisation Accuracy
OPERATIONAL BENEFITS (O) .................................................................................................................................................. 46
Maximises Reuse of Existing Assets
Simplifies the Enterprise operation
Aligns Organization to Enterprise operation
Improves Operating Procedures
Enhances Enterprise Processes
Enables Activity Based Costing (ABC)
Permits Faster New Product introduction
Exploits Synergies between similar operations of the Enterprise
STRATEGIC BENEFITS (S) ......................................................................................................................................................... 48
Maps Roadmaps to Architecture
Facilitates Vendor Products Roadmaps alignment to EA
Provides Agility to business change
Enables Outsourcing and Mergers & Acquisitions
Improves Risk Management
COMMUNICATION, COLLABORATION AND COMPLIANCE BENEFITS (C) ...................................................... 48
Improves Stakeholders’ Understanding and Communication
Enhances Working with Suppliers and Partners
Makes Regulatory Compliance possible
REVIEW CHECKLIST ..................................................................................................................................................................... 49
6.THE BUSINESS CASE AND RETURN ON EA (ROEA) ...........................................................................................
HOW DO YOU ‘COST-JUSTIFY’ ARCHITECTURE ........................................................................................................... 51
RETURN ON ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE (ROEA) .................................................................................................... 52
KEY BENEFITS INDICATORS TABLE ..................................................................................................................................... 53
QUANTIFYING THE COSTS AND REVENUE RELATIVE TO THE NON EA CASE ............................................. 56
THE EA DEVELOPMENT REVENUE AND COST CURVES .......................................................................................... 58
EA PAYBACK AND NPV ............................................................................................................................................................. 59
REVIEW CHECKLIST ..................................................................................................................................................................... 61
7.TECHNOLOGIES REFERRED TO, SUPPORTING THE EA ..................................................................................... 63
WEB SERVICES (WS) AND XML ........................................................................................................................................... 63
ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION EAI/ESB ................................................................................................................................. 63
ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) .................................................................................................................... 64
IT INFORMATION LIBRARY (ITIL) ........................................................................................................................................... 64
CONTROL OBJECTIVES FOR INFORMATION (COBIT) AND VAL IT ...................................................................... 65
BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) ................................................................................................................. 66
SIX/LEAN SIGMA .......................................................................................................................................................................... 67
CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL (CMM) ........................................................................................................................... 68
BUSINESS PROCESS REPRESENTATION ......................................................................................................................... 68
PORTER'S VALUE CHAINS ........................................................................................................................................................ 70
BALANCED SCORECARD .......................................................................................................................................................... 71
COMPLIANCE (SOX, BASEL II. HIPAA…) ............................................................................................................................. 71
AGILE PROCESSES AND SMART DELIVERIES ................................................................................................................ 71
REVIEW CHECKLIST ..................................................................................................................................................................... 72
8.EA FRAMEWORKS AND CLASSIFICATION .............................................................................................................
EA FRAMEWORKS OVERVIEW .............................................................................................................................................. 73
Zachman's
EAP, Spewak's
FEA Reference Model
DODAF
TOGAF
Other: NGOSS/eTOM, PERA, E2AF, BPTrends EA Pyramid…
AN EA FRAMEWORKS CLASSIFICATION .......................................................................................................................... 82
REVIEW CHECKLIST ..................................................................................................................................................................... 83
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9.THE FUNCTION-FLOW-LAYER-VIEW (FFLV) FRAMEWORK DESIGN ............................................................. 85
AN EA FRAMEWORK DEFINITION ....................................................................................................................................... 85
EA FRAMEWORK IN ANALOGY TO THE HUMAN BODY ......................................................................................... 86
EA FRAMEWORK ENTITIES ..................................................................................................................................................... 87
THIS FRAMEWORK DESCRIPTION AND COMPONENTS ........................................................................................ 89
THE EA DESIGN APPROACH, IN SHORT ........................................................................................................................... 90
ENTERPRISE CONTEXT, STAKEHOLDERS' INTERACTIONS/USE CASES ....................................................... 91
THE BUSINESS FUNCTIONS.................................................................................................................................................... 92
THE BUSINESS FLOWS ............................................................................................................................................................. 93
Customer’s View of the Enterprise
Owner's View of the Enterprise
THE FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE: FLOWS OVER FUNCTIONS......................................................................... 94
THE EA RESOURCE LAYERS: TECHNOLOGY AND PEOPLE .................................................................................... 95
A Function Stack consists of Business, Technology and People
A Flow is executed by a sequence of Function Stacks
EA LAYER SPECIFIC VIEWS ..................................................................................................................................................... 98
Business Layer Views: processes & orchestration, strategy & objectives
Technology Layer Views
People Layer Views: organization, culture, communications…
ENTERPRISE WIDE VIEWS: INFORMATION, SECURITY, PERFORMANCE, FINANCE… ......................... 101
The Information Architecture
The Security View
The Location (Where) View
The Performance View
The Planning and Evolution View
The Financial View
ARCHITECTURE PRINCIPLES ............................................................................................................................................... 105
Decoupling/Modularisation
Encapsulation
Layering
Hierarchical design
Distribution agnostic
Standardisation
Duplication minimization
TECHNOLOGY DESIGN STANDARDS .............................................................................................................................. 106
Design on SOA services with ESB and Web Services
Employ Container/Application hosting technology (JAVA, .NET, Portal)
Virtualise technology
Converge data, voice and video networks
Deploy Web interactive access for stakeholders
Reuse, Buy or Build
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 107
10.ENTERPRISE REFERENCE MAPS AND ORGANIZATION DESIGN ............................................................... 109
ORGANIZATION DESIGN......................................................................................................................................................... 109
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BUSINESS AND OPERATING MODEL, VALUE CHAIN ............................................................................................ 110
Business Models
Operating Models
Value Chains
THE ENTERPRISE GODS MAP............................................................................................................................................. 113
THE IT EA TEMPLATE ............................................................................................................................................................. 114
THE BUSINESS (FUNCTIONS) REFERENCE MAP ..................................................................................................... 116
THE BUSINESS FLOWS REFERENCE MAP .................................................................................................................. 117
THE ENTERPRISE GROUP LINE OF BUSINESSES ..................................................................................................... 119
TERMINOLOGY OF BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE ........................................................................................................ 120
THE APPLICATIONS REFERENCE MAP .......................................................................................................................... 120
THE INFORMATION REFERENCE MAP ........................................................................................................................... 120
THE INFRASTRUCTURE REFERENCE MAP ................................................................................................................. 121
MAPPING REFERENCE MODELS TO ORGANIZATION ........................................................................................... 125
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 127
11.EA PATTERNS AND SINGLE PAGE ARCHITECTURE................................................................................ 129
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PATTERNS ................................................................................................................... 129
Business Layer
Application Layer
Infrastructure Layer
THE SINGLE PAGE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE (SPEA).................................................................................... 132
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 135
12.THE FFLV FRAMEWORK AND NAVIGATION .......................................................................................................
THE EA FUNCTION-FLOW-LAYER-VIEW, FFLV FRAMEWORK ........................................................................... 137
THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE FFLV FRAMEWORK ........................................................................................ 139
THE FFLV FRAMEWORK TREE .......................................................................................................................................... 139
THE KEY FFLV VIEWS .............................................................................................................................................................. 140
THE FFLV FRAMEWORK METAMODEL ......................................................................................................................... 141
THE FFLV FRAMEWORK NAVIGATION ......................................................................................................................... 144
A CUSTOMER'S REQUEST NAVIGATION SCENARIO .............................................................................................. 145
THE FFLV MAPPING TO OTHER FRAMEWORKS ..................................................................................................... 147
Mapping to Zachman
Mapping to the four "standard" EA layers
Mapping to DODAF
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 150
13.THE ENTERPRISE WIDE IT ARCHITECTURE ............................................................................................... 151
THE ROLE OF IT ........................................................................................................................................................................... 151
BUSINESS DRIVERS FOR IT.................................................................................................................................................. 152
KEY IT PROJECTS ..................................................................................................................................................................... 153
SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE ALIGNMENT TO EA ....................................................................................................... 155
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APPLICATIONS INVENTORY ................................................................................................................................................. 159
INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE ........................................................................................................................................... 161
IT OBSOLESCENCE AND EA ROADMAP ........................................................................................................................ 161
THE EA VERSUS ITIL, BPM, SIX SIGMA, ERP, ITIL… .................................................................................................. 162
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 164
14.SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE - SOA .........................................................................................................
WHAT IS SOA OR WOA FOR THAT MATTER.............................................................................................................. 165
SOA BENEFITS ............................................................................................................................................................................. 167
SOA AND BPM ............................................................................................................................................................................ 169
SOA AND EA ................................................................................................................................................................................. 170
SOA + EA = SOEA....................................................................................................................................................................... 170
SOA, TO DO OR TO BUY .......................................................................................................................................................... 171
SOA DESIGN BEST PRACTICES .......................................................................................................................................... 172
EVOLUTION TO SOA .................................................................................................................................................................. 174
SOA, LESSONS LEARNT ......................................................................................................................................................... 175
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 176
15.STRATEGIC PLANNING AND ENTERPRISE TRANSFORMATION ................................................................ 177
DO ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS: PESTEL, PORTER'S 5 FORCES ........................................................................ 179
PESTEL
Porter's Five Forces
DO COMPANY ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................................................... 181
DO STAKEHOLDERS' ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................ 181
OUTLINE ENTERPRISE VISION, GOALS AND TARGETS ......................................................................................... 182
SPECIFY STRATEGIES .............................................................................................................................................................. 182
BALANCE BENEFITS BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS ................................................................................................... 183
CHECK STRATEGIES FOR FEASIBILITY, ACCEPTABILITY, SUITABILITY......................................................... 184
CASCADE STRATEGY PLANNING TO THE EA TREE ................................................................................................ 185
SPECIFY THE STRATEGIC EXECUTION ROADMAP & MAPPING ...................................................................... 185
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 189
16.THE EA DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AND BEST PRACTICES ..........................................................................
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF BEST PRACTICES ................................................................................................................ 191
DEFINE EA MISSION AND DELIVERIES ........................................................................................................................... 192
CAPTURE STAKEHOLDERS’ REQUIREMENTS, DETERMINE SCOPE .............................................................. 192
BUILD THE BUSINESS CASE FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE .................................................................... 192
GET SUPPORT FROM TOP LEVEL MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS ..................................................................... 193
BUILD THE EA GOVERNANCE TEAM ............................................................................................................................... 193
NOMINATE THE EA CORE AND VIRTUAL TEAM ....................................................................................................... 193
SPECIFY AN ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORK ................................................................................. 194
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SELECT AN EA TOOL SET TO SUPPORT THE FRAMEWORK ............................................................................. 194
OUTLINE A DESIGN STRATEGY .......................................................................................................................................... 195
Bottom-Up discovery of existing technology and model ERP processes
Design SOA in the middle to wrap Applications as Business Services
Apply Architecture and Design Principles
SPECIFY AN EA EXECUTION STRATEGY ....................................................................................................................... 196
Prioritize to deliver the urgent fixes for the Enterprise
Leverage existing applications and infrastructure
Work with Suppliers to package applications as SOA services
Design, Plan and Implement iteratively
Use an Agile Processes (AP) approach
Establish SMART Deliveries, CSFs, KPIs
Agree Best Practices
DESIGN THE BUSINESS FUNCTIONS AND FLOWS ARCHITECTURE ............................................................ 198
DISCOVER AS-IS USING THE BUSINESS REFERENCE MAP AND FRAMEWORK LAYERS ................ 199
CASCADE STRATEGY OBJECTIVES AND INITIATIVES TO EA TREE ................................................................ 199
SKETCH THE TARGET ENTERPRISE STATE ................................................................................................................. 199
ASSESS GAP BETWEEN CURRENT AND TARGET STATES, ESTABLISH ROADMAP ........................... 200
ESTABLISH PROJECT PORTFOLIO AND PROGRAM PLAN ................................................................................. 200
ESTABLISH EA OPERATIONAL GOVERNANCE ........................................................................................................... 200
EXECUTE ENTERPRISE TRANSFORMATION ITERATION AND EVALUATE EA MATURITY ................. 200
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 200
17.AN EA DESIGN EXERCISE ...........................................................................................................................................
THE DESIGN PROCESS STEPS............................................................................................................................................ 201
AN EA DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE OR VIRTUAL CASE STUDY .......................................................................... 202
Specify Enterprise Mission & Products, Vision, Strategy and Objectives
Document Stakeholders' Interactions and internal requirements
Design the Business Functions Map
Design stakeholders' scenarios as Flows over Functions
Draft the Single Page Architecture
Specify the Applications executing processes in Functions
Draw the Infrastructure aligned to Applications
Map Information entities to Functions
Map Organization units to Functions
Link all Views in the EA framework
Specify Target Objectives and Vision for the Enterprise
Design the target EA, employ SOA paradigm
Assess gaps and devise the Transformation roadmap and program
INSTEAD OF CASE STUDIES ................................................................................................................................................ 214
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 215
18.FRAMEWORK USE CASES FOR M&A, OUTSOURCING. ITIL.......................................................................... 217
EA FRAMEWORK USE FOR INVESTMENT ................................................................................................................... 217
EA FRAMEWORK FOR IT SERVICES MANAGEMENT (ITIL) ARCHITECTURE ............................................. 218
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EA FRAMEWORK FOR SECURITY ARCHITECTURE ................................................................................................. 219
HOW TO DESIGN YOUR ENTERPRISE AROUND THE CUSTOMER ................................................................. 220
EA FRAMEWORK USE FOR MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS ............................................................................. 221
EA FRAMEWORK USE FOR OUTSOURCING................................................................................................................ 222
EA FRAMEWORK USE FOR A START-UP BUSINESS .............................................................................................. 223
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 224
19.THE EA GOVERNANCE, PROGRAM AND THE ARCHITECT ROLE ................................................................ 225
EA GOVERNANCE....................................................................................................................................................................... 225
THE EA PROJECT ORGANIZATION AND FUNDING ................................................................................................. 227
AN EA SITE TAXONOMY ......................................................................................................................................................... 228
THE ROLE OF THE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT .............................................................................................................. 229
Enterprise Architect kinds
How does one select an Enterprise Architect
The job description for an Enterprise Architect
The Tasks and authority of the Enterprise Architect
Enterprise Architect as a leader
The growth of EA jobs
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 239
20.EA MATURITY, VALUE AND SELL ............................................................................................................................
MEASURE YOUR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE MATURITY .............................................................................. 241
EA development maturity
EA exploitation maturity
MEASURE THE VALUE OF EA .............................................................................................................................................. 243
SELL THE EA ................................................................................................................................................................................. 245
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 246
21.EA ROADBLOCKS, CULTURE AND POLITICS.......................................................................................................
EA DEVELOPMENT TRIGGERS ............................................................................................................................................ 247
EA ROADBLOCKS ....................................................................................................................................................................... 248
The Enterprise Inertia, silo organization and the Business - IT divide
The lack of reference Business Architectures
The diversity and non-coordinated approaches to fix the Enterprise evils
EA vague definition, is it a blueprint, process, program, strategic planning…?
EA scope, no non-IT technology, no people or other stakeholders' views
The EA program developed solely by IT
Lack of an agreed EA framework
Overly simplified EA framework
Lack of Business Case at initiation
EA deliverables not fit for purpose
EA governance and implementation failures
Enterprise Architect not invested with authority
Politics slowing EA development
Independent SOA programs competing for resources
ERP development competing with EA
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Not using EA tools
The vast knowledge required and paucity of Enterprise Architects
Roadblocks recap and recommendations
ENTERPRISE CULTURE AND EA ........................................................................................................................................ 258
EA POLITICS .................................................................................................................................................................................. 261
EA RISKS AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT ..................................................................................................................... 263
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 264
22.EA STATE, FUTURE OUTLOOK AND THE VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE ....................................................... 265
EA CURRENT STATE ................................................................................................................................................................ 265
THE VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE .................................................................................................................................................. 267
The Virtualization of the Enterprise IT
The Virtualization of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) Layers
The Enterprise Value Chain modelling and Virtualisation
THE FUTURE OUTLOOK FOR EA ........................................................................................................................................ 275
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 276
23.ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE RECAP ....................................................................................................................
THE EA FRAMEWORK RECAP ............................................................................................................................................ 277
THE KEY STEPS OF AN EA DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................................................... 278
THE EA DELIVERIES CHECKLIST ........................................................................................................................................ 280
WHY USE THE FFLV FRAMEWORK ................................................................................................................................ 282
EA STAKEHOLDERS' BENEFITS REVIEW ....................................................................................................................... 283
THE ENTERPRISE TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIC PROCESS ......................................................................... 284
FINAL SAY...................................................................................................................................................................................... 286
REVIEW CHECKLIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 286
24.REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................................................................
ACRONYMS ............................................................................................................................................................................
INDEX ........................................................................................................................................................................................
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ...........................................................................................................................................................
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Chapter 2
1. EA provides a competitive edge to the Enterprise
Due to the growing complexity of technology, the daily increase in the amount of
information and the ever fastening pace of change and competition, the very
existence of many Enterprises will be challenged in the next few years. Ray
Kurzweil states that every ten years the rate of change doubles; in the next
hundred years we may experience the same amount of change as in the past
20,000 yearsi.
Historically, companies built products, deployed services and structured the
organization rapidly in response to market demand and new regulations. This was
achieved through point solutions, patching and silo organizations, all at the
expense of an increasing complexity of a “spaghetti” like architecture, fostering
duplication in functions, data, platforms, processes and projects. The unnecessary
complexity slows down business change, the decision making process and fosters
longer time to market which ultimately increases the costs of operations.
At today’s pace of change, to conquer the soaring complexity, to deliver faster and
better and be sustainable the Enterprise has to be:
A. Streamlined: simplified to minimize unjustified variety, reduce unnecessary
complexity, remove silos and improve focus
B. Aligned: technology (IT) and people (organization) resources aligned to
business processes and strategy to achieve the firm objectives
C. Agile: modular, layered, standardized, technology independent, built out of
services, quickly to adapt to change
D. Built to last: strategically planned according to business and technology trends
and vision
E. Documented: a blueprint to document the current and target architecture to
enhance comprehension and management of its performance.
To repair a car, the mechanic has to know its blueprint and, based on it, its
operation. To design a car or improve it the firm needs to understand where
technologies and markets go. The mechanic has to become a planner, a marketing
man, a business man. Same with the Enterprise Architect.
An EA will integrate in a single effort many fragmented or loose coupled Enterprise
developments such as SOA, IT Architecture, Application Integration (EAI), ITIL
efforts and many independently performed activities such as Enterprise alignment
to Business Strategy and Objectives, Enterprise Simplification, Compliance to
Regulation Frameworks, Business Process Improvement, Six/Lean Sigma,
Business Performance Management, Mergers and Acquisitions, Integration and
outsourcing (such as BPO, SaaS…).
What will be the role of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) in the Enterprise evolution
in the decade to come? How can an Enterprise operate in a predictable manner,
change fast enough to lead or at least swiftly follow the market and offer high
quality products at the same time, without the modular structure and blueprint of
an Enterprise Architecture?
For the next decade, there is little chance for a legacy Enterprise to survive the
accelerating change, the ever reducing time to market, increasing customer
expectations, the industry consolidation and outsourcing trends without a clean,
streamlined, optimized and documented operation.
The EA is an asset which, once in place and properly maintained, will return value
for many years (RoEA) since the investment in EA can be leveraged over and over
again to pay back dividends. EA is the knowledge database of your Enterprise.
The EA asset promises you a Competitive Advantage by streamlining your
Enterprise, enabling faster product delivery at lower costs, handling the exploding
amount of information and providing greater Enterprise agility to cope with change.
Conservative quotes from different industries vary between 10-30% reduction in
cost and time to market due to EA.
The hypothesis and conclusion of the book is that the EA will offer the Enterprise
the edge needed in the survival race through blueprinting, streamlining,
roadmapping and agility.
The US now requires government departments to provide their Enterprise
Architecture to justify investments. Your shareholders will demand the EA soon in
order to increase the guarantees of their return of investment.
12
Chapter 2: EA provides a competitive edge to the Enterprise
Review checklist
1. What is the hypothesis of the book? What do we want to prove?
2. What are key benefits of the EA?
3. What developments does EA integrate in a single effort?
4. Why is the EA indispensable to the Enterprise for the decade to come?
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Chapter 3
2. The Problem and Drivers for Change
The Problem
Remember how many times you have spoken to a large organization providing you
a service, only to discover that they still have your previous address, where some
of their correspondence is still sent, as well as having your current address. This is
because for each service there is a platform which retains your personal data. A
change in address often has to be operated in many platforms, at the same time,
and sometimes manually, which is slow and error prone. In fact, duplicated data is
created for each platform.
On occasion, as a customer, you need to identify yourself several times to get a
service from a company. This is because each service owns its data and requires
its own authorization since there is no cross platform authentication and
authorization service.
The current state of the Enterprise as seen by Zachman: “Enterprises have a large
inventory of current systems built out-of-context, not integrated, not supporting the
Enterprise, that are consuming enormous amounts of resources for maintenance
and are far too costly to replace; as a matter of fact, the inventory of existing
systems has come to be referred to as ‘the legacy’”ii.
Enterprises met many challenges in arriving at their current structure. Many have
been through a rapid customer growth and technology changes which fuelled an
organic growth, based often on one-off, point solutions. Shortening timelines for
new products, and immediate priorities to minimize CAPEX and OPEX, resulted in a
silo culture where, quite often, each part of an organization cares only for its own
products, budgets, applications and technology. The Enterprise, as a result, is
made of patched legacy with multiple and various solutions for same or similar
capabilities.
The current state of the Enterprise requires simplification since it has grown
complex, after many mergers and acquisitions. The complexity makes applications
patching impossible. Adding new point solutions, re-using little from the existing
capabilities, can only make things worse. Can we call this Enterprise manageable,
predictably delivering quality to customers and value to shareholders? And the
cost of running this Enterprise is growing higher and higher with the level of
complexity increased by mergers, point solutions and patching.
The divide between business and IT departments is frequently deep since there is
no common vocabulary, skills to facilitate communication and shared objectives to
align efforts. Business understands processes, rules, markets and products. IT
people specialize in IT support, maintenance, helpdesk and software development.
Usually, business inflexibility is associated either with the IT or with the
organization which is changed ever so often. It does not matter how much
emphasis is set on the Customers' needs, if the products themselves and the
operational processes deliver at low quality. This, ultimately, hinders the efforts
made by the customer facing units. And the faulty products are the result of faulty
processes which require business process improvement using Six/Lean Sigma and
BPMS etc.
Currently, in an Enterprise, there are so many plans, designs and architectures.
Everybody has a drawing: the Supply Chain, the Customer Services department or
IT. They do not look alike, they have different vocabularies, entities, conventions
and levels of detail, they are drawn with various tools as Word, Visio, Power Point…
and they sit everywhere and nowhere when you need them. What do we do? We
call a meeting with all domain experts to make a decision. And we just pick their
minds during a brainstorm. It's like the architecture is floating in the air, above the
expert audience where nobody can see it. And we are not even sure that we are
talking about the same thing.
By the way, where is the Business Architecture blueprint to be used by IT to align
Technology Architecture to business processes? Unfortunately, no Enterprise has
been built according to a blueprint, at best it was re-engineered. But we solely let
IT provide the Enterprise Architecture.
To our relief, the ERP application suites are saving the Enterprise by providing both
the business processes and application layers of the Enterprise. More often than
not, this comes at the price of inflexibility, poor integration, high cost, dependency
on one vendor and poor comprehension of the underlying functionality. EA is more
than an ERP.
Every Enterprise has a structure, an architecture, and it works, more or less. The
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Chapter 3: The Problem and Drivers for Change
structure is often the result of an organic growth and not the outcome of a
deliberate process. Without the synoptic view of an EA, the Enterprise is marred by
duplication in platforms, projects, roles, data, applications and even products.
Quite often, units of the same company compete with each other and do not share
good practices, processes, applications and strategies.
From a business perspective, the Enterprise problem is the inflexibility, slow
change and high costs of IT. From an IT perspective, it is the lack of business
process and requirements clarity, inherited obsolete technologies and the tangled
IT spaghetti architecture.
The Problem: the silo organization, the point solutions duplicating functionality, the
unnecessary complexity and the poor understanding of the Enterprise operation,
causing a lengthening of the decision making; not able to implement, quickly
enough, the change required by business.
The problem lies with the today's unresponding and undocumented Enterprise in a
world of growing complexity and change.
.
Business Trends
The next decade is characterized by an ever increasing trend in speed of change,
complexity, amount of information and customer expectations, reducing product
life cycles and industry consolidation.
Often, an Enterprise needs to enter a new line of business or to enhance its
product portfolio by acquiring or merging with another company rather than taking
the time and absorbing the cost to produce the product in house. Mergers and
acquisitions happen so often now because, before an Enterprise can acquire the
skill and deliver the product, the window of market opportunity is lost. The new
company has to be aligned to the Enterprise. But because companies have
overlaps in products and functions, and exceedingly different applications to
implement similar processes, a merger may simply fail to bring benefits since
there is no common blueprint of operation to deliver a single service proposition to
customers and cost reduction, from economies of scale, to owners. On the other
hand, the opposite result could occur; customers are confused by offers of similar
but slightly different products and technologies, employee’s motivation may suffer
from internal competition and potential redundancies and the share price may
drop until the confidence is restored, that is, when the new products are integrated
and the Enterprise is streamlined again. But there are numerous issues with
acquisitions, for instance alignment of organizations, IT infrastructure, applications
17
and in general Customer Relationship, Supply Chain and all the Enterprise Support
functions. Not to mention different strategies, cultures and values.
It is hard to understand how it is done without a common blueprint, provided by
the EA. The current best practice is to align the organizations' charts.
Outsourcing and managed services are also one of the strongest trends in any
industry now. They are essentially about work division. Nowadays we can do very
few things well, at the level of quality expected by customers. Companies
outsource functions which do not align to the perceived core business activities.
Interestingly although companies pretend, more and more, to be customer
oriented, they outsource Customer Care functions such as Call Centers. But what
functions in the Enterprise should we outsource? Should we outsource
operations? It happens, often off-shored. Before making the decision you need to
determine in detail the services to be provided to your Enterprise and their present
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Is there a context, a blueprint to help us make our
outsourcing decisions?
Can the Enterprise be certified against quality frameworks (CMM, Six Sigma)? This
may be a trigger for initiating an EA program, besides acquisitions and outsourcing
as these maturity and quality frameworks require business process optimization.
Six Sigma, Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and recent regulations and auditing
procedures as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II … demand a structured, well understood,
managed business process architecture, data architecture, security and privacy
controls, accompanied by proper document and financial management systems,
all in the scope of an Enterprise Architecture. The business process and
information flows modeling offer a framework for auditing and compliance to
regulatory requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley.
There are numerous external and internal forces that lead towards the
development of an Enterprise Architecture:
1. Business management need for direct control of change of the Enterprise, IT
and investment process; for a long time now, business users have struggled to
obtain the IT support they need to deliver process change for flexibility
2. The need for Enterprise simplification and integration of point solutions and
silo organizations due to the current state of organic growth and patching
3. Increasing customer demand and expectations for quality, growing raw
material and energy prices forcing companies to deliver new levels of
scalability, quality, cost efficiency and performance
18
Chapter 3: The Problem and Drivers for Change
4. Rising worldwide business competition manifesting in
o Rapidly reducing lifecycles/Time to Market
o Increasing consolidation trend through mergers and acquisitions as the cost
of developing new products in house is growing
o Rising trend for outsourcing of Business Process (BPO) , applications (SaaS),
data centers and managed services
o increasing request for modular, service based business architecture (SOA)
and growing popularity for web services to increase business agility
5. Drive for quality frameworks (Six Sigma, CMM) and new regulatory compliance
(SOX, Basel II, HIPAA…) demanding documented and auditable structures and
processes
6. EA, becoming a regulatory requirement in the US: the Clinger-Cohen Act of
1996 for Federal Agencies mandates the EA.
Business needs
Of course, a business has to return value to all its stakeholders: owners,
employees, community... But what are the main categories of issues a business
always has to have in perspective, what are the business needs in this day and
age?
1. Differentiate products for customers' benefit, and establish business models to
create a continuous competitive advantage to increase profit for your
shareholders/owners (Financial view).
2. Increase agility to be able to respond quickly enough to market changes
(Operational view)
3. Streamline and architect current Operations to enhance effectiveness and
reduce costs (Operational view)
4. Automate as much as possible, reduce redundancies in functions, processes,
platforms and projects, reduce the tangled architecture, document current
business functionality and implementation to get in control of your business.
5. Build the Enterprise to last (Strategic view)
6. Analyze trends (industry, economical, social, political and regulatory,
technological) and plan your strategy and business models accordingly (market
segments, products, costs, new technology capabilities).
7. Improve Corporate Social Responsibility (Community and Regulatory view)
19
What business constantly requires from IT
1. Technology alignment to business and strategy intentions
2. Customer self service
3. Customer/Employee/Partner Reduced/Single (Reduced) Sign On
4. “Single Customer View:” a real time operational response to customer data
request to return all personal data, subscription, interaction history… ,
5. “Single Version of Truth”: only one source of data for reporting, Business
Intelligence and ultimately decision making
6. Straight Through Processing: process automation, document imaging and
character recognition to reduce human error and processing time
7. Agility to change, access security, data privacy…
8. Reduce IT costs and investment
What the Government sector expects from IT
In short, a collection of issues the government agencies are confronted with at this
stage in time:
1. Joined-up government, inter-working & information sharing between
departments
2. Common services and infrastructure across government
3. Government portal and intranet, authentication/authorization/Id Mng service
…
4. Information systems to respond faster to business change
5. Efficiency & customer focus through business process re-engineering
6. Electronic delivery of services, E-business to business
7. Usage of communication and cooperation technologies such as Web2 (2 way
Web)
As such, the Government demands a streamlined operation with reduced
duplication and improved processes, common inter-departmental shared
resources, cross boundary services and electronic services delivered over the
Internet, using the latest Web2.0 communication technologies.
Ultimately, the book intends to prove that the Enterprise problems and trends can
all be acted upon in coordination in an Enterprise Architecture to defeat the
20
Chapter 3: The Problem and Drivers for Change
increasingly threatening enemies of the Enterprise: growing competition, rate of
change, complexity and ultimately the increasing entropy of the Enterprise.
Review checklist
1. Which are the key issues with the Enterprise today? What is the "problem"?
2. State a few important business trends.
3. Describe the main business drivers and the business requirements from IT.
4. What are the Government drivers?
21
Chapter 11
3. EA Patterns and Single Page Architecture
EA layers are built on few simple patterns: Nodes, Lines, Rules and Plans. The
metamodel describes the relationships between EA entities observing patterns.
The Single Page Architecture is an overall single page view of the Enterprise.
Enterprise Architecture patterns
EA layers are built on few simple patterns: Nodes, Lines, Rules and Plans.
Business Layer
The Nodes are implemented by Processes in Business Functions; the Lines by Flows of
control (events), information (documents) or parts.
Application Layer
The Nodes are implemented by Applications.
Lines by information exchanges over middleware such as EAI.
A Service sub-layer is introduced by a SOA/EA development. Nodes are implemented by
Services while Lines by Requests in SOAP/XML, REST Web Services and ESB
messaging.
Infrastructure Layer
Is composed of two sub-layers: Servers & Storage and Networks.
Server and Storage sub-layer
Nodes are implemented by Servers and Storage units. Lines by TCP/IP transport
protocols and respectively SCSI and Fiber Channel links..
Servers:
♦ SW side:
o Application Servers (Java EE, .Net)
o DB Servers (Relational, XML, Object, Hierarchical… DBMSs)
o Web Servers (+ Server Pages)
o Network File Servers, Printer Servers
o Audio/Video Servers
o Email, Chat, FTP, telnet…
♦ SW servers interconnection protocols
o JMS, RMI, SMTP, SNMP, FTP, Telnet…
♦ HW side
o Windows, UNIX. LINUX…, Hypervisor (virtualization)
o on Blades, rack drawers, mainframes, AS/400…
♦ HW servers interconnections:
o Sockets, TCP/IP
Storage sub-layer nodes
o DAS: Direct Attached Storage
o NAS: Network Attached Storage
o SAN: Storage Area Network (RAIDx)
♦ Storage interconnections
o iSCSI
o Fiber Channel (FC)
o
Networks
♦ LAN (Local Area Network) implemented mainly by Ethernet Hub switches
♦ WAN nodes implemented by Switches, Routers, Gateways, DNSs…over fiber (Dark
Wave, SONET…) and copper ( Tx/Ex, xDSL) transmission networks
26
Nodes & Lines patterns and Technologies at each EA layer
Nodes Lines Nodes
Layers
Process Process
Business Flow
Service Service
Req/Resp (ESB, WS SOAP/XML, REST)
Applications Application (ERP, CRM…) Application
Information Exchange/EAI, CORBA
Infrastructure DAS, NAS, SAN DAS, NAS, SAN
Storage (i)SCSI, Fibre Channel (FC)
& SW side: Application, DB, Web…)
Figure 11-1 – EA patterns: Nodes and Lines at each layer
Chapter 11: EA Patterns and Single Page Architecture
Servers JMS, MQ…
HW side HW Serv
Sockets, UDP,TCP/IP protocols
Networks Switch, Routers Gateways, DNS…
WAN MPLS ,ATM, FR, Copper
Hubs, Bridges Hubs, Bridges
LAN Ethernet
27
The Single Page Enterprise Architecture (SPEA)
The Single Page Enterprise Architecture is a diagram (see diagrams at end of
chapter) providing a synoptic view of an Enterprise operation, describing the key
business functions and the interconnections channeling key flows; it shows a
reduced view of a functional Architecture (all Flows over Functions) depicting
solely key business functions and flows. It looks like an application integration
architecture with applications exchanging information over pipes.
The applications (systems), the Functions they map to, the flows and stakeholders
are represented in subsequent EA views.
SPEA is structured on the Business Functions Map. As the Business Flows Map is
discovered and designed, entities are added to the Single Page EA.
SPEA is the most popular EA artifact. It is used by everybody to understand the
Enterprise operation and communicate in the same language. It remains, in some
cases, the only Enterprise Architecture artifact. It addresses the whole Enterprise
audience and should be designed with a largely available drawing tool since most
people must have access to it.
It is similar to the Operational View 2 (OV-2) in DODAF that shows nodes (Functions
here) and needlines (Flows).
Since SPEA represents the logic operation of the Enterprise, the level of detail has
to stop to a couple of levels below a Line of Business (LoB). Frequently, an
Enterprise consists of a few Lines of Business, each delivering a product. Further
detail going beyond level 2, can be provided by a specific business Function
architecture and be referenced from the parent Function in the SPEA.
A couple of samples of Single Page EAs are shown in the following. Support
functions are typically not shown, for simplification.
In the Single Page EA diagram: a box is a Business Function which is a subdivision
of a Line of Business.
♦ A Line of Business is an area of the enterprise delivering a specific service or
product
♦ A line is an information/material/control flow; an arrow ending a line shows
the destination of the flow.
28
29
Direct
Mail House Insurance System Banks
Campaign
Figure 11-2 - A Health Insurance Single Page Architecture- IT template
Managmnt Membrship Product Claims
Bank Gway Payment
Face 2 Face
EFTPOS Claims/ Bank 1
3rd Parties Contact
Mng Benefits Provider Rate Config Cheque Service
Refunds/
Customer Premium Providers
Payments
Member Service Billing
Member Claims
Chapter 11: EA Patterns and Single Page Architecture
Centre
Center Gway HIC
B2B Gway
Prospects ContactMg Eligibility Authorise Claims Hospital
Phone
Call
Customers IVR Centre (Batch)
Gway Access Premium
Medical
DB
Bus
Corporate
Call Center
Retail
Access
B2B Gway
Corporate Autoclaims
Access ID Claims
Mng (Real Time) Tranfer
Web
www.xxx.com. Pre supplier
admission Payment
Provider Premium
Access
Payment Payment Banks
Content
Intranet Manag Payment Post Office
Paymaster
Revenue Management
Cheque Cash Group Real Time Replica Finance Apps Balance
Register Balancing Balancing Reports ETL Score- ReInsurance
GL AP/AR AM Card
Batch
Reports
Government
DW
Claims Community
BI
Review checklist
1. What are the EA main patterns?
2. How do they map on each EA layer entities?
3. What is a metamodel?
4. What are the key artifacts of the metamodel?
5. Explain the key relationships between entities of the metamodel artifacts?
6. What is the Single Page Enterprise Architecture (SPEA)?
7. What are the main SPEA components?
30
Chapter 12
4. The FFLV Framework and navigation
The EA reference maps/templates supply a generic structure for an Enterprise. It
should be used to jump start the EA development efforts.
A framework is the backbone, the frame of a system to which most parts are fitted.
An EA framework looks like a contents page, a mindmap or a document tree with
all components of the EA having to hook onto the framework. It does not define
the architecture of the components, but solely the frame joining them, exhibiting
component placeholders. It enforces reuse of components, an interface
philosophy, design constraints and notations and architectural principles to
provide consistency in design so that artifacts fit back into the framework.
The EA Function-Flow-Layer-View, FFLV Framework
The EA framework consists of business Functions, Flows and Layers (Business,
Functions, B
Technology and People) described by Views
Views.
The FFLV framework proposes an EA meta-architecture consisting of a Flows over
Functions functional architecture - shaped by a Business Reference Map -
executed by the Technology and/or People resource Layers with Views describing
various layer specific or Enterprise wide stakeholders' concerns.
Functions Flows
Development D Layers
Governance G
Views
Support S O Operations
Products/Lines
Business
Technology
People
The FFLV Enterprise Architecture Framework
Figure 12-3 - The Function-Flow-Layer-View (FFLV) EA Framework
An extended business Function can be seen as a stack traversing the EA layers.
The business processes. the technology and people resource layers, belong to the
Function stack. To that, one might add strategy, objectives, performance criteria
etc, all cascaded to the Function stack entities.
In a Flow diagram, any line between Functions or to stakeholders can be described
in terms of an output of a process (Product) which can be a part, information (bill,
order, message) or event and a connection (Line) which is its transport,
implemented by a network, a mechanical transport band or courier.
The framework could initially be implemented with a minimum of flows describing
the customer’s services, two or three levels of Functions in a hierarchical
decomposition and a minimum number of Views. As the framework is open,
Functions, Flows and Views can be added at later times. There are also the 4th
dimension, “Time” and the 5th, the detail or level of granularity.
32
Chapter 12: The FFLV Framework and navigation
The three dimensions of the FFLV Framework
The FFLV Framework specifies three dimensions: Functions, Flows and
Layers/Views. A swimlane functional architecture diagram shows business Flows
consisting of processes executed by Functions/participants in lanes. The
Layers/Views dimension exhibits the executing resources view.
Flows
Layers
/Views Functions Layers,
Views
Functions
A
B
w
w
F lo
Flo
Business
Technology
People
Flows
Another dimension is the hierarchical functional decomposition granularity level
Figure 12-4 - The 3 EA framework dimensions: Function. Flow, Layer/View
The FFLV Framework Tree
The EA design and analysis is hierarchical; a specific level of detail could be
chosen for analysis, depending on stakeholder's interest. An Enterprise can be
seen as a hierarchy of Functions structured in an Enterprise tree i.e. the Business
Functions Map; it can be also seen as an Enterprise hierarchy of Flows (Business
Flows Map); and also categorized in a number of Layers: Business, Technology and
33
People or Organization, each and every one of them further described by Views
filtering only the aspects of interest to you.
Hence, the entry points into the EA navigation framework and tree are the
Functions, Flows, Layers and Views. This tree can and should be devised for the
Enterprise Architecture. It also guides the sitemap of the EA web site which may
also contain other information business, technology or people related such as
strategy…
Enterprise
Functions Flows Layers & Views
Levels Process Technology People
1 G O D S
Views
2 Plan Strt SCM CRM HR Pay
Click on an Line Click on a View…
Connection Output/
Product
Process
S Technology Flow
People
Figure 12-5 - The Enterprise Framework Tree
The Key FFLV Views
The Business Reference Map (BRM) provides the initial structure for all EA views,
including the Single Page EA. The Business Functions Map may be shaped by the
BRM Enterprise reference map.
The key Views were selected to minimize the effort to design the first iteration of
34
Chapter 12: The FFLV Framework and navigation
an EA. They are the Context (Stakeholders' interactions), the Business Functions
Map, the Business Flows, The Organization chart and the Technology (IT
Applications, Servers and Storage and Networks) architectures.
People
Organization
Technology Networks Unit 1
L1 Org
Servers and Storage L1 Org Unit 2
Business Applications OU1.1
L2
Information Node2 L2 OU2.1 Node5
Business Flows Server2 Server5 Qantas Airline Associated
Node1 L2 OU1.2 2 Node4 App5
Services
Business Functions Map Subject Area Cluster
Subject Area 1 App2
Server1
Server Market
Sales
Sell
Customer
Service
Customer
Deliver/Operate
Holidays
Context View
Context ViewApp1
Entity 1.1 Entity 2.1 Entity 2.2
Marketing Management
Qantas Airl ine
Service
Management Relationship
Management
Ground
Operations
In-flight
Service
Associated
Context View
Market Sell Service
Virtual L1 Org Unit 3
App4 Services
& Maintenance
Deliver/Operate Catering
Develop Enterprise
Holidays
Node3
Marketing
/Plan
Sales Customer
Service
Functions
Customer Ground
Srver1
Deliv er/Operate
In-flight
Single Page Architecture Management
Management
Relationship
Management
Operations
L2 OU3.1
Service
Engineering
Product Yield Reservations Operations
Environment
Analysis
Entity 1.2
Server3
Business Reference Map App3 Develop
Campaign
Management
Development
Customers
Acquisition
Management
QF
Int ranet
Customer
Cent res
Ticketing
Enterprise
Contact
Centre
Customer
Service
Entity 2.3
Check-in
Entity 2.4
Node6 Boarding
Gates
Fli ght s
Di spl ay
Logistics
Pax
S ervices
I -Fli ght
S ervice
Catering
Freight
/Plan
Delivery Channels
Schedule Functions
Virtual
Freight
Management
/Front Tier L2 OU3.2
Airline
Product Reservations
Srver2 Operations
Brand
Market
Segmentat ion Mngment Yield Bags
S ervices
App6
Sales CRM
Development Management Ticketing Logistics Engineering/
Crew Management
Subject Area 3 Node7 Freight
Maintenance
Operations Utility Functions Schedule
Management Server7
Manage
Lounge
Fleet
Planning
Product
Development
Planning & Payment
Content
Mngement
... Business
Flows
User
I dentification
Entity 3.1 Crew Comms/ Loyalty
Negotiation Management
Crew Management App7 Performance
Engineering/
Maintenance
Pax
Yield Reservat ions Ticketi ng Depart ure Comms
Opti misat ion Management Mngment Management
Corporate Group Services
Market & Planning &
Negotiation
Payment
Make & Entity &
Sell 3.2 Crew Comms/
Performance
Loyalty
Management
CEO Office
Group Services Risk &
Assurance
Inventory
Mngment Security Safety
OpS ched
& Di srupti on
BI & Fl ight
Planni ng
Finance Property
Forecast Deliver Service
Reporting
Control:IOC
Legal
Schedule Schedule/GDI
Development Dist ribution
Corporate Report ing
Warehouse
Group Services
Enterprise IT Fuel Procurement Payroll People ...
Make/
Revenue Payment Load
Accounti ng Mngment Control
Communi Management
cations
Crew Bi ddi ng
CEO Office
Legal Corporate
Business Logic
Risk &
Assurance
Security Safety
BI &
Reporting
Finance
Meal
Orderi ng
Property
Crew # Work Planning CrewPlanning Crew
Source/B2B
Long Range Pl Patt ern/Pairing Rostering Tracki ng
Enterprise IT Fuel Procurement Payroll People
...
Communi Management
cations
Developmnt Governance
Fuel Planning
Support Crew Perform
Mngment
Services
Agreements
Negotiat ion
Corporate Services Crew
Comms
Airlines
Comms
Figure 12-6 - Key FFLV Views, Business Reference Map & Single Page EA
The FFLV Framework Metamodel
Largely, a metamodel describes the structure of a system. The EA metamodel
illustrates the types of EA artifacts, their components and relationships. It is
imperative to be implemented in an EA tool since the metamodel is the DB
schema of the repository of the EA framework in the tool database.
The Enterprise can be depicted as a Black Box with surrounding stakeholders’
interactions described by business Flows. The Black Box is decomposed as either
a hierarchy of Business Functions or Organizational units. A map linking the
35
Functions to organizational units should exist, and it is important for the
organization alignment to business and technology.
Business Flows contain entities such as processes, interconnections, information
exchanged, events and participants (in swimlanes). A sequence flow between two
processes can represent an information item, event or a physical part transported
over a connection. A swimlane in a Flow diagram represents a Function in the
Business Functions Map diagram. As such, processes become part of Business
Functions. Resources such as People, Applications and Infrastructure, show a
relationship to the process they execute.
A Function, as the basic unit of the Enterprise, is related to the Applications and
People groups or roles it is executed by. Hence resources executing the processes
- such as organization roles and applications – may appear in a lane.
At the business level, an Information Architecture Model exists, in fact a taxonomy
of Enterprise key Information Items.
At the resource level, the physical or electronic documents with data schemas,
described in the Data Model are implementing the Business Information Model.
Process sequence flows are implemented by applications interconnections.
All objects in the diagrams are stored in the tool repository with relationships as in
the metamodel for enabling navigation between EA artifacts.
More relationships and components could be added to the basic metamodel from
new EA architecture artifacts.
36
Chapter 12: The FFLV Framework and navigation
The FFLV Framework Navigation
One may choose to see the whole picture of the Enterprise or a department, a
Function, a View, a Line (connection). One may navigate horizontally along a Flow
or vertically over a Function to inspect the process and resources involved, such as
people, applications and supporting technology.
EA Selection EA entities
As-Is
As- Functions Governance
To-Be
To- Flows (from…to) Operations
(from…
Roadmap Layers&Views Development
Support HR
Finance
…
D
s
ion
at
S
Op
er O
G
Business
Technology
People
Click on a Function, Flow, View/Layer, Line
Figure 12-7 - The FFLV Framework Navigation Cube from menu bar
The FFLV framework representation constitutes the Graphical User Interface (GUI)
to the EA artifacts with direct entries to the EA tree elements: Functions, Flows,
Layers and Views, for selection. The navigation is initiated by clicking on the
graphical image components (Function, Flow, Layer or View. For horizontal
navigation you need to click on a product/line. Navigation can also be performed
with Up/Down, Back and Home buttons.
37
EA Selection EA Entities
As-Is
As-
To-Be
To-
Roadmap
D Layers&Views Business
Security Technology
S O Planning People Organization
G Location Security Culture
Information Planning Comms
Business
Technology
Finance Location Values…
People Information
Finance
For navigation, select the Function, Flow, Layer/Views from the Drop-Down Menu
Drop-
or click directly on a Function, Flow or Layer/View on the FFLV framework.
Click on a Function, Flow, View/Layer, Line
Figure 12-8 - The FFLV Framework Navigation Cube with side menus
From a tool perspective, a View, is the graphical representation of all objects in a
repository that have been selected to have a specific attribute value, chosen from
the EA GUI. A mouse click on a menu or cube GUI generates an SQL statement
selecting a combination of objects and interconnections from the repository,
assembled as a diagram by the tool. Ideally, once a View or a group of Views is
selected for display and visually edited, the tool should be able to retain the visual
configuration and re-create the diagram on subsequent selections; a first time
editing will allow diagram shaping and configuration.
A Customer's request navigation scenario
The following figure illustrates how to trace a customer's interaction flow and
navigate to the layers of applications and infrastructure implementing it.
38
39
EA Selection EA Entities
As-Is
To-Be
Roadmap
Organisation
Servers and Storage Servers and Storage
L1
Networks Org Unit 1 L1 Org Unit 2
Server2 Server5
Server Cluster
Applications OU1.1
L2 4a 2b
Server1
Server5
Information Server22a 3 4 5 Applications
2 L2 OU2.1 Virtual
Business Server1Node2
Server Cluster Node5 Q antas Airline Associated
Services
Srver1
Chapter 12: The FFLV Framework and navigation
App5
Business Functions Map L2 OU1.2 Server3
Market Sell Service
Flows App5
Deliver/Operat e
Subject Area
View 1
ContextNode1 App2 Subject Area 2
& Maintenance
Holidays
Sales
App2
Custom er Custom er
4a
Management Service Ground In-flight
Context
Marketing
Virtual Managem ent
Relationship Operations Ser vice
Virtual
Entity 2.1 Node4 2.2 Unit 3
Q ant as Airline
Management Associated
ContextApp1 1.1 1
View
Entity Entity App1
App4 L1 Org
Srver1 Services Srver2
Engineering
Market Sell Service Deliver/Operate Catering
App4
Figure 12-9 – The basic EA navigation screen
Develop Enterprise
/Plan Functions
Holidays
Marketing
Sales
Management
Customer
Server3
Service
Management
Customer
Relationship
Management
Ground
Operations
In-flight
Service 2a Server7
Entity 2.3 EntityOU3.1
Virtual L2
Product Yield Reser vations Operations
Management
Node3
Entity 1.2 2.4 App3
Developm ent Ticketing Logistics
Freight
Freight
Develop
App3 Enterprise Catering
Airline
/Plan Schedule
Functions
Srver2
Node6
Managem ent
Product
Development
Yield
Management
Reservations
Ticketing
Cr ew Managem ent
Business Flows OU3.2
App6
Operations
Logistics L2
Server7 Freight
Engineering/
Maintenance
App6
Schedule
Management
Subject Area 3 ... Q antas Airline
Planning &
Negotiation
Pay m ent
Management
...
Crew Management Entity 3.1 2 App7 3
1 Node7 Crew Com ms/
Per form ance
Engineering/
Loyalty
App7
Maintenance
Corporate G roup Services
Planning & Payment Crew Comms/ Loyalty
4
Group Services 3.2
Entity
Negotiation Performance
Management
CEO Office Risk & Security Safety
BI &
Finance Property
Assurance
Reporting
Legal
Corporate Enterpr ise IT Fuel
Group Services
Procurem ent Pay roll People ...
Management
Com m uni
cations
CEO Office
Legal
Risk &
Assurance
Security
Corporate
Safety
BI &
Reporting
5 Finance Property
Enterprise IT Fuel Procurement Payroll People
Communi ...
Management
cations
A Customer’s Request Navigation Scenario
The FFLV mapping to other frameworks
The FFLV framework covers:
♦ Zachman's designer and implementer perspectives: as Business and
Technology layers respectively
♦ the What and the How perspectives of Zachman: the Functions and Flows in
FFLV
♦ EAP and TOGAF like layers: Business, Information, Applications and
Infrastructure
♦ People and Organization layer (the Who) (TEAF, PERA …)
♦ Views, aspects of interest to Stakeholders as in TOGAF, IFEAD's E2AF
♦ As-Is, To-Be and the Transformation process and Best Practices as in TOGAF,
EAP & others
♦ Architecture principles and technology guidelines, as in TOGAF, FEA
♦ Enterprise Strategic Planning as in EAP, TOGAF
Both TOGAF and FFLV refer to an EA development process, layers, views,
principles. TOGAF does not really put forward a framework structure synthesized
as a single graphical representation. TOGAF ADM is similar in approach to the
proposed EA development but a comparison is difficult since TOGAF is so plentiful.
And, like in OO methods, the FFLV employs UML and Use Cases to describe the
interaction with stakeholders.
Some other frameworks as MIMOSA, Gartner's … are outside the scope of this
book since they are not widely in use or I was not able to collect relevant
information.
Mapping to Zachman
Zachman’s framework from an FFLV point of view:
♦ the What: FFLV business Functions - rather than information
What:
♦ the How FFLV Flows, describing the operation of the Enterprise
How:
♦ the Where the location View applied at the Enterprise or Function level
Where:
returning the location of resources
♦ the When EA roadmaps and planned developments
When:
The FFLV functional architecture maps on Zachman's designer’s logical
perspective.
40
Chapter 12: The FFLV Framework and navigation
The How: Flows
Development The What: Functions
s
ion
at
Support
er
Designer/Engineer’s Views:
Op
Governance the Technology layer
Business
Technology
People The Who: People layer
The Why: Strategy mapping
The When: Roadmapping/Planning Views
The Where: the Location Views
Figure 12-10 - FFLV Framework mapping to Zachman
Mapping to the four "standard" EA layers
The mapping to Zachman, the early guideline and mapping model for most
frameworks, is described in the figure.
The Business, Information, Applications and Infrastructure architectures appear in
most EA frameworks, as the de facto "standard" four layer architecture. In the
FFLV, Business, Applications and Infrastructure are each described by different
views relevant to stakeholders rather than by a single architecture diagram.
The Information Architecture is a composite Enterprise View as information exists
in conceptual form in the business layer, in electronic data versions in the
Technology layer or in physical paper copy on your desk.. In addition, FFLV has a
People and Organization layer, essential in describing the Enterprise organization
and performance in alignment to business processes and technology.
41
Mapping to DODAF
DODAF Operational DODAF System Function-Flow-Layer-View
Viewpoint Viewpoint (FFLV)
OV-2 Operational Nodes Business Functions Map
Interconnectivity Model diagram
OV-5 Operational Activity SV-4 System Business Flows Models; SV-4
Model Functions is the implementation flow, in
Interconnectivity fact, an OV-5 at the ultimate
Model level of detail
OV-4 Roles and Org Units People/Organization Chart
OV-7 Information Model SV-11 Data Model Information Architecture
OV-6a,b,c Business Rules, SV-10a,b,c Business Only applied when behavior
State Transitions, Rules, State is required
Sequence Transitions,
Sequence
OV-3 Info Exchanges Matrix SV-6 System Data Result data exchange matrix
Exchanges Matrix from Lines summary
SV-1 Systems Nodes Applications & Technology
Interconnectivity Architecture
Figure 12-11 - A comparison between DODAF and FFLV
Leaving out, for clarity, the concept (OV-1), the summary (AV-1/2), and standards
(TV-1) the remaining artifacts compare well to FFLV.
The summary of a potential mapping a minimum DODAF to the FFLV:
OV-2 Business Functions Diagrams
OV-5 Business Flows Diagrams
OV-3 Information exchange generated from Function/Flow models
SV-1 Applications Architecture
The FFLV Flow diagrams are similar to DoDAF OV-5 or SV-4 views while the FFLV
Applications architecture diagrams to DoDAF systems SV-1.
The FFLV frameworks enables navigation between Functions, Flows, Layers and
42
Chapter 12: The FFLV Framework and navigation
Views at different levels of detail; it unifies most EA frameworks approaches and
provides answers to all Zachman's questions. It is structured and synthesized in a
graphical framework easy to understand and navigate.
The FFLV framework can be utilized to integrate the work you have already done
using another framework; it also adds Views for all stakeholders and enables, at
the same time, the mapping of processes and applications to the organizational
units and people roles.
Review checklist
1. What are the dimensions of the FFLV EA framework?
2. Why is the navigation of EA framework important?
3. What is the Enterprise tree?
4. How can the EA framework be navigated?
5. Describe FFLV mapping to Zachman.
6. Write down the mapping to DODAF.
7. What is the mapping to business process maps like SCOR, VRM, eTOM?
43
Chapter 13
5. The Enterprise wide IT Architecture
The role of IT
It is hard to conceive a business without IT of some sort these days. Overall, IT
supports the customer sales, service, access and call center technology, business
automation, B2B, data storage, document management, archiving, office
automation, complex calculations, communications, collaboration and security.
Here is only a draft list of some of the today's Enterprise IT functions:
♦ implement core business and support activities: business logic, ERP, CRM,
SCM…
♦ business automation engines replacing repetitive human activities through
business process and rules
♦ storage of structured information (customer, product, supplier...)
♦ content management supporting the information lifecycle: creation,
transformation, storage, archiving, search, publishing and presentation of
documents, media, records...
♦ authentication and authorization of customers, partners and employees
♦ customer presentation and distribution channels: web, email, chat…
♦ automated B2B interaction to suppliers and partners
♦ data and applications integration middleware
♦ powerful calculation tools for complex scientific, forecasting or simulation
algorithms
♦ DW/BI/Risk Management tools
♦ office automation, desktop and printing network services
♦ Software development tools
♦ Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools for drawing and design
♦ management of all other IT infrastructure
♦ collaboration, communications, remote access and mobility
♦ security (encryption, digital signatures, firewalling...), load balancing
♦ the infrastructure to support all above: processing servers, disks, RAID...,
archiving tapes ...
The list is open. Often SW/HW systems are not categorized as IT as for instance:
PBXs, SCADA, manufacturing equipment, robots, mobile technology…
Since IT has such a high innovation rate, IT is also a major source of innovation.
IT is ultimately a key source of competitive advantage in the enterprise or,
alternatively, when poorly managed, a source of pain and costs. IT has become a
prime object for simplification, alignment to business processes and goals i.e. for
Enterprise Architecture.
Business drivers for IT
Business imperatives like resolving the legacy patched spaghetti Enterprise,
coping with customer churn, the increased amount of complexity, information,
change and the need to care for the world around have all solutions in IT.
The customer data and identity integration demands of a "Single Customer View"
may be solved by a data architecture and implementation of Master Data
Management (MDM)/Customer Data Integration (CDI) solution.
The "Straight Through Processing" may be the target of a business process
improvement effort.
SOA will provide modularity based on services, thus agility. A Data Warehouse,
Business Intelligence and reporting efforts will manage the "Single Version of
Truth". They are all, in fact, part of an integrated Enterprise Architecture effort.
The table summarizes the five big Business requirements along with their
stakeholders and the IT solutions that contribute to their satisfaction.
46
Chapter 13: The Enterprise wide IT Architecture
Business Customer Operations Financial Strategic Corp. Social
Drivers Satisfaction Streamlining Fitness Strength Responsibility
Rationale Increased Point Revenue Increasing Increasing
Competition Solutions Growth amount of care for the
Cust. Churn Patching Cost Reduct. info, rate of world around
Org. Growth change,
complexity
Business Customer Company Owner Employee, All Community/
Stkehold Environment
Business Improve Simplify Prioritize Establish Manage
Actions Response Legacy investm. & Competitive Community/
Usability Enterprise reduce Advantage Environment
Develop New waste Manage Manage
Products & Business Change Compliance
Markets Process Manage to Regulatory
Improvemen Innovation
t
Align
organization
Resulting Single Cust. Fix Spaghetti IT strategy Manage Save the
IT View (MDM) Architecture alignment Agility/SOA environment
Priorities Cust Portal Straight Thru Single Risk (recycling…)
CRM Processing Version of Management Community
BPR, CMM, Truth-DW/BI Emerging Involvement
Self Service
6/Lean Real Time BI Technologies
Sigma Knowledge
Virtualization Management
Document
Management
Figure 13-12 - Business Drivers and IT priorities in summary
Key IT projects
IT technology currently stands many transformations. The mainframe is still there
occasionally. Its replacement requires a multi-million, multi-year effort. In some
cases, the life time should be extended with SOA services.
The legacy of merged companies with multiple products left Enterprises with
inconsistent organizations, many portals, different information architectures and
various platforms for the same purpose.
Business requires a Single (Reduced) Sign On for customers and a Single Front
End i.e. the same "Look and Feel" and process for all products and services.
Management needs to understand the reality of the business; so reporting based
on a Single Version of Truth is key. Data warehousing and Business Intelligence
well implemented, become competitive advantages since they help understanding
the market and the costs and profits of your own operation.
47
Applications Reference Map
Web
Web Mobile Delivery Channels
Mobile PBX IVR
Access /Front Tier
Server Server
2.0
Single Cust. Content Sales as a
Campaign Mg
Front End Product Ctg Content Mng
Portal Distribution Sales
Service
CRM
Utility Functions
Data Straight Reduced
Forecasting MDM BPM-Rules SSL AAA
BPM- Messg Document
Integration Thru Sign On Imaging
Processing
Market Make & Sell &
& Plan Business App
New Business App Deliver Service
products
Make/
Business Logic
Application
Integration Middleware
Integration
Partner
B2B SCM
Integration Source/B2B
SW IDE CAD Decision Enterprise Recruitment
Portfolio ERP Travel
Making Portfolio Mng
Mng Deployment ERP
Payroll Training
Knowledge Finance GL
Knowledge
Mng Assets Mg Expenses Procurement
DB Single BI
DW & Version ITIL
IT Operations Helpdesk
Development G
overnance of Truth CMDB S
upport
Figure 13-13 – Developments at IT Application layer
Document imaging to translate the customer paper application to electronic XML
documents are unavoidable.
Business Process Automation (Straight Through processing) through BPM
orchestration and choreography with partners are a condition for survival in this
competitive landscape, since they enable an agile Value Chain.
Application and Data integration efforts are a must today. since there are too many
applications, each with its design philosophy.
Outsourced converged networks (data, voice, video) services become the norm.
Virtualized data centers are the latest in fashion: servers, networks and storage
are all virtualized. The Data Center is eventually outsourced. Loss of Business
Continuity is unacceptable nowadays. Disaster recovery is required by
shareholders.
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Chapter 13: The Enterprise wide IT Architecture
Review checklist
1. Explain why IT is indispensable to the Enterprise.
2. What are the business imperatives?
3. What are the typical key IT projects?
4. How are Solutions Architectures aligned to EA?
5. Describe Solution Architectures integration to EA.
6. What are the attributes of the Application Integration table?
7. How do you deal with IT obsolescence?
8. Describe in a few words the relationship of EA to BPM.
9. Describe in a few words the relationship of EA to ITIL.
10. Describe in a few words the relationship of EA to Six Sigma.
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Chapter 14
6. Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
For most business people, SOA looks like yet another over hyped information
technology. SOA, which has its roots in a long history of distributed components
architecture, is usually associated to Web Services technologies and is typically
promoted by IT.
But what is SOA? Is it a technology, an architecture, a program or a product? Is it a
business or an IT development? What is the rapport to BPM? And what is the
relationship to Enterprise Architecture (EA)? After all, both SOA and EA are about
the Enterprise and its architecture, with the EA supposed to remedy similar
malfunctions of the Enterprise. It is just that SOA appears to attract an even more
IT oriented audience than EA. The question is, should we implement SOA and EA,
SOA only, EA only?
What is SOA or WOA for that matter
SOA is primarily about business design and only afterwards about the technology
for service integration and discovery. In a wider view, any function of an Enterprise,
not necessarily IT, can be defined as a service. The service paradigm has been
long applied in our day to day life and even in IT. Not long ago we were attempting
to fix the car ourselves or mow the loan. These days, we just employ one of the
many services on offer, at a cost we can afford and at a quality we cannot supply
any longer. In real life, the technology for service discovery is the Yellow Pages.
From a business angle, SOA is a style of business architecture design and,
ultimately, a way of re-structuring your business. It enables a Business Oriented
Architecture by allowing the business define Enterprise workflows around reusable
business services. The granularity of the service is targeted at the business
cognizant, rather than at the software application developer.
♦ What is SOA?
♦ SOA is a business oriented style of architecture enabling best of breed,
technology agnostic business services, delivered by applications, with a
granularity determined by business needs rather than IT
♦ A SOA Service is an interchangeable building block, providing a business
service that exposes an interface, hiding the internal implementation
technology and published in a service registry for dynamic discovery
♦ SOA is also an integration technology (based on WS: SOAP, UDDI, WSDL and
ESB) evolving from distributed component architecture technologies
♦ SOA, W3C definition: "a set of components which can be invoked and whose
interface definitions can be published and discovered”
♦ Web Services (WS) are implementing a SOA paradigm over Web protocols.
A business service would require definition and enforcement of SLAs to control the
quality of the service delivered and the service consumption within defined usage
limits. An accounting mechanism should measure the service usage at an SLA for
payment purposes. Security is another important aspect of SOA as it regulates
access and enforces privacy and integrity of the information exchange in a
distributed environment.
From an IT point of view, a SOA service is a component providing a service which
exposes an interface hiding the internal implementation technology, published in a
registry, and eventually, dynamically discovered.
Like Object Oriented (OO), SOA provides data and behavior encapsulated in a
service, accessible solely through published interfaces. But, as opposed to OO,
which addresses the SW development community, SOA aims at services business
can understand, and orchestrate to implement end-to-end Enterprise processes.
Objects and components like Java Beans and ActiveX are still technology
dependent i.e. in the context of the language and platforms, Java EE and .NET,
while SOA services are technology transparent executables, in that any technology
would do as long as it complies to the messaging and interfacing protocols.
A SOA service returns an outcome in response to a request. The service may use
other services, transparently, in a layered manner. What is the definition of a
layered service? By having a look at networks and their protocols, it is apparent
that the concept is not new. In the OSI (Open System Interconnect) networking
standard, a layer uses services provided by the layer immediately below, that in
turn, employs services in the lower layer, and so on. Similarly, SOA business
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Chapter 14: Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
services use distribution and security services provided by the supporting
middleware, which in turn employs services provided by the platform (JavaEE, .Net)
and OS infrastructure.
As a style of architecture, SOA applies to any system design. At the Enterprise
level, the workflows, delivering value to stakeholders, may be built out of services
which are technology, supplier, location or owner independent. The Enterprise
would ideally consist of a loosely coupled set of business services.
Web Services have been implementing the SOA paradigm over Web protocols, for
a while now. As a result, SOA is often associated to Web Services and its
technologies (SOAP, XML, UDDI, WSDL...). But SOA is more than IT although its
origins are in software.
SOA + WS gives WOA used for integration of external services, called in some
instances, global SOA. WS is a technology only, SOA is a style of architecture while
WOA joins the two. WOA is an IT development rather than a business one as SOA:
already existing services, accessible on the Web, are integrated to Enterprise
processes. WOA brings SOA in the IT realm again.
SOA benefits
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) reduces costs through service reuse and, by
promoting modularity at service level, it enables the flexibility and agility required
to respond to the ever greater pace of change.
More often than not, agility and technology reuse are the major benefits
associated to SOA. The reality is that SOA, frequently approached outside an
Enterprise Architecture context, is developed incrementally, without the benefit of
the big picture the Enterprise Architecture delivers. As a consequence, the
promised agility and reuse are not achieved or are achieved late, towards the end
of the SOAization of your Enterprise when technology reuse may require costly
redesign.
Nonetheless, there are a few other major SOA benefits, which should be more
easily achieved, understood, and accepted. Invoking these advantages would
make SOA a joyous sell rather than the often reported stressful experience.
SOA benefits:
♦ Agility is the ability to compose your business processes our of independent
services in response to market demands; the services themselves can be
outsourced to different services providers when necessary and the
orchestration can be easily changed by the business expert.
53
♦ Integration: after all SOA enables easy integration of business systems over
standard messaging, standard technology (WS, ESB), standard discoverable
interfaces.
♦ Documents based communication between various services; an important
distinction to OO is the communication with information rich XML documents
rather than simple information structures; this increases manifold the
communication efficiency and aligns systems integration better to the
business style of transactions.
♦ Reuse: SOA is about modularity and reuse; a good service will be called from
many applications rather than redesigned or re-implemented in various
versions. A "re-entrant" platform capable to sustain many threads is in order.
It is worth mentioning though that the Business process reuse is the
advantage rather than the IT reuse, since SOA identifies similar business
activities and groups them in a service. SOA reduces process replication and,
only afterwards, for the same type of process, the application duplication.
♦ Business service accountability, improving business governance
Application are usually a bundle of many functions; in practice, a large group
of business and IT people will share the responsibilities for the data and
behavior of application functions. But can you hold accountable a group of
individuals with many other responsibilities, for a specific function? In such an
environment, neither accountability nor authority can be assumed for specific
functions in an application. On the other hand, for an SOA business service, a
single role is being assigned the responsibility: it does not matter if it is an IT
or business issue, there is one single point of contact for the service and a
service SLA to deliver against.
♦ IT technology virtualization conveyed by SOA services hide the implementation
technology and offer a clear, contractual-like interaction between business and
IT.
IT becomes a service provider, offering business services at a QoS secured by
an SLA, well comprehended, quantified, and eventually remunerated by the
business through a payback mechanism. This is a major achievement since
your applications and technology are hidden behind IT services supplied to the
business. From a business perspective, this is what really counts. There is no
longer a division between business and IT, but well cut interfaces, SLAs, and
contracts. No more blame culture. The separation of concerns pacifies the
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Chapter 14: Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
parties.
♦ Untangling the applications to provide a clean architecture, reducing the side
effects of change.
There is no more random access through the back door to applications or
databases, which makes any change a burden and any modification a major
risk because of unforeseeable effects.
♦ Extended lifetime for legacy applications, reducing the pressure to replace
them. This is achieved through the encapsulation of legacy behind SOA
interfaces. Although there are other increasing costs related to legacy
technology, there is no more pressure to replace it; you can do it at own
convenience when a viable alternative exists. This is an extension of the
technology virtualization benefit.
♦ Enables outsourcing: Software as a Service (SaaS) which is making inroads in
the software market, is effectively an outsourced SOA service.
SOA and BPM
The relationship between SOA and BPM has been the subject of debate. No
wonder, since there are different professional groups, magazines or activities to
address them. BPM was in vogue in the 90s as BPR, Business Process
Reengineering. As a concept, it is the practice of discovering your processes,
improving and automating them to reduce human error, Business processes are
also a part of the Business layer of the Enterprise Architecture (EA). The Enterprise
processes would be described by current and target process architecture parts of
As-Is and To-Be EA. Processes are still abstract in that they still have to be
performed by humans and/or machines. There are notations and languages to
describe business processes. There are models that help in evaluating the
maturity of processes and frameworks, such as CMM and Six Sigma, for process
improvement.
SOA is a style of business process design for the target architecture with
processes implemented as an orchestration of loosely coupled SOA services. SOA
is an evolution of BPM aiming to hide and encapsulate complexity of processes in
independent business services. In SOA, the business workflows will consist of
orchestrated SOA services that encapsulate both the process and the technology
implementing it.
From a technology viewpoint, BPM is offered at the EA business layer, as Business
Process and rules design, execution and monitoring engines. Now these are
55
offered as part of an overall SOA proposition, since they provide an orchestration
service.
On the other hand, SOA is an integration technology based on products as
Enterprise Service Buses (ESB), Service Registries, and management tools. But the
definition of SOA services is still in the realm of business; services should be
specified by business people, since they are not an IT concern or in the IT domain
of expertise. This being said, ERPs, embedding and integrating various Enterprise
processes, are the products of IT companies.
Is an ESB part of SOA? It is not, even if inside an Enterprise, it is definitely helpful,
in that it provides a series of services like transparent distribution, reliable
messaging. security, transactions, data transformations… that otherwise will fall
into the attribution of each and every application.
Is orchestration included in SOA? That is orchestration performed in a business
process execution language in a business engine. Not really, but it is a good
practice, adding to the business agility since it is performed by the business expert
graphically and not by IT.
SOA and EA
Many EA programs are partially happening under the cover of SOA developments.
In truth, SOA can be seen solely as the Target EA implementation solution
whereby, business functions are specified as services and workflows as
orchestration or choreography of services. The SOA only effort ignores though, the
initial As-Is discovery phase of an EA development, the requirement to align IT to
business goals and the Enterprise strategic planning effort.
SOA does cover architecture, but it does not specifically address business process
automation, IT alignment to strategy, even if it helps; it does not document the As-
Is state like EA does; and it does not provide guidance for the development
program as EA methodologies do. SOA requires a large Enterprise process re-
engineering and re-design effort, with significant consequences, at process,
applications, infrastructure, and people Enterprise Architecture layers. Services will
be reused, access will be enforced by SLA contracts, and a new SOA services
governance will be in use affecting the existing organization and applications
suites.
SOA harbors under its umbrella developments that are in the scope of EA and as
such, it hides the recognition and complexity of an EA program. SOA, given its
scope and ambition, should be a joint business and IT effort, a key part of a full EA
development, and not considered in isolation as a light IT Enterprise Integration
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Chapter 14: Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
effort.
SOA alone is misleading if not taken in the context or scope of the EA
development. After all, it can be applied to any architecture (an application
architecture, for instance) and not necessarily to an Enterprise Architecture (EA). A
note of caution: the Enterprise Wide IT Architecture (EWITA) is often called
Enterprise Architecture.
SOA, in the Enterprise context, is a Service Oriented target EA design and
implementation. It requires re-engineering of the business, data, technology and
people layers around business services and, as such, a new business governance.
SOA + EA = SOEA
A “Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture,” SOEA, defined as an EA with an SO
style of target architecture, would better describe the positioning of SOA with
regard to EA. EA may be implemented without SOA while a stand-alone SOA
development, mainly driven by a Service Orientation Architectural requirement, will
tend to ignore business objectives and strategy.
The EA sets in place a process to achieve technology and organization alignment
to business processes, strategy, and objectives. SOA, as a style of business
architecture, is adding value to the EA by enabling modularity at the business
service level, and, as such, agility, reuse, Quality of Service, facilitating payback
mechanisms and service contracts. This means a more decoupled business where
services are provided and consumed based on contracts. And this offers enhanced
manageability. Moreover, there are benefits from enabling services provided over
the Web using Web Services technologies, and from making possible service
outsourcing on an on-demand basis, such as Software as a Service (SaaS).
SOEA, the development of an EA with an SOA flavor, must have support from top
management and involve business since it requires process re-engineering,
technology alignment, and firm re-organization, in other words, SOEA transforms
the whole Enterprise, more than EA or SOA taken separately.
As both SOA and EA are usually initiated by IT, the lack of business stakeholders'
engagement and firm's management support or funding may foil the success of
SOEA.
The SOA should be initially implemented as an additional EA service layer – on top
of the EA applications layer – which would exist during the Enterprise
Transformation stages. Some time into the future, the Applications will be,
hopefully, implemented as Business Services, and the SOA services layer will
57
cease to exist. This requires the applications suppliers to adopt SOA, which would
be an advantage for everybody except, maybe, for them.
Once implemented, SOEA (EA + SOA), becomes a powerful competitive asset since
it is the blueprint of a service-based Enterprise, with best of breed components
easily outsourced, no matter what technology or geography.
SOA, To Do or To Buy
The definition of architecture states that it is the structure of a system and the
description of its components and interconnections. As a structure, the
architecture exists in any system, no matter how convoluted; and it can be
described by an architecture diagram.
For the target state of a system, a blueprint is drawn to describe the desired logical
architecture of the system, that is its components and interconnections. This
architecture blueprint enters then a design phase where technologies and
products are selected for each component and interconnection. The end result,
the design blueprint, consists of detailed drawings of the interconnected
components of the systems.
The design is ready now for implementation and as such, at last, the architecture
is implemented in a physical system out of the interconnected products.
A style of architecture consists of recognizable and reproducible architecture
patterns. SOA is a style of architecture applied to a target system. SOA, as a style,
can be equally used in an application or in the target architecture of an Enterprise.
SOA architecture, after the design phase, is implemented by the systems
delivering the SOA business services.
SOA is at the same time an integration technology for services rather than
applications. This is what vendors try to sell you: ESB, registries... based on
SOAP/XML, UDDI, WSDL etc. SOA technology integrates and interconnects rather
than implements the services of a system. Vendors also offer, in addition,
business process (and rules) engines, B2B systems, application servers, service
management and other products in their SOA offer.
The SOA business services design and orchestration is what people say you must
do, not buy. You do have to specify your business services first and then
interconnect them with a SOA technology.
Can you say implement SOA services once you specified them? You can. But you
can equally say that you buy SOA technology to integrate the systems delivering
the business services.
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Chapter 14: Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
SOA Design Best Practices
SOA is often treated as a separate development from EA, BPM…. It is not.
SOA provides modularization, standardization, integration and re-use.
In hardware design you always need a schematics diagram to describe the
components and their interconnections. Catalogues describe the components
functionality, interfaces and protocols. By analogy, in a SOA architecture, services
described by WSDL and discovered by UDDI are interconnected through
orchestration.
The SOA development, part of the EA effort, should be directed by business and
should have support from top management since it is really a business re-
engineering exercise. Exceptions are cases where SOA scope is limited to Portal
developments and Web Services where IT is in charge and already skilled for the
development.
Here are the few steps for designing the target EA, SOA style:
1. Discover your current architecture:
1.1. Specify for each Line of Business the As-Is EA Business Functions Map
Use Business Reference Map provided.
1.2. Document the external stakeholders’ flows process steps, events, data,
control and material flows, key business rules and associated roles.
1.3. Specify internal flows; use the business process template suggested in
the book or alternative sources.
1.4. Specify GUI and process interaction to customers and other
stakeholders.
1.5. Document current technology architecture
1.6. Identify bottom-up systems, applications, information topics and
organization units and roles, implementing business functions and
processes.
1.7. Document supporting organization roles and responsibilities
2. Specify target business architecture
2.1. Assess impacts of strategy, planning and objectives on functions,
applications and technology
2.2. Evaluate technology specific issues and solutions impacts on architecture
2.3. Employ loose coupling, high internal coherence architecture principles to
specify independent elementary services
59
2.4. Build complex services out of elementary ones using SOA composition
2.5. Identify functions in applications that can be deployed as services
2.6. Propose a list of services
2.7. Design target Functions as business services: encapsulated functions with
interfaces describing service requests and responses, technology
independent; not all services being implemented by IT. In software
development, function calls or subroutines are reusable segments of
code. SOA orchestration calls services in a similar manner to the main
program calling a function.
2.8. Re-design processes as an orchestration/choreography of services;
2.9. To confer responsiveness, Event Driven Architectures (EDA) are often a
choice in SOA design. This enables asynchronous operation and
parallelism. Since the OO time a debate existed between the sequential
like Central control of the objects of an application and the distributed
event and message based communication between objects with no
central supervision. The reality is as always somewhere in the middle,
where the central orchestration and events at service and orchestration
level co-exist. An event distribution scheme like publish/subscribe could
be implemented. This would be in the realm of the SOA products
technology capabilities.
2.10. Describe services UI to users and customers
2.11. Provide management and maintenance interfaces to services
2.12. Align information architecture to services; provide an MDM service to
hide existing legacy databases
2.13. Identify applications changes required to fit SOA services and request
change projects
2.14. Select technology for SOA integration (ESB, UDDI/WSDL repository…
BPM)
3. Begin implementation program
3.1. Sketch technical transformation roadmap with dependencies, taking into
account the technology and applications lifecycle and upgrades to
minimize change for the sake of change and exploit new technology
opportunities
3.2. Decide, roadmap and initiate negotiation for outsourcing of services as
BPO/SaaS/Managed Services/Data Center
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Chapter 14: Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
3.3. Assign governance and accountabilities for each business service
3.4. Do planning, establish budget, assign resources
3.5. Plan with suppliers the SOA style changes/design of applications
3.6. Iterate and design and deliver services in steps
A SOA Design Case
In this section, a SOA design is illustrated in pictures, specifically the As-Is and the
To-Be EA. To simplify the matter, the transformation excludes the strategy impacts
on the architecture. The target picture is derived from the Service Orientation
demand of the Enterprise and good architecture principles such as reduction of
duplication, applications integration and technology standardization. Hence, the
current duplication in business systems is eliminated, the many internal
connections dissapear replaced by an ESB, and the platforms are identical (Java
EE, Open Source JBOSS or BEA/Oracle). Circled are the systems that become
Enterprise Services, grouped in a customer front-end layer (Portal and
presentation), utility functions (Authentication, Content…), B2B access (to
suppliers, banks…), Business Logic specific services and Support (financial,
reporting…). Before the SOA technology is deployed, the major effort is to define re-
usable services provided by systems and decouple, encapsulate and standardize
their interfaces over SOA ESB and Web Services interfaces. An ESB technology
internally interconnects all the major services of the Enterprise. A business
orchestration engine is implemented and if the architecture is opened to accept
Web Services an UDDI/WSDL discovery platform must be added. SLA contracts
must be established to formalize the service payback, according to usage,
monitored over the ESB. The architecture should be events based.
61
On line
Receipting
Health Insurance Fujitsu Mainframe
Member Center Corporate Med/Dent
Call center Hospital
HBA
Mail House Banks
Direct
Health Insurance System To EFTSRV
Cam paign ANZ
Genesys DW IBM mainframe
Bank Gway ASCII/FTP/ISDN
3rd Parties ASCII file
Claims/Cheque
EFTPOS Payment Bank3
Grp TCP/IP
Contacts GW
Face 2 Face
Providers
Printer Web Premium Pay/HTTP
Prospects SQL
Health IT Sun Cluster HIC
MC Gway
Custom ers MBFG MC DNT New Technology Oracle Database
.Net CITRIX .NET
Farm JBOSS/JETTY
/
BEMIS EJB
SchedTibco
JMS Messaging MDB Hospital
JMS SOAP/ HTTP Struts
/ Classic BusLogic B2B Gway EDI
Batch Claims
IVR
Phone
DNT Bus Logic
CC Gway
Diamond Data Services ECXpert/SUN Medical
CFS RV Tibco Proprietary
SQL Scripts
GT-X /
Claims
HTTPS
Corporate
Tibco BW
CC
SQL
Retail/
W ebLogic XML file
HICAPS/IP
B2B Gway
Corporates Autoclaims NAB
W ebLogic JMS
ID GW Switch
eDir IBA/IP
iChain
W eb PreAdm WL Telecom
TCP/IP
JMS
Provider W L
Web
JMS HTTPS
SOAP Prem ium Pay
Banks
Diam SDK HTTPS
JMS WebLogic
Insite Content Mng
Vignette FTP Post Office
W ebLogic
Paymaster
Channel Support
Crystal Netw Bid Finance Oracle BalSC
Oracle Cobol,SQL
RT Analysis Shell,Pearl GL AP/AR AM Oracle
RMS Crystal
Java EJB Extra MfReports
DB Benefits Cold TM1/Price
Sched Informix
W eblogic SAS
ClaimInd Claims BI/
ISIS Im promptu XRAY FUTRIX BusObj
Web InfoView
ePortofolio (ZABO)
Figure 14-14 – The As-Is Single Page EA of an Enterprise
Banks
Mail House Corporate
Direct
Campaign To EFTSRV
DW/SVOT Banks
Genesys
Bank Gway ASCII/FTP/ISDN
Claims/Cheque
3rd Parties EFTPOS Payments
Grp Contacts GW
Providers
Face 2 Face
Printer Web Premium Pay/HTTP
Prospects SQL
Health IT HIC
Customers MC Gway
Member Center CITRIX DNT New Technology Oracle Database
.Net B2B Gway
Farm JBOSS/JETTY
/
BEMIS EDI
Tibco BW EJB Claims
SQL Hospital
JMS Messaging MDB
JMS Classic BusLogic
XML file ECXpert/SUN Proprietary
SOAP/ HTTP Struts
/
Under Review
IVR DNT Bus Logic
Batch
CC Gway Workflow
Phone
CFS Diamond Data Services Medical
SQL Scripts
HTTPS
GT-X /
Claims
.NET OCR Scan Corporate
ESB
Call Center SQL
Retail/ EclipseOPVClaim
ESB
JBOSS
HICAPS/IP
S FS B2B Gway
Corporates C Autoclaims NAB
JBOSS ID V GW Switch
eDir IBA/IP
iChain
Web PreadmisJB
TCP/IP Telecom
ProviderJB JMS HTTPS
Web
Premium Pay
Banks )
SOAP Diam SDK HTTPS
JMS
Content Mng JBOSS
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JBOSS Post Office
Paymaster
To Branch Printer
Support
Finance Oracle
Crystal ETL
RT GL AP/AR AM
RMS Single Version
RMS
Java EJB Extra
Of Truth
DB Benefits
Sched SVOT
JBOSS
ETL
Indemnity
ISIS XRAY FUTRIXj Crystal BusObj Provider Claims Sales Revenue SAS
InfoView
()
1
Figure 14-15 – The SOA design solution for the target EA
62
Chapter 14: Service Oriented Architecture - SOA
Evolution to SOA
The MIT Sloan Centre for Information Systems Research (CISR) studies identified
four distinct architectural stages that business units and IT must pass through
before the benefits of SOA can be realized: (1) Silos, (2) standardized IT, (3)
standardized business processes (Optimized Core) and (4) business modularity.
There is the underlying assumption that SOA is a target EA architecture, achieved
at the end of the Enterprise transformation process, from the As-Is Silo stage.
Long term, the history truly shows, that the Enterprise maturity evolves from the
silos of the ‘90s, through IT standardization, to arrive now at stage 3 of business
process rationalization and pointing at stage 4, the SOA based Enterprise. CISR
also states that moving upwards, from stage 1 to 4, is increasingly difficult, since
to achieve stage 3, business participation is a must and to realize stage 4, an
overhaul of your Enterprise operation and organizational change are necessary.
.
While I agree, I would like to observe that the transition from 1 to 2 would not
remove silos until stage 3, since silos exist because of business rather than IT.
SOA, lessons learnt
1. SOA is primarily a business development, a way to structure your Enterprise, a
style of target business architecture, and only then an integration technology.
2. SOA must have support from top management and involve business since it
requires process re-engineering, technology alignment, and firm re-
organization.
3. Since both SOA and EA are usually initiated by IT, the lack of business
stakeholders' engagement and a firm's management support or funding may
foil success
4. Pick only the technology you need for integration and orchestration; vendors
have piled all their products in the SOA basket – BPM and rules engines, user
interaction (Portals), application servers, B2B gateways, messaging
middleware, repositories/registries, data management, business intelligence
products, development environment and management equipment. After all
SOA is about best of breed, vendor independent services.
5. SOA does not succeed outside an Enterprise Architecture development since,
in itself, does not cover the development process, the current situation
discovery (process, apps, infra…), information architecture, the alignment to
strategy…
63
6. The target business processes are specified top-down while, the current
processes discovery, is performed bottom-up starting with the re-modeling of
existing applications. Top-Down design and Bottom-Up discovery EA efforts,
performed simultaneously, succeed if observing the same EA framework
decomposition tree. SOA in the middle approach is recommended. Initially it
may add an SOA services layer on top of the applications, until the vendors
come up with SOA solutions.
7. SOA will not succeed without an Information Architecture and service in place
because, after all, SOA services use the same information vocabulary.
Review checklist
1. Define SOA and WOA
2. What are SOA benefits?
3. Depict the relationship to BPM.
4. What is SOEA?
5. Answer the question SOA "to do or to buy".
6. List SOA design best practice process in conjunction to EA design.
7. What is the SOA evolution path?
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Chapter 16
7. The EA Development Process and Best Practices
This chapter will Endeavour to identify and summarize Best Practices in an
Enterprise Architecture development. Practices will be outlined at each phase of a
proposed process, which in itself becomes a suggested good practice. The
process, the result of a deliberate reflection act, was constructed from answers to
common sense business questions. Why Enterprise Architecture, what are its
economic drivers and benefits and what is the technology context? What are the
requirements and what shall the Enterprise Architecture deliver to you?
What do you need to set out even before you start? What are the critical success
factors and development strategies capable to guarantee success? And how can
Best Practices become Business As Usual (BAU) practice!
Practices are shown in a rather imperative manner, illustrated by a few sample
practices of my own. As a good practice, embed Best Practices in the EA delivery
process and make it an integral part of the Enterprise Framework next to
principles and technology evolution guidelines. Document the EA process and
enforce it using an Enterprise Architecture tool.
What is the value of Best practices
Best methods to achieve an outcome and guidelines to achieve best results!
♦ Result of our collective experience, lessons learnt from pioneers
♦ Afterthoughts and result of a deliberate process of reflection,
retrospective analysis!
♦ Good practices have to pass the test of time and trial to become
♦ Best Practices are a first step in building a rigorous process and methodology
to deliver a desired output.
Define EA Mission and Deliveries
The EA Mission Statement will capture unambiguously, for all audiences, the
essence of deliveries and development goals. For example:
“The program will deliver an integrated blueprint of all business domains showing
the boundaries and scope of the Enterprise, functions, use case scenarios and
flows delivering customer products and value to stakeholders. The EA blueprint
should describe the Enterprise in a hierarchical manner, enabling ‘drill down' from
logical to technology level architecture and offering each stakeholder its own
views. It shall provide common architectural and design principles, standards,
guidelines and policies”.
Capture stakeholders’ requirements, determine scope
To manage expectations, first determine the scope of your development. Is it an IT
only architecture? Is it a SOA or a business process re-engineering? Do you include
your people organization? Is it a full EA development?
Identify stakeholders and gather requirements.
Common stakeholder requirements (add your requirements to this sample lot):
♦ specific views for every stakeholder at each iteration
♦ link solution architecture to EA as Views at the next level of detail
♦ EA roadmap must be linked to the Enterprise Project Portfolio
♦ align technology strategy and roadmapping to Business Objectives
♦ provide traceability to Requirements and Business Objectives
♦ allow simulation of change impacts and Business Modeling
♦ show areas of bottlenecks, potential high cost or little yield
Capture all relevant business information which serves specify and align the EA to
the business model, strategy and objectives.
Build the Business Case for Enterprise Architecture
Organizations must be prepared to perform a thorough analysis to determine the
benefit of the EA investment in the long term.
Consider the EA an asset which, once in place and properly maintained, will return
value for many years since the investment in EA can be leveraged over and over
again to pay back dividends. The EA asset offers your company a competitive
advantage by providing simplicity, alignment, strategic planning and as a result,
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Chapter 16: The EA Development Process and Best Practices
cost savings, increased revenue, agility to change and customer satisfaction.
Conservative quotes from different industries vary between 10-30% reduction in
cost and time to market.
Nevertheless, consider the initial investment and migration expenses. The
Business Case will need to talk the language the decisions are made in, the
language of finance.
Get Support from Top Level Management & Business
Use the Business Case to get support from your top level management and
stakeholders.
Quite often, companies operate in silos. To reduce the decision tree, units are
often empowered to make up their mind in isolation, with regard to business,
strategy design and technology selection. To penetrate this silo culture, the
support of top level management and business stakeholders is essential. There is
also the divide between business and IT. EA will help attenuate this divide, in the
long term, by aligning the organization to work towards common goals.
Build the EA Governance team
The Governing Function should include members of the management board,
senior business and sponsor, e.g. its advocate, and the EA lead architect. The
Governance should be able to make cornerstone decisions with regard to
framework, principles, planning and prioritization and facilitate investment and
funding in the Enterprise. The Enterprise Architect’s lack of empowerment is often
the motive for EA failure, since the EA lives only on paper.
Nominate the EA core and virtual team
Assemble an Enterprise Architecture core team with a knowledge of Business
Strategy, Business Processes, BPM, IT, Enterprise Architecture and Frameworks
and not in the least SOA, BPMS and Web Services technologies. The EA
architecture team shall define the EA Framework: layers, views..., principles and,
after the first iteration, police further Enterprise developments for compliance to
the EA.
Nominate architects or domain experts, with a knowledge of your Business
Processes and IT Applications for each main business function or department.
They will constitute the virtual EA architecture team. Negotiate their availability for
the initial design phase.
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Specify an Enterprise Architecture Framework
The EA Framework is a structure describing the Enterprise decomposition tree at
all architectural levels and from all perspectives. Select layers you will be looking
at and the architectural and technology principles guiding the specification of the
target EA.
The framework should not define the component architectures, but solely a frame
joining them, showing component placeholders. The framework enforces the
specific system views and principles that apply consistently to all component
architectures. Request the function architects to provide the same system views,
with same conventions and constraints, in order to interconnect them in overall
Enterprise wide pictures observing common architectural principles.
The EA framework is, as well, the backbone of the whole program as it defines the
component Functions and the way they fit into the whole. Once you know the
components and the work breakdown around them, a program plan can be
devised as a portfolio of component projects. This will give you and everybody else
the confidence that it can be done.
Select an EA Tool set to support the framework
An Enterprise Architecture tool should document the whole process and store all
components and artifacts from the beginning. A repository, centralized or
distributed, is essential for documenting and reuse of the EA entities.
The EA tool should enable drawing business processes, data architecture,
organization charts, applications and IT infrastructure diagrams, in various
notations. It should provide navigation between artifacts, at various levels of detail,
web rendering, change control, requirements tracing, collaboration, access control,
regulatory compliance features, link to other existing tools and databases and be
able to store artifacts as business objectives, strategies and organizational
information. It should be able to store both current and target EA.
Various specialized tools exist to support modeling, repository and collaboration to
design organizational structures, business processes, information flows,
applications and technology infrastructure and link them to business strategy. An
aggregated set of tools will probably serve the goal best. To properly present and
interact with such dissimilar information, the various types of data have to be
recognized and the proper tool launched to act upon the data. This is similar with
the file type extensions of your operating system associated to various
applications. Or it is analogous with the microformats operation of the semantic
web world. The EA tool should provide the GUI navigation and serve launching
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Chapter 16: The EA Development Process and Best Practices
other tools, depending on the artifact type.
The EA team should embed the framework – graphical interface, object
metamodel, principles…. - into the tool.
Outline a Design Strategy
The recommended practice is to establish a Design Strategy: Bottom-Up document
As-Is, Top-Down design To-Be, and middle-out use SOA paradigm for integration of
Bottom-Up and Top-Down.
Top-Down MDA approach to model the Value Chain
This approach supports the development of the Business Process Architecture
from the Value Chain. Services, in the SOA sense, may be implemented from any
business function, not necessarily IT. A service could be built by a 3rd party or
outsourced from another company. By deploying SOA you arm your Enterprise with
flexibility and prepare it for rapid change.
Bottom-Up discovery of existing technology and model ERP processes
May be executed in parallel with the Top-Down design and would consist of
discovery and documentation of the Current architecture and technology.
Design SOA in the middle to wrap Applications as Business Services
Would support the Top-Down and Bottom-Up approach integration by orchestrating
workflows out of business services obtained by wrapping existing applications.
SOA may be built on an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) wrapping legacy applications,
deploying Business Rules and Process Engines for orchestration, and employing
ESB horizontal services as reliable transport, security, transactions service life
cycle management, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SOA offers the flexibility
to build your Enterprise from Off-The-Shelf (OTS), best of breed applications. A
service is a Function with a request (service solicitation) and response (service
provision) behavior. You have to:
♦ Specify Functions as Services
♦ Design transparent, layered Services
♦ Adopt a location agnostic, distributed architecture of Services
Apply Architecture and Design Principles
♦ Adopt a hierarchical, layered, modular, service based architecture
♦ Functions at level one are partitioned in sub-functions that are still composed
69
of Process, Technology and People Layers.
♦ Specify non-functional capabilities as Performance, Scalability & Availability
♦ Specify Security controls at design time
♦ Assess threats, their probability, estimate impacts and specify security policy;
assess intrusion points and design security zones accordingly and specify for
each zone security controls, access rules and roles and Access Control Lists
(ACL).
♦ Design Services to support testing, lifecycle
♦ Design for deployment, upgrade, retiring and recycling.
♦ Specify design and drawing guidelines
♦ Use a tool or combination of them: a tool for Enterprise Architects and a
standard one such as Visio for business analysts to design process and
technical architects to document infrastructure
♦ Establish an intranet site for all other EA documents and EA web tool
publishing
♦ Use same modeling methods/diagram types for all EA artifacts same symbols
and naming conventions, colors, diagram size, diagram identification box,
logo…
♦ Align levels of granularity (level 1, 2, 3…) between diagrams
♦ Map input/outputs between diagrams
Specify an EA execution strategy
Some good practices to have in the implementation phase:
Prioritize to deliver the urgent fixes for the Enterprise
This is a good policy to get acceptance, to make the business case for the
Enterprise Architecture by firstly initializing those EA projects seen by the business
as a priority.
Leverage existing applications and infrastructure
Any design that is worth considering, should strive to leverage the large investment
that has already been made in existing applications. Ideally, these systems can be
re-used without significant re-investment in development. The design should
provide an approach for integration of these systems.
EA and SOA should be implemented opportunistically, taking advantage of the
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Chapter 16: The EA Development Process and Best Practices
existing technology lifecycle to avoid artificial, architecture only generated
expenses.
Do ERP modeling to discover the embedded business processes.
Work with Suppliers to package applications as SOA services
A SOA approach will be more successful if your applications’ vendors cooperate to
deliver their applications as services accessible through defined interfaces and
standard protocols.
Design, Plan and Implement iteratively
Construct a plan taking into consideration the stakeholders’ short term priorities.
What is characteristic to the EA is the continuous delivery process, in iterations to
keep the team focused on incremental stages in order to deal with complexity.
Use an Agile Processes (AP) approach
As Enterprise Architecture development is a long term process. Use an agile
methodology with frequent deliveries and stakeholders' consultation.
Nonetheless, a minimal process and plan is necessary to measure, manage and
guarantee progress, quality and timely deliveries.
Establish SMART Deliveries, CSFs, KPIs
Critical Success Factors (CSF) and Critical Achievements must be estimated
upfront. Once delivered, the EA will be closer to realization. CSFs represent
milestones in the delivery process.
♦ Define SMART, measurable deliveries
♦ Define KPIs for the EA Development Process
The goals, defined for the To-Be architecture, in line with the organization’s
strategy, must be quantifiable. Once the EA program has defined its goals, it needs
a measure for progress toward these goals. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are
quantifiable measurements, agreed beforehand, that reflect the progress towards
targets. KPIs must be tracked against a plan and embedded into a dashboard to
enable you to assess the state of the Enterprise Architecture development, at a
glance.
From a business point of view, it should be proved that the EA program creates
value. The Balanced Scorecard Model aligns the Enterprise objectives with four
Enterprise viewpoints: Customer, Process, Innovation and Learning (People), and
Financial (Owners). The four views define, describe and capture the goals, KPIs
71
and initiatives for each area. The EA value delivery can be traced at a high level,
with this tool.
The key benefits indicators table, in the business case chapter, should be used to
fill in the perceived benefit % column at each iteration to estimate returned value.
The EA maturity model should support the KPI definition for the EA progress
measurement.
Agree Best Practices
Here are a few:
♦ Establish the EA Scope at the whole Enterprise, not only IT!
IT is just a part of the Enterprise. There are many other reasons the Enterprise
does not perform, like people and work culture. Lack of recognition and
empowerment can be more damaging than technology.
The EA development includes the strategy specification and mapping effort,
process improvement, company re-organization, roadmapping and planning
towards the To-Be state, the blueprint design and documentation.
♦ Manage early Cultural and Organizational transformation
Enterprise Architecture removes silos and duplication. For a merger, a main trigger
for a converged Enterprise Architecture effort, there will be human redundancies
and technology platforms to be scrapped even though they have not reached the
end of their life cycle. People will feel threatened, new platforms will require
training.
As such, early in the process, propose changes necessary to align the organization
to the business functions structure. Organizational change is one of the most
difficult aspects of change since it involves people. The best way to avoid
resistance is to ensure that people are prepared and motivated to support the
change. Involve people from the beginning, clearly explaining the reasons for the
change. Having a clear strategy, direction and vision will help. Involve Change
Management expert teams, communicate goals, reasons, solutions, and provide a
transition path for people.
♦ Sell, Not Tell
Do not tell people what to do: find out what their issues are and demonstrate how
the EA works for them.
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Chapter 16: The EA Development Process and Best Practices
Design the Business Functions and Flows Architecture
Specify the business functions tree (Functions) and business process map (Flows)
and ultimately the Single Page Architecture (logical architecture). This will enable
stakeholders to understand the Enterprise structure and operation and how their
own work fits into the whole. The functional Single Page architecture is also the
frame for As-Is discovery and To-Be Enterprise design. Use standard industry
process frameworks or the Business Reference Map and current organization
chart to derive main business Functions.
Discover As-Is Using the Business Reference Map and
framework layers
Any Enterprise has an existing architecture, whether documented or not. Before
designing a new architecture, the current architecture must be documented. This
will help you measure the gap between As-Is and To-Be.
The Bottom-Up approach is based on documenting the systems already in place
i.e. applications and the legacy technology systems to determine your existing
Business, Processes and Technology layers. Do ERP modeling.
As-Is EA evolves as you work, with all projects modifying your Enterprise.
Cascade Strategy objectives and initiatives to EA tree
Map Strategies and goals targets Top-Down, that is, cascade them to Functions,
Flows, Technology and People. Do the reality check (are they realizable?) and re-
iterate, if necessary, to soften and prioritize targets.
Introduce strategies, Bottom-Up as well, to solve existing issues in processes,
technology and organization. Harmonize with Top-Down vision strategies in a
single view, ensuring that both business objectives and practical issues are
resolved in the execution phase, without additional projects and resources.
Sketch the target Enterprise state
Specify the To-Be Functions, Flows and Layer Architectures taking into account the
Business Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions, Architectural principles, technology
transformation guidelines and roadmaps.
Enterprise Architecture is a continuous process of improvement, adaptation and
managing of the gap between As-Is and To-Be. Business Objectives will be moving,
perhaps, faster than your EA development.
Prioritize deliveries and iterate, applying each time the 80/20 rule (80%
73
functionality with 20% effort). Think of a spiral, iterative process.
An iteration starts from its own requirements and has its own deliveries.
Subsequent iterations would build on prior progress to supply new functionality.
Most iterations shall be planned in advance, although the farther in time, the lower
the detail.
Assess Gap between current and target states, establish
roadmap
For each Function, Flow, Layer and View assess differences, gaps, effort
(resources, time, costs). For each serious gap do a business case to assess
feasibility and priorities. Specify the transformation roadmap.
Establish project portfolio and program plan
For each iteration, do the whole cycle from requirements to implementation,
always building on the previous iteration or cycle.
Fully involve the EA program management team and office at this stage.
Establish EA operational governance
After the 1st iteration, nominate an EA operational governance team to supervise
and sanction all new developments, modifications and additions to the Enterprise
for compliance to EA. The team will insert EA checkpoints in all relevant business
processes and will review all new applications and capability developments for
compliance.
Execute Enterprise transformation iteration and evaluate EA
maturity
Use agile processes, iterate, deliver often and frequently consult the stakeholders.
The EA maturity has to be measured now for the EA development, exploitation and
maintenance phases.
Review checklist
1. Depict the process of EA design and implementation.
2. What are the main design strategies?
3. Enumerate key execution strategies.
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Chapter 17
8. An EA Design Exercise
This chapter describes a logical sequence of steps and deliveries for the
development of an Enterprise Architecture. Students of EA and practitioners at any
level, may use this exercise to build their own baseline EA, following the
conceptual case study illustrated in this chapter.
The Design process steps
The EA design process for a minimal architecture can be roughly illustrated in the
picture in a few numbered steps, around the metamodel artifacts, beginning with
the documentation of the firm's mission and vision followed by the design of
A. Enterprise context and key stakeholders' interactions or Use Cases
B. Enterprise Lines of Business (LoB/Products) and Value Chains
C. Business Functions Map
D. stakeholders' interaction scenarios as Business Flows over Functions
E. business information map with information items from Business Flows
F. organization chart resources (roles/units) alignment to Business Functions
G. the architecture of applications executing the Business Flows
H. data architecture, implementing the business information architecture,
showing data flowing in applications exchanges
I. IT technology (desktops, platforms , servers, and storage/DBMSs/SANs)
J. networks (LAN/WANs, data and voice) providing interconnectivity
K. application inventory database (configuration database)
L. preferred technology standards for applications, technology, networks
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Chapter 18
9. Framework use cases for M&A, Outsourcing. ITIL...
The Single Page logical Architecture describes the operation of the Enterprise in
terms of business Functions and interconnections. It offers a logical view, useful
for comprehension, value chain analysis, business model establishment, current
EA discovery and target EA design. The Business Functions and Flows maps are
aligned with the Single Page EA..
A user should be able to select a business Function part of a an organization
department, at a specified level of detail, to investigate process issues. Then
navigate to the affiliated applications and technology, to discover the activity they
perform.
Alternatively, a user can select only the narrow View, a Function to analyze for
instance, how re-insurance works. By navigating along the Function stack, the user
finds out who is responsible, what technology is employed and what is the
roadmap for change for the next year.
Since Views can be built in response to any stakeholder's concerns, the four layer
architecture, designed in the first path, is rapidly augmented to cover all the
aspects of an Enterprise. An EA tool is essential for complex selections,
subsequent navigation and access control.
EA Framework use for Investment
Once elaborated, the Enterprise Transformation plan would establish the priorities
and timetable of the investment to implement the business objectives and
strategy. The transformation plan already takes into account the technology
replacement budget, innovation program costs… Any new investment proposals
should be evaluated in the context of this existing and approved Enterprise
roadmap and transformation project portfolio so that all implications on other
projects or final objectives can be assessed. The investment would be assessed
at the people and technology layers delivering a capability or a new product.
EA Framework for IT services management (ITIL)
architecture
EA is sometimes associated to ITIL, that is, IT service management architecture. To
start with, the IT architecture only describes the IT department structure and
operation, and as such is not an Enterprise wide IT Architecture, but the illustration
of the IT department organization and processes. First of all, the customers of the
IT are the business units rather than the external Enterprise stakeholders. But the
EA framework may be applied successfully to any department of an Enterprise. The
GODS structuring method:
♦ GODS IT Operations (O) is Service Delivery in ITIL, consisting of
o Infrastructure operation, maintenance, upgrades and optimization
o Applications maintenance and upgrades, back-up, log cleaning; (note:
business people operate applications not IT people)
o Availability & Capacity Management
o Service Level Management
o IT Service Continuity Management
o Release & Configuration Management
o Change Management
o IT Architecture documentation
♦ GODS IT Development (D), project activities, would be SDLC in ITIL
o Applications: software design (SDLC), new solution integration and EAI
deployment
o Infrastructure: new capability Design and Planning, Deployment
o Project management
♦ GODS IT Support (S) is ITIL Service Support
o Incident, & Problem Management
o Helpdesk
♦ IT Governance consists of boards as :
o IT Management committee
o IT Architecture, Strategy and Roadmap
o IT Investment committee
IT Flows over IT Functions constitute the IT business architecture. The Enterprise
applications, while serving the business purpose, are not serving the IT key
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Chapter 18: Framework use cases for M&A, Outsourcing, ITIL…
functionality and thus they are not part of the ITIL department Application views,
as opposed to Helpdesk, monitoring, upgrading applications etc.
EA Framework for Security Architecture
Enterprise security architecture is, in actual fact, about controlling and protecting
access to the Enterprise assets. For that, a strong concept is the "perimeter". We
surround an asset, or a group of assets, with a perimeter at which we install
protective measures.
The logical security architecture begins at the business level by discovering the
information, processes, and other artifacts like business strategy and planning, to
which access needs to be managed.
The next step is to devise the type of access (Read, Write, Update…) for each role,
and an Access Control List (ACL) for the asset. People and systems would be
assigned roles.
The access type: it can be physical or remote, over networks particularly with
regard to IT.
At the Business Layer, an Actor would be assigned a role and specific rights with
regard to business artifacts and process execution.
At the Applications Layer, these rights would materialize in Access rights to
content, structured data and application (right to reverse an EFTPOS transaction,
for instance).
At the infrastructure layer, the rights to manage platforms, OSs, servers, storage
and networks would also have to be controlled by similar mechanisms. Actors are
assigned roles with standard rights to infrastructure assets.
The Enterprise assets, become components of the Security Architecture; they
should become objects in the EA repository, having a description of access rights
for various roles. Assets belong to business Functions.
At the technology layer, access rights to non-IT assets (paper documents,
equipment…) must be established. Security must be also enforced for real estate
and facilities with access controlled at the perimeter around workplaces,
especially at gates, doors and cabinets inside buildings.
Nevertheless, before costly security systems are put in place (such as video
cameras, 128bit encryption etc.), a threat and risk analysis would be performed to
learn how often and how damaging could a threat be. Once the potential loss
analyzed, an estimate of the worth of the security method and system could be
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produced.
At the people layer, security access cards and remote access authentication
tokens could be provided besides passwords.
For remote access, VPNs or SSL with encryption for information integrity and
confidentiality should be utilized. Measures should be put in place to detect Denial
of Service attacks and Man in the Middles message modification.
In summary, every component of every EA layer should be analyzed from a security
standpoint and accordingly protected, given the level of threat and potential
damage to the Enterprise.
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How to design your Enterprise around the customer
♦ The Business (Functions) Reference Map allows a good modeling of the
customer interaction.
Customers
Authorization
Subscription
Customer
Discovers
Campigns
Research
Service
Service
Update
Market
Service
Market
Service
usage
Customer Interaction Layer
Operations Utility Functions
Market & Sell & Make &
Plan Service Deliver
Make/
Business Logic
Source/B2B
Development Governance/ S upport
Services Corporate Services
Partners/Supliers
Figure 18-16 - A sample customer's interaction navigation scenario
Some of the following business activities have to be strengthened to transform
your organization into a customer centric one.
♦ Market research (customer needs, trends, competitors' products) resulting in
customer segmentation, new product concepts.
♦ Market campaigns based on research to attract prospects
♦ Customer interaction at the Portal, Shops, Call Centers…
♦ The Booking/Reservation/Subscription/Application for Product
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♦ Customer Service and Relationship Management for customer interaction
history, personalization, product changes, incentives, loyalty
♦ Service Authorization and Access
♦ Service usage (downloading, therapy, access to show, transport…)
EA Framework use for Mergers and Acquisitions
The starting point is the existence of two different As-Is Enterprise Architectures,
even if not properly documented. The aim is the development and evolution
towards a single Enterprise and EA. This is a long term process, finished after the
formal merger. To control this process a formal common program has to be
established, before the merger, with activities described in this section. By looking
at the EA framework it becomes apparent that you have to align
♦ the Business layers of the two Enterprises:
o establish the new common Governance of the merged Enterprise
o evolve towards a single mission, set of products, market segments,, brands
o design a single vision, strategy, objectives
o establish high level logical architecture (business functions and flows);
specify common Functions such as operations, shared support and
development services; analyze outsourcing at this early stage
o rationalize external stakeholders (banks, suppliers …)
♦ the Technology layer: after discovering the existing two EAs, rationalize and
standardize the Applications and Infrastructure platforms to serve the
functional architecture (Functions and Flows). Decide on, merge and
rationalize:
o ERP, CRM, SCM…
o customer services and sales channels
o main product applications
o Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence, reporting
o B2B platforms
o Knowledge and Content management
o Voice and IP networks, email and printing architectures
o Office technology (PCs, mobiles, Helpdesk, IT support)
o Non IT technology and facilities: rationalize real estate, parking…
♦ the People layer:
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o manage change (expectations, redundancies…)
o align organizations to the same EA business functions;
o begin cultural transformation: choose common values, ethics…
o design common communications channels and technology
o align payroll levels, recruitment standards…
♦ design common EA Views, such as
o Financial/Accounting functions, flows people and technology
o data architecture (vocabulary)
o security
o planning
EA Framework use for Outsourcing
Outsourcing, a fast growing trend, offers the flexibility to choose the best of breed
service and cost effective supplier. It could be justified by a few factors:
♦ reduced costs of service compared to the in house TCO
♦ enhanced reliability and quality of service as a result of clients' usage by and
feedback
♦ improved response times and productivity through supplier's specialist
expertise
♦ faster time to market due to the new service deployment time
♦ elimination of longer internal feature development cycles
♦ minimization of the HW/SW infrastructure maintenance costs
♦ reduction in real estate for people and machinery.
Moreover, it allows you to focus on managing the key business functions only and
deploy an "on demand" model of usage rather than build, operate and maintain,
in-house, a service you seldom consume (recruitment for instance).
Drawbacks: the formal, contractual way to address a new requirement, especially
when you missed the opportunity to formulate the feature at acquisition. Not all
functions can be easily outsourced. The more connections are necessary, at
human and technology levels, the more difficult is to outsource. Another
impediment is the fact that there is typically little understanding of the existent
service boundaries, requirements, costs and profitability. As such decisions are the
result of "intuition".
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Outsourcing exists at business process level (BPO), IT application level (SaaS),
infrastructure (data centre), function or department level (helpdesk, call centre), or
combined under a managed services agreement. In general, it is employed when
specialized skills are required and it is not your core function.
You already outsource development to contractors, maintenance of the mainframe
to suppliers, business strategy development to management consultancies, IT
support to specialized IT firms, call centers to India, payroll to China, HR to
specialized agencies and so on.
Enterprise Architecture and SOA would prepare the ground for outsourcing by
showing all parameters of a Function starting with the process, technology and
people belonging to it, the costs and KPIs associated to it etc. The Lines would
describe the interface to other business functions. The EA framework would
support a rapid transition to outsourcing at all layers: Process, Application,
Infrastructure and People.
The Operations, Support and Development functions may all be outsourced
depending on your business model. That is, the way you decided to make money
would stress specific links of your Value Chain, leaving out others which can be
outsourced.
EA Framework use for a Start-Up Business
How would a Small or Medium Business (SMB) adopt EA? A simplified framework
can be used as a guideline for entrepreneurs to plan and build the new company.
The EA framework already contains the main aspects an entrepreneur needs to
consider:
♦ The business architecture layer is to be determined first:
o the product, the business mission
o the vision, business strategy and plan (how to get there), forecasts
o Value Chain and business model (what markets, customer segments,
pricing, costing, core capabilities etc) to serve the mission
o typical stakeholders: partners, suppliers, financial institutions
♦ define Governance, type of ownership such as Sole Trader, Partnership …
and decision making: the managing team roles and responsibilities
♦ Specify GODS functions in terms of activities and required resources such as
people and technology and estimate costs for each and every function
o Operations: sales and services, inbound/outbound logistics, customer
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distribution channels, manufacturing
o Development (R&D, product and capability development) functions
o Support functions ; decide their business model (how do they produce value
to the company) and outsource if necessary
♦ Select basic technology for each function, deploy an ERP, use managed
services or a plan to do this
♦ Sketch key aspects: locations, data, security, planning, required performance
(from benchmarking data)
Produce the business plan including all the above.
Review checklist
1. Describe Security Architecture.
2. Explain the process of application of EA framework to ITIL
3. Describe the interaction of the customer with the Enterprise.
4. How do we use the framework for M&A?
5. How could be FFLV used for outsourcing?
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Chapter 19
10. The EA Governance, Program and the Architect role
EA Governance
The EA should be used across the entire company in various ways, to support
learning, making decisions and investments, designing new products and
capabilities and do strategic planning.
EA compliance checkpoints and templates should be incorporated into all relevant
business and IT processes:
♦ The Product/Capability development process will observe enforcement checks
at each milestone
♦ Projects will have milestones checked against the architecture deliveries
templates.
♦ Roadmapping process aligned to EA
♦ the Investment process to consider the Enterprise Project Portfolio and
technology selection to EA technical standards
An EA compliance team should observe and police all solution architecture
development for compatibility with the EA .
Departments shall:
♦ design their own architectures using the same tools and conventions
♦ provide architectural Views to the overall Enterprise Architecture
♦ interconnect their architectures at reference points agreed with the EA
♦ observe common architectural principles and technology standards in design
Suppliers should be distributed a version of the EA architecture so that they may
include the required functionality, interfaces, protocols, roadmap and EA technical
standards in products. The Business improvement activity should be devised to
take into consideration: process, technology and people performance at the same
time.
EA Governance
EA Governance Council:
Business Sponsor, CIO,
Chief Architect, Program Manager
EA Chief
Architect
EA Program EA Tool/Site Lead Architects: EA workstreams Solution
Manager & PMO Administrators Business
EA Architect Lead Architects Architects
Applications
EA Architect
Technology
EA Architect Domain experts
Compliance& Information Portal, Cnt Mng,
Maturity Id Mng, BI/SW)
Domain
experts
Virtual team members
Figure 19-17 - EA governance
EA should provide mixed business-IT governance, compliance, program
management, administration teams and Enterprise Architects to lead the EA
workstreams and supervise the key EA domains of activity.
The business and IT governance should be adapted to the new SOA structure, to
enable ownership and operation of the business Services by common business
and IT teams. This deserves a discussion: the business Function as such contains
business processes, information and the Technology and/or People executing the
processes. But there are different teams and managers for business Functions
and IT. An explanation is the existence of the separate IT organization delivering
shared services. While technology is key in supporting business processes and in
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delivering business objectives, the IT team supporting this specific technology may
have other priorities coming from the IT line management. A straightforward
remedy would be that the people operating the technology would report directly to
the business Function and in dotted line to IT, to enable co-ordination with the rest
of IT for technology standardization. A solution is to partition the IT department
into units, reporting into broader LoBs, except for the few truly shared IT and EA
central functions. The ultimate goal is to unify the business and IT teams and
their objectives, inside the business Function.
The EA project organization and funding
Is EA a project or Business As Usual (BAU) activity? EA, ultimately delivers an asset,
a capability. A project has to be initiated to create the capability in the first place.
Afterwards, a BAU function and team must be established to manage and upgrade
it. The EA is no different. A project will deliver the EA in an 80/20 manner
(functionality/effort). The project should transit and deliver into a BAU team.
The EA project should be organized in phases and staffed accordingly:
1. Planning phase: determine scope, iterations, resourcing and governance
2. Overall EA set-up phase – Architecture + program support group
o Specify rather than choose the EA framework
o Design the key EA layers and views
o Specify the vision state of the Enterprise
3. Design and Implementation of iteration N – multiple teams/workstreams
o Discover As-Is views
o Design End and transition States
o Plan, resource and Implement state for each workstream
4. GO TO 3 (after reviewing 1 and 2)
5. Form and handover to BAU team
The BAU EA team should follow the same design process with Solution projects.
The main tasks of the team would be to coordinate the work done by Solution
Architecture teams to assure fitness for the EA purpose.
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EA Program and BAU organization
Program BAU transition
Phase 1 Iteration 1 Iteration 2…
Workstream 1.1
Discover As-Is
Design To-Be Solution
Workstream 2.1
Implement Gap Project 1
Discover As-Is
Design To-Be
Planning: Scope, EA set-up: Implement Gap
Workstream 1.2 EA coordination
Iterations, EA Framework,
Discover As-Is Discover As-Is
Governance Principles,
Design To-Be Design To-Be
Resourcing… Standards,
Implement Gap Implement Gap
Estimating costs Strategies Workstream 2.2
Discover As-Is
Design To-Be
Workstream 1. 3 Solution
Implement Gap Project 2
Discover As-Is
Design To-Be
Implement Gap
EA core team
EA core team EA core + virtual team IT Architects
Figure 19-18 - The EA program organization
Initially, the development should be funded as a project with Operational
Expenditure (OPEX) for development. Both OPEX and Capital investment (CAPEX)
are necessary for implementation but the CAPEX should be synchronized
opportunistically with the lifecycle of existing technologies.
SOA requires that funding be distributed between the internal customers of a
service. After the design phase, outsourcing of a service should be considered.
An EA site taxonomy
As the EA becomes the knowledge DB of the Enterprise, the content has to be
organized early according to an EA taxonomy and exposed on the Intranet to
enable content. management. The EA architect leads this effort.
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EA site taxonomy
Architect. Tool Business Layer Line of Business
Line of Business
Technical
Roadmaps Documents Relevant
Publishing Folder Standards EA Architect Relevant
Documents
Documents
Applications
EA Architect
Technology
EA Architect
Information
IT Solution & Domain
Team Structure Program Governance Info Architecture Docs
/Responsibilities Documents Business Cases (Cnt Mng, Id Mng, Portal,
BI/DW, EAI, B2B, BPM…)
Figure 19-19 - EA site organization
The role of the Enterprise Architect
The EA architect role requires putting together an EA business case to justify the
EA development once and for all, then sell the EA to business and management to
get sponsorship and resources.
Afterwards, the job demands the EA framework selection, customization and
creative design since most frameworks stop at general architectural patterns like
matrices, layered structures, triangles, pyramids, cubes, circular processes etc.
This is a critical success factor for the rest of the EA development!
The architect establishes the design principles, the process, breaks down the EA
work into workstreams, and organizes the teams to discover and document the
current Enterprise state and blueprint.
Then he validates other Enterprise developments from an EA point of view: all
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solutions architecture designs have to comply to EA principles, standards and
conventions, reuse the same components and link them to each other and the rest
of EA artifacts.
Also, the ERP, SCM, CRM, MDM, Portal and business specific applications, suites
and activities have to be properly documented at the process and technology
layers, to be integrated in the overall EA.
Then the architect looks at the Business and IT Strategies - to align them to the
Enterprise map and analyze their impacts - and determines the future state of the
EA and its roadmap.
The EA architects also establish the technology standards and guidelines, specify
and verify the EA compliance criteria and process check points, evaluate the EA
maturity and not least, coordinate the entire EA development work.
Enterprise Architect kinds
A good number of Enterprise Architects (EAs) appear to come through the IT
professional promotion ladder process which ends up at the top of this value
chain: the Enterprise Architect. They are veterans, they know people and people
know them, they give advice and are knowledgeable about the company history,
culture and motivation behind every technology in existence. They are often
consulted by management and occupy a position of respect since some are
legends for services rendered. Do they really do Enterprise Architecture? They
mostly don't. They do check consistency of designs between projects and against
their own experience, but they do not have a reference Enterprise Architecture to
validate results against.
Another type of Enterprise Architect is the Integration architect; it is an important
role since most applications are hard to interconnect even today. They are chosen
from the SOA ranks, as the middle name for SOA is integration for most adopters.
They use middleware, mostly based on ESBs, JAVA/JMS, MQ Series… and Web
Services. Do they do Enterprise Architecture? They do the EA integration bit.
Then, the well known Enterprise JAVA Architects so called because of the
“Enterprise” in the Java EE naming. The technology is said to be Enterprise wide, in
that it may support all Enterprise applications.
There are also Enterprise Solution Architects because they work in capability
delivery projects. They do patching and interconnection work to keep the
applications running. This is not really EA work., but Solution Architecture.
The Enterprise IT strategist role, is the Enterprise Architect working on the IT
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roadmap which is aligned to the Enterprise Architecture. If not based on EA, this
role will deliver best effort silo-ed outcomes. leaving gaps which, later on, would
demand resources competing with the strategy activities.
The Enterprise Architects are often classified in Applications and Infrastructure
architects to enable work division and specialization. Often they end up doing
inventories of technologies and applications, working on these EA layers in
isolation.
Sometimes, the Enterprise Data Architect and Warehouse roles are also created
when the Enterprise has trouble with managing its customer data or extracting
reliable intelligence from available sources, which is quite often, simply because
information is duplicated in many applications.
It is significant to note that Business Architect roles are seldom if ever advertised
even though Applications, Information and Infrastructure roles, one for each
framework layer, are. Business Architects, when they exist, usually occupy
business analyst roles, mostly belonging to the "business" community, not the IT;
they have the task to look into requirements and model the business processes
but typically out of the Enterprise Architecture context.
Hence, while there are "Enterprise Architects" in place doing IT solutions,
integration, inventories... more often than not, there is no one to do the business
architecture (business functional decomposition, process , business services).
More, EA architects do not really do EA framework design and customization,
metamodel specification, EA compliance or maturity evaluation work.
The EA positions are occupied nevertheless because the thrills of the EA job attract
lots of candidates. Since the current "Enterprise Architects" are more likely to be
senior and experienced people, there is no way one can substitute them. They do a
great job. While existing EA architects are experienced IT people there is no
guarantee that they understand the business methods and theory.
One still needs to bring in "true" EA architects to develop and manage the EA. An EA
architect must be able to develop the EA framework, understand the business theory
and practice and manage the EA development.
The problem with the EA is that Enterprise Architects do not cover business
architecture and business analysts do not cover technology, information or even
architecture as a discipline. The division between business and IT does the rest of
the damage.
In reality, one may not employ another team of Enterprise Architects. How would
one avoid the conflict of naming and interests? Who is supposed to draw and drive
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the Enterprise Architecture? Does one have to reassign roles and responsibilities
or change titles? The risk is the loss of these valuable people.
A solution would be to introduce the Business Architect role whose responsibilities
are not covered by either current Enterprise Architects or business analysts.
The business architect is not a mere business analyst. The role, once created and
properly filled, could take charge of the EA development since the business
architecture drives the technology, describes the operation and goals of the
company and conveys understanding to everyone in business and technology
alike. This role should be a senior one, unlike the Enterprise Architect today; it
should have authority to suggest organization alignment, perform project and team
management, resource, delegate... To inspire trust to the top management, the
role should be knowledgeable in business operation, value chain analysis, supply
chain, business models, Six/Lean Sigma, strategy and BPM and have an
understanding of IT and architecture. The Business Architect would lead the design
of the Business Functions Map, Single Page Architecture, Business Flow Map,
Business and Operating model assessment, strategy alignment and so on.
The existing EA IT architects would continue to do the IT work, play the same
important role in IT, in alignment with the Business Architecture this time. They
should have a dotted line reporting relationship to the Business Architect lead.
All in all, there are just a few true Enterprise Architects; the few who have both the
business and IT theoretical and practical background and have overcome, with
passion and dedication, the limitations of existing EA frameworks.
How does one select an Enterprise Architect
Since there are few distinctive qualifications or selection criteria for an Enterprise
Architect, how do you recognize an Enterprise Architect?
Most EAs have studied TOGAF, Zachman, FEA and quickly gave up on DoDAF.
These appear to be the universal requirements for an Enterprise Architect. Nothing
earth shattering though, almost marketing like material.
Zachman is quite straightforward to read and understand. It is common sense. All
candidates have browsed TOGAF, hard to go through due to its richness.
FEA is a bit of a read, in fact there are quite a number of documents, but what
remains in one's mind is the simple framework (consisting of performance,...
business, services, technology reference layers) which is not quite rocket science.
But if you read specific agency frameworks you discover they differ in many ways.
DODAF formalizes descriptions in diagrams types with relationships described by
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a metamodel. It has its own vocabulary that departs a bit too much from the EA
accepted modeling. Hence it is hardly usable, except in defense.
As such, it is not too hard for a candidate to tick the methodology boxes for an
Enterprise Architecture job: Zachman, TOGAF, FEA and other (IAF, EAP, E2AF...).
But unfortunately this is not too distinctive, in fact it provides no differentiation
since most IT architects can claim this.
The EA (SOA too) certification courses will surely help, won't they?
EA certification attempts to fill the gap to an experienced IT professional but,
typically, it does rely on the existing frameworks to guide the development work.
The IT layers (applications, information, technology) are more often than not,
presented extensively in training and certification courses. You will see long
chapters about network, DB, servers technologies, type of applications etc. But do
they arm the Enterprise Architect with a practical framework to design or lead the
implementation of an Enterprise Architecture? An Enterprise Architect needs to
understand the framework connecting the layers and its navigation, rather than all
layers in detail.
Since it is not too hard to tick the boxes for an Enterprise Architecture ad, the
Enterprise Architect's curriculum must be usually backed by a long IT experience,
references and social skills. There are also technology requirements: such as
experience with Java, DBs, ERP... And there is also the experience in the specific
business domain such as "Insurance" industry.
Counting these criteria, is it possible to narrow down the candidates to a short list?
Not by much. How do you really make sure you get what you need? Since there are
no clear qualifications or selection criteria for an Enterprise Architect, how is it
done today?
The professional history, Zachman and TOGAF tick boxes, soft skills, technology
skills like Java decimate the number of candidates. Ultimately a reference and the
experience in the domain of business do the trick for most jobs. You just selected
an Enterprise Architect. But will you get an Enterprise Architecture?
These criteria help but unfortunately they may eliminate the "real" Enterprise
Architects. But what is that? Someone who had a structured mind and takes the
time and the pain to understand how things fit together. Might also have done
hardware design since this is a more structured domain based on functionality
encapsulated in chips.
Consultancies, do they have EA frameworks? They have variations of the existing
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ones. Consultancies count on the collective consultant experience to resolve
issues.
For a consultancy, a typical framework - which changes quite often - is based on
the known layers (business, information, applications, technology etc) conveniently
surrounded by a few great Zachman style questions, such as Why, Who, When,
Where.... Orthogonally one will always find a security slice.
The job description for an Enterprise Architect
A job description for an Enterprise Architect,:
Architecture wise
♦ architecture know how: definition, principles
♦ IT architecture styles (centralized, layered, multi-tiered client server, web)
♦ IT architecture patterns and typical components: Content Management,
Presentation, Business Orchestration, ID Mng, B2B…
♦ SW and HW development experience at flowchart level
♦ concepts as MDA (Model Driven Architecture), MVC (Model View Controller)
♦ OO concepts, design and Distributed Components history (RPC, CORBA, COM)
♦ UML modeling: context diagrams, Use Cases, activity, sequence, state
diagrams, data modeling, ERD (Entity relationships Diagrams), Class
diagrams, BPEL
♦ a disposition to draw diagrams and flowcharts before coding and soldering
♦ Integration experience
Business wise:
♦ Business acumen: operation of an Enterprise, Porter's Value Chain, Business
Models, Operating Models, Governance, Financial Management, Performance
and Cost Management, SWOT analysis, SCOR and VRM reference models
♦ Business Strategy, Roadmapping
♦ Business Process modeling (BPM, IDEF representations, swimlanes), Business
Process Management, Business Orchestration and Rules, Balanced Score
Card, Six Sigma, CMM, Change Management
♦ A working knowledge of the specific business: products and stakeholders
Technology wise:
♦ EA Frameworks: Zachman, TOGAF, DoDAF, FEAF, TEAF…, PERA, eTOM /NGOSS
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♦ EA and other modeling tools
♦ SOA, ITIL, COBIT IT process and governance frameworks
♦ Systems and Software Architecture and Principles
♦ Service Oriented Architecture concepts and Web Services protocols
♦ Mainframe, client server technologies, databases, Content Management, Data
Warehouse, Business Intelligence, reporting, B2B, Portal, Internet and IP
technology, virtualization technologies, trends
♦ Infrastructure: servers, storage, networks, telecommunications, OSI
♦ Agile Processes, project management
♦ ERP, CRM, SCM… applications suites
♦ SDLC: Software Development Life Cycle
♦ EAI/ESB distributed component architectures
♦ Web Services, Java and .Net aware
Social wise:
♦ Able to communicate, influence, negotiate, motivate, facilitate and inspire, in
other words, get the human interaction right.
♦ Able to guide the EA development process and get support from all levels.
♦ The Enterprise Architect should be politically savvy, able to present and argue
at all levels of management.
The Tasks and authority of the Enterprise Architect
♦ Prepares business case, exposes benefits and drivers
♦ Specifies framework, best practices and tools
♦ Establishes architecture, design and technology principles and guidelines
♦ Supervises EA design and development
♦ Coordinates works done by domain architects
♦ Controls artifacts consistency and compliancy
♦ Owns the EA repository and decides access rights
♦ Presents, justifies communicates to all stakeholders in business and IT
♦ Recommends transformation roadmap and works with PM
♦ Controls EA iterations and operation
♦ Establishes compliance checkpoints in major development processes
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♦ Assesses EA maturity
♦ Measures returned value
Authority:
♦ makes decisions with regard to artifacts design and implementation
♦ drives the virtual team of function architects
♦ resolves architecture disputes
Enterprise Architect as a leader
There is an argument that the Enterprise Architect is a leader in the transformation
of the Enterprise and a participant in the business decision making process. Right
now, this is not the case but the trend points in that direction.
But what is a leader or leadership for that matter? And what is it compared to
management? Management is about organization, control, planning and
budgeting. Leadership is about motivation, mobilization, creating the vision and
establishing the culture and relationships. To succeed, an Enterprise Architect has
to act as a leader to motivate people, mobilize resources and create the EA vision
while as a manager has to manage the complexity of the Enterprise Architecture
development, documentation and day to day running.
Latest thinking points out that leaders must have theatrical qualities. I would say
that actors becoming leaders are not rare these days, especially in politics. But is it
what leadership needs? What is called theater is in fact another term for excellent
communication skills, the ability to hold an inspiring speech in front of people at a
conference.
But it is possible to have a leading position without having leadership capabilities
or the other way around. A leader is an individual who leads a group's activity to a
specific purpose. But these individuals could be selected, nominated, self-
nominated or inherit a leading position, a position of authority. In this latter case, a
group may not even respect or agree with these individuals since the authority of
this leader comes from the power of the position. Discussed here is the case of
leaders capable of leadership.
What is leadership then? Leadership or charisma is the quality of an individual to
attract followers for a specific purpose. For that, a leader must inspire trust and
respect, coming from natural personal qualities, experience or education.
Leadership requires self confidence and emotional control to reassure and inspire
the followers.
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What are the qualities of leadership? Inspiring trust and respect is vital, even if the
leader has a position of power, but how is it done? In the first place, the individual
has to be credible and lead by example. This requires top competence in that field
of activity, a basic sine qua non condition for the leader. Self confidence has to be
rooted in knowledge and experience rather than mandated by culture (you must be
confident at all costs!), or two days training courses. The leader would find
solutions where few can, strengthening the others' confidence. He is Not someone
who is looking the part, confident, decided, sure of success but without with the
depth to deliver. The problem is that without the underlying professional ability, the
confidence is wrong footed and the results average. The surrogate leader fails
without knowing why, since he is playing the role well and moreover believes
unconditionally in himself. Acting the role alone, will not deliver professional
results. Acting the role of a leader, can only benefit, in the long term, the actor, the
"leader" and not the group. There is a difference between the role and the reality,
the personage and the person. An actor is at his best when plays naturally since he
is authentic i.e. a leader. Otherwise there is mismatch between substance and
form, easily noticed unconsciously, decoded by primitive but efficient detectors
within ourselves: the eyes which do not smile or avoid looking into your eyes, the
gesture that does not confirm the words, the intonation gone the other way.
The leader should have a vision, an ideal that inspires people and determines
them to follow in the long term. He does the "right things", and does "things right"
as a good manager/administrator does.
He should be emotionally stable, having a degree of Emotional Intelligence (EQ as
opposed to IQ), so that he could understand, interpret and control emotion in
others. But the leader is in control of himself first. A leader, alternatively, could be
passionate to inspire his followers with his energy and enthusiasm.
Leadership needs authenticity to succeed, that is the image shown should fit the
substance and competence. Authenticity means "you do what you say" and "you
say what you think".
There are archetypes, or worse, stereotypes of leadership. The hero leader in films
is a typical example. People are molding themselves on heroes since early
childhood. We struggle to imitate the best, their behavior, we learn from them.
There is also the stereotype of the business manager played by many,
unfortunately.
In a culture driven by acting leaders, the real work would not be prized any longer;
meritocracy would be applied in terms of acting skills. An acting leader can
empower, delegate, but the immediate ranks feel the competence void. This
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leadership will be maintained not by respect inspired by competence but through
power, minute control and politics.
The style of leadership depends on field: a warrior leader would be bold and ready
to fight, a president would be a decision maker, and a conductor would
orchestrate the individuals in the orchestra. This would require different qualities.
Leadership also depends on situation such as a company in difficult times for
instance. In normal times leadership is welcome but not in demand. It does not
necessarily mean doing moral "good". There are evil leaders. Why people follow
them? Because trust, belief and the lack of doubt is said to make people content,
if not happy. It was discovered that following is easier than leading, that too many
choices or decisions make people unhappy.
Finally, leadership comes from will or desire to lead, since it is not solely a blessing
but a very consuming activity, requiring sacrifice and dedication to the cause.
EA is a difficult task. Many people in management, business and IT would have to
trust the Enterprise Architect and take action. But without the right authority the
task is made impossible for the Enterprise Architect.
Review checklist
1. Describe governance for EA design.
2. Illustrate governance for EA execution.
3. How is the project organized? Specify phases.
4. Discuss project funding.
5. List a few components of the EA silo taxonomy.
6. Write the job description of an Enterprise Architect.
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Measure your Enterprise Architecture Maturity
A few attempts have been made to define EA maturity evaluation models. The
Capability Maturity Model of Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI)
is a main source of inspiration. A simplified maturity model is shown here. The
development maturity model assesses the phase of EA development. The
exploitation model determines the degree of adoption. An important factor is
overlooked deliberately at this stage. the quality of EA. This depends very much on
EA definition, scope, framework (and artifacts) and practical purpose of
development.
EA development maturity
The following phases are distinguished:
1. Phase 0: Pre-EA
From value of EA not assessed or understood until the Business Case is
approved. There is no commitment or capability to plan, design or execute.
2. Phase 1: EA Program Initiation
From approved business case until
o the EA organization is set up
o planning and resources are committed
o Chief EA architect, Steering Committee/governance are agreed.
Capabilities for the EA design and execution are committed now.
3. Phase 2: EA Definition
EA design and transformation planning phase, until
o the EA framework and tool are established
o the As-Is Architecture is discovered
o intermediate stages and To-Be EA are sketched,
o transformation plan approved
o KPIs, CSFs, quick win are determined.
4. Phase 3: Transformation Execution
Enterprise transformation execution in iterations until 80/20% (functionality/
effort) is achieved and value delivered is confirmed.
5. Phase 4: EA exploitation
EA enters the exploitation stage, while incremental design/plan/
implementation stages are still executed.
The components assessed in the transformation implementation process would
typically be business processes, technology architecture and organization. The
degree of EA development progress inside a phase would be also evaluated as a
percentage.
To measure the earned value, the table of indicators in the Business Case chapter
can be employed to fill in the % column. Alternatively, a subjective way to measure
benefits, would be to estimate the ultimate benefits: the degree of simplification,
alignment, agility, strategy alignment and blueprint documentation achieved.
Once the EA is implemented to a significant degree (80/20) the CMM for the EA
exploitation process should be employed.
EA exploitation maturity
This may overlap with the EA development capability assessment. It may be
practical to keep them separate.
1. Level 0: EA ignored
o Although EA artifacts exist, they are ignored or not easily available.
o No EA central authority or clear distribution of ownership of iterations exists.
2. Level 1: Empirical EA exploitation
by a few stakeholders:
o the process is repeatable but depends on people;
o There is some ownership but
o The EA utilization process is not clearly documented.
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3. Level 2: Documented EA utilization process
o The exploitation process is well defined
o Design and ownership of artifacts is in place
o The exploitation process embeds controls, checkpoints and audit points in
all relevant Enterprise processes.
4. Level 3: Managed EA
It is used by management, business and technology teams to design, deploy,
control investment, make decisions and manage change.
5. Level 4: Optimizing EA
There is on-going EA improvement and maintenance. EA is used in product
design, organization evolution and strategic planning.
Measure the Value of EA
EA, like any architecture, represents the structure of an Enterprise and its
documentation describing how the Enterprise operates. The better the
architecture, the better the outcome, i.e. the returned value.
A good architecture structure reduces duplications and overlays in processes,
platforms, projects and sometimes people and it consolidates the many
interconnections.
A good EA framework describes the structure, standardizes best practices and
technologies, maps strategies on architecture components and architecture layers
such as processes to people and technology. It makes understanding the
operation and training people easy.
The Enterprise Architecture delivers value, as soon as it is designed and
implemented. In fact, it does that, gradually, while it is implemented by increasing
the effectiveness and efficiency of your Enterprise. EA soon becomes an asset in
its own, returning value to your Enterprise.
A project justification is done at Business Case time, before the start of the
development,
by enumerating and estimating a number of key benefits. Ideally, all these initial
benefits should be tracked and measured at implementation time to prove the
delivery of promises. Same applies to EA. The EA scope is key though, since more
scope should return more value. EA iterations may add scope and as such, new
value.
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But EA definitions vary and their scope is wildly different for each development.
What is EA? Is it an IT only architecture? Then you are looking only at the benefits
of standardizing technology and integrating applications. With business and
people architecture the picture changes significantly. The Business, Organization
and IT alignment with ensuing benefits can only be achieved if you include in
scope a Business Architecture.
Once the scope and deliverables are established, the benefits and business case
of the development can be estimated. The EA success should be measured
against the listed benefits and deliverables in scope rather than against an
abstract EA that does not have an agreed definition, but promises a lot, in vague
terms.
A table of key business improvement benefits, the way to measure them, and their
stakeholders should be defined from the beginning and measured at the end of an
EA iteration. The key benefit indicators may be grouped in a few categories:
♦ Operational (those enhancing the operation such as single customer view -
master data management -, Development (improving your innovation and the
new product development process, reflected in time to market) and Support
(enabling single version of truth for reporting…)
♦ Governance (enabling understanding, communication and decision making in
the organization)
♦ Strategic, enabling effective execution of strategy
♦ Communications and Collaboration
The EA development success is measured at implementation time with project
progress indicators.
An EA maturity framework will help you measure progress in the development and
compliance in exploitation phases; It will do that by measuring success from a
process maturity and extent of business participation points of view rather than
from a business value view.
Value, sometimes comes down to how do I justify my job as an EA architect! Firstly,
many "EA architects" are not really doing an EA design work. They are Enterprise
level technology and applications integration experts and IT veterans. But if you
are really doing EA work, one can evaluate your job performance by assessing,
after each iteration, the benefits stated in the business case and measured by key
improvement indicators in the benefits table. This could be correlated with a
maturity framework evaluating the EA development progress, participation and
compliance to EA.
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A Balanced Scorecard approach for performance measurement and management
of your Enterprise is supported by the FFLV framework in that it is addressing the
four scorecard views: market (customers), processes (company), learning and
growth (people) and financials (owners).
Sell the EA
This seems to be one of the issues continually confronting us in the EA arena. To
sell it, start by identifying the interested and affected parties for each iteration, the
stakeholders. Ask the old question "what's in it for them?" and "what is the impact
on them" since they would be asked to support, pay or even contribute to it!
The potential audience depends entirely on the scope of your EA development
which can vary a lot. Is your EA an IT only architecture? If you define your
architecture in terms of applications, information and technology architecture you
address an audience in IT, for the most part. For IT, do you intend to include
content management, knowledge management, BI, DW, integration architectures?
That will considerably enlarge your IT audience.
Top management, what is in it for them? The representation of the Enterprise
governance, the roles and responsibilities, governance bodies and principles of
decision making, the business models - how the business makes a profit -, strategy
alignment to the Enterprise organization, regulatory compliance and not least a
business blueprint. There is quite a lot to sell.
For Enterprise shared services organization: support functions as HR, Payroll,
have to be described in terms of services, processes, costs and effectiveness.
For business people you should be providing information on IT or other
technologies they use - like SCADA and GIS for utility companies - process
automation and improvement, business rules and orchestration and not in the
least reporting and Business Intelligence blueprints. If you provide this information
the business organization would become your supporter.
To satisfy the interests of most potential stakeholders, the concept of architectural
view is crucial: a view satisfies the concerns or needs of a stakeholder group.
There are as many views as stakeholder types.
To sell the EA, put together, upfront, an EA drivers and benefits pack and a
business case based on financial terms. Business management thinks in terms of
Payback, ROI, NPV which are measures of profit vs costs, typically applied to
projects. A table of benefits, such as time to market, agility, and the estimated EA
contribution to them at each EA iteration will do a lot of good to the sales process
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of EA. Calculate RoEA at each iteration.
The EA has to be opportunistic, planned to deliver first what the business needs
such as a Single Customer View or a Single Version of Truth architecture. A natural
progression to EA with obsolete systems and technologies replaced when their
time has come and not before would reinforce the EA sell effort.
Business does not see technology in isolation as IT does, except as a source of
problems.
Review checklist
1. Describe the EA maturity exploitation model.
2. Explain the stages in measuring the EA maturity at design phases
3. How do you measure the value of EA?
4. How do you sell the EA?
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12. EA Roadblocks, Culture and Politics
EA Development Triggers
Enterprise Architecture, as shown, provides many benefits. Once a business case
is built it is easier to argue for the EA investment. The typical issue is that tactical
concerns are always winning in competition with long term, strategic programs as
EA. A reason is that strategic issues are coming today, at tactical speeds. If not
strategic thinking, then which factors may trigger the development of an EA?
♦ An imminent Merger and Acquisition requiring the amalgamation of two
companies with different organizations, processes and technology
♦ A decision to outsource business functions where productivity and costs are
becoming an issue
♦ Technology infrastructure needs urgent alignment to business Strategy
♦ Imminent regulatory issues demanding documented business processes and
document management with compliance controls
♦ The company suffers from inefficient processes
♦ A re-organization to adopt a new business model and strategy is on the agenda
♦ Master Data Management or Customer Data Integration introduction
♦ There is an acute need to upgrade from an obsolete technology as Mainframe
To be successful, the EA has to offer first relief for the trigger problem.
EA Roadblocks
Enterprise Architecture (EA) has promised a thorough transformation of the
business world by streamlining enterprise operations, aligning IT to business,
enabling strategic planning and documenting the company blueprint to improve
understanding, measurement and management of its operation.
Although EA has been around for some time now its take off has been rather
modest or inconsequential. The value it promised to offer has not quite
materialized. But what are the factors inhibiting adoption or its success?
What I found is that EA is seen as an IT architecture only. All technologies besides
IT seem to be ignored.
EA is overly simplified to four architectural layers with few other "views" to respond
to non-IT stakeholders' concerns.
The logical architecture, a good practice in systems design, is not really adopted
and Use Cases, coming from the world of software design, are not really used.
There is seldom a link to the enterprise Value Chain or business model.
EA tools are not used, true EA architects are hard to find (as opposed to Java/.NET
architects), and there are few successful EA cases to encourage adoption.
ERPs are already covering the Application side of EA and are very costly to change,
SOA is in fact a disguised EA development but incomplete. Presentations on large
paper format (A0), covering a wall, scare off stakeholders.
This being the case, no wonder that people are reluctant about an EA development
then: it is costly, takes time and resources, its business case is not proved and the
outcome may not live up to expectations.
The Enterprise Inertia, silo organization and the Business - IT divide
Your Enterprise may be in a state of cultural inertia. EA challenges the status quo
of the Enterprise by altering its course.
Most companies have a predominant tactical thinking. EA is about strategic
planning. This collides with the short term thinking. Strategy demands good long
term planning and execution that needs discipline. Tactical action demands ad
hoc allocation of resources which works against long term planning.
The Silo organization plagues many Enterprises where there is no big picture (EA).
Silo management focuses on own business segment ignoring the big picture
activities. Silos generate wasteful duplication in projects, platforms and resources.
The divide between Business and IT, yet another silo, exists simply because they
have different management, planning and goals. Besides, It is not easy to cross
the boundaries between domains of such different skills and interests.
The lack of reference Business Architectures
Historically, there is no business architecture designed by the academia, a global
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forum or business people. You have to design the business architecture without a
template, a reference map or even help from business.
The diversity and non-coordinated approaches to fix the Enterprise evils
In practice, there are a few categories of activities or approaches for mending the
evils of today’s Enterprise:
♦ Business Process Management (BPM), improving processes - belonging to the
business domain and specialized consultancies
♦ Six/Lean Sigma to eliminate defects in processes, mostly people related and
typically in the manufacturing environment
♦ Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI), about IT architecture and integration;
♦ EA, that usually and unjustly belongs to IT only
♦ Human Performance and organization evolution, about people performance
and organization design, factors frequently dealt with by HR and top
management or external Human Performance agencies
♦ SOA, about transforming the Enterprise based on Services
♦ Strategy alignment, executed top down affecting mostly the organization and
job descriptions
Not surprisingly, each activity
♦ is performed in isolation, at different times, and by different groups, without a
mutual exchange of knowledge
♦ engages a different set of skills
♦ develops artifacts with different conventions, tools and stores them in different
places
but they are all associated to a layer of the Enterprise Architecture.
Management consultancies typically operate on the business side in business
process improvement, organization design, business strategy and objectives
cascade to people and roles.
IT consultancies, more often than not, sit in the driver’s seat for the EA, SOA and
Enterprise Applications Integration developments. The same divide between
business and IT can be observed at external expert advice from consultancies.
Six/Lean Sigma is typically an internal business development to improve
processes requiring extensive resources and training.
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EA vague definition, is it a blueprint, process, program, strategic planning…?
In fact, EA is all that: a blueprint for As-Is and To-Be Enterprise, a plan and
roadmap for transformation and a process of delivery, reinforced by best practices.
The strategy and target Enterprise Architecture specification constitute the
"strategic planning" of the Enterprise. The EA design and Enterprise transformation
are part of an Enterprise wide program organized as an Enterprise project
portfolio..
But no matter what the definition is, you have to clarify what the expectations are
for your case, right from the beginning.
EA scope, no non-IT technology, no people or other stakeholders' views
A. EA is more than an Enterprise wide IT only architecture
This is a noteworthy scope issue: Enterprise Architecture is composed of the
Business, Technology and People Architecture, not only IT. The end result is
that it prevents the business people and firm's management involvement,
funding and support. The EA is not visible to the business side and what is
more relevant is that it does not cover business aspects. Such an EA fails to
raise interest or ultimately extend usage outside the IT.
The assumption may come from Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) or EAI, ESB
where the term "Enterprise" is used liberally! There is nothing wrong with an IT
architecture. The issue is that the expectations promised by the Enterprise
Architecture advertisement will not be fulfilled.
IT architecture is only a part of an EA architecture. To succeed, an EA
architecture needs to address business concerns, to be sanctioned, supported
and have visibility at the business and management board. EA needs the wider
scope to include and provide motivation to business teams and enable
adoption and usage.
You need to design the EA top-down starting from business processes and
strategy and not bottom-up from the supporting IT technology.
B. Not many IT Views
Often there are no email, printing, PBX, SOE, Helpdesk… architecture views; no
Knowledge or Content Management, Data Warehouse, Business
Intelligence…, typically approached in isolation.
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EA frequently covers only the key products architecture. It needs a wider scope
to include other architecture views to provide motivation to all IT teams.
Enterprise Architecture is more than two views of Applications &
Infrastructure.
C. Technology is more than IT!
Often, no other kind of technology such as mechanical, optical etc is
considered. What about manufacturing technologies?
50 years ago there was no IT. Banks and factories still existed though. It is
hardly an Enterprise wide Architecture, a development which does not
describe the manufacturing equipment when your products are cars or shoes.
The IT only view is restricting the sphere of interest to just a few types of IT
intensive enterprises and, inside a company, to a few stakeholders. It is again
a matter of scope, not only in design but in business users' involvement,
support and usage. As a result it's difficult to get traction from firm's
management, business or manufacturing people or, for that matter, from
other stakeholders outside IT.
For wider adoption, EA has to cover all Technology, not only IT. Enterprise
Architecture is more than IT Architecture and Technology is more than IT.
D. Lack of stakeholders' views
reduces the interest and usage of EA to just a few stakeholders, leaving out
other aspects or "views" of the Enterprise such as real estate, accounting,
parking or, in IT, email or printing, file server architectures although they
probably exist, are documented elsewhere in some form and are of real
interest to you and quite a few enterprise stakeholders. Due to this
simplification, EA architect positions are sometimes advertised directly for
Information, Infrastructure or Applications roles in the IT space, already
confining the activities to this narrow scope before the development has even
started.
E. Often people/organization are left outside the scope of EA
Typically business processes or parts of them are still performed by people
rather than applications. These processes, in fact, more accurately workflows,
are still relying on human interventions for data input, validation, phase
approval... In other words they are not automated. Processes lag because
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people taking decisions are away or technology fails at the hands of poorly
trained personnel. More often than not, the human intervention is not
described in business workflows for the simple reason that people are not part
of the framework.
If human performance is not accounted for, the overall workflow will perform
as its weakest link, the people. But EA looks like an unfinished business
without people manning processes and technology.
Organization (people) design is often the object of an entirely separate and
non-correlated initiative. In a company, the process and best practices
optimization effort, the organization re-design and alignment to strategy and
the Enterprise Architecture program activities are often performed by three
different groups, in parallel. That is, the process, people and the EA activities,
constrained to IT, are executed in isolation, without correlation. The
organization chart should be aligned to your Enterprise Architecture so that
people take ownership of business function's process and technology. Culture
and people communication also affect your Enterprise performance, but this is
quite a topic in itself.
After all, "the Company is the People" who govern, plan and operate the
Enterprise.
The EA program developed solely by IT
In terms of EA implementation, the EA program initiated by IT has little authority to
drive the business architecture, influence corporate strategy or recommend the
people architecture/organizational changes.
Usually the EA team has little control of the business process documentation
effort, for instance, even if it successfully initiates it.
Lack of an agreed EA framework
or the diversity of approach and limited scope of the existing frameworks inhibits
EA adoption. Some of the existing EA frameworks are, by and large, cognitive aids,
enabling discovery by asking key questions such as why, what and how. Some are
merely reference models describing outcomes and implementation guidelines to
serve as reference for other EA developments. Some are specialized on domains
as government, defense, manufacturing or telecoms. Some have been applied for
a while with less than convincing results, and some are obsolete or used no
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longer. Some other only touch aspects of the EA implementation program
management. Some approaches talk about BPM, Enterprise Applications
Integration or SOA only. Most leave out the people layer, and some are only
process architectures ignoring the technology and people resources. Most are
mapped on Zachman's for scope validation. Mapping matrixes are used,
sometimes, to link elements in layers but they hardly support the navigation or
consistency of artifacts.
How do we choose a framework? None of them appears to cover all aspects. Are
there any recommendations for the framework selection? Do we need to create
our own framework where so many others have not quite succeeded? All
legitimate questions.
Overly simplified EA framework
A. EA, overly simplified to the four layers architecture
EA frameworks typically consist of four architectural layers: business,
information, applications and technology. The EA development is often
considered finished, soon after an inventory of technology is compiled, the
application architecture is drawn, the process documentation is initiated by
business analysts and data architecture class diagrams are sketched.
An EA framework that covers business functions and flows architecture,
people and organization and many views on top of the four layers framework,
is necessary to deliver to the many stakeholders.
B. Frequently there are neither business reference or logical architectures
The lack of an industry reference architecture inhibits understanding of the
Enterprise operation and of the EA itself. A logical Single Page architecture
outlines key Flows operating over the Functions of the firm to deliver value to
stakeholders. eTOM/NGOSS provide such a reference process architecture
framework around which a Telecommunications company can be modeled .
For a technical system design, the logical architecture specification is one of
the first steps an architect has to perform to describe the system operation
and its components. The organization has to be mapped to the logical
architecture.
A Single Page EA (key Functions + key interconnections), added to the
business, information, application and technology layers, will dramatically
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improve comprehension. It will also make possible SOA with services built
around functions. A Single Page Applications Architecture, derived from SPEA,
serves the IT audience.
The logical architecture is one of Zachman's framework perspectives, the
designer's.
C. The EA design is not initiated by Stakeholders’ Use Cases
By default the only stakeholder considered is the customer, leaving out
owners, partners, employees and other views, thus limiting the EA scope yet
again. This leaves out B2B and employees views. A good practice would be to
listen to stakeholders and capture their interactions as part of the EA
architectural layers.
The Enterprise discovery should be initiated by Stakeholders' interaction Use
Cases.
Lack of Business Case at initiation
Frequently, the EA development is rather the result of the hype that animates IT
but annoys the business . A Business case would resolve once for all, the
argument about To Do or not To Do Enterprise Architecture. Further more the
business case establishes the indicators that have to be measured to prove that
EA delivered value.
The business case, drivers and benefits need be produced for each EA iteration.
EA deliverables not fit for purpose
Deliverables are not fit for implementation. Take the typical “tome” delivery, a
stack of paper reflecting in fact the politics of “passing the buck” to the next team
and phase.
EA governance and implementation failures
The EA, initiated solely by IT, has little chance to enroll business stakeholders or
attract management support.
At implementation time, an EA development that trails for too long, not solving the
immediate business pains and displaying a lack of transparency revives the
tactical project threat to resources and discussions about the utility of the EA.
There is little tolerance for long programs with uncertain results.
At exploitation time, the governance makes sure EA is not ignored, forgotten or
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considered a dead weight because you have not implemented architecture
controls and check points in the relevant business processes.
The governance team has to be properly chosen to reflect all interests and has to
have enough authority to make it happen.
Enterprise Architect not invested with authority
The lack of authority, budget of the Enterprise Architect and in general of the
Enterprise Architecture program proves that management and business people
still see EA as an IT clean up exercise, at best. Until this perception is changed EA
remains a futile exercise usually terminated after a few months when the
applications diagram and inventory are produced.
One of the common mistakes is to invest no authority in the Enterprise Architect.
Even minor objectives cannot be achieved without the proper approvals,
contributions and budget.
Politics slowing EA development
There are execution mistakes: ignoring important stakeholders, not
communicating properly or enough, in simple clear definitions and messages, not
consulting relevant people, not referencing and recognizing contributions, to name
a few.
Not consulting the relevant groups, breeds the “not invented here” syndrome, i.e.
“you have not consulted us, where did this come from"?
The Enterprise knowledge is locked in people's minds. The ability to extract
information requires negotiation skills in the absence of authority. To release this
collective wisdom you need negotiation skills, “selling not telling”. Otherwise, the
information you may get for the EA may be of little value.
Independent SOA programs competing for resources
SOA is a partial EA development in disguise. While not an inhibitor as such, SOA
harbors under its umbrella developments which should be covered by EA. SOA
does cover architecture but not technology alignment to strategy or organization
design for example. SOA is not IT specific; it tends to fail as much as EA because it
is initiated by IT, without business stakeholders' and the board of directors'
support.
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SOA should be a business development first, part of a larger EA development. It is
taking off as the Enterprise integration paradigm of preference as it provides agility
and utilization of best of breed solutions from various vendors
ERP development competing with EA
but not offering an Enterprise blueprint, comprehension alignment to strategy...
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) covers many Enterprise functions (payroll,
procurement, accounting, finance, inventory, order fulfillment etc.). It provides, in
a rather monolithic approach, the business process and application layer of an EA
for support functions. Historically, they were introduced to integrate the Enterprise
applications in software suites delivered by one single vendor. Nowadays, ERPs
are probably too integrated, too vendor dependent to open the Enterprise to Best
of Breed (BoB) applications and offer agility through easy integration. It's not in the
ERP suppliers' interest to open up their products to SOA which promotes best of
breed services and as such open the gate to other vendors.
ERPs do not promote the understanding of the Enterprise an EA does, through its
blueprint and there are main culprits in inhibiting the alignment of IT to business
requirements for lack of agility and laborious integration to other applications.
ERPs are notoriously hard to change as they are inflexible, expensive and hard to
learn!
ERP modeling is the solution for documenting the ERP processes and as such, re-
use the existing suites in the EA development.
Not using EA tools
There are many repositories, inconsistent diagram input/outputs, various
notations and a proliferation of PowerPoint and Visio drawings with the
consequence of creating the issues which, in the first place, EA had to eliminate.
As a consequence the EA artifacts are hard to reuse or evolve in harmony. A
change has to be propagated to many diagrams in many stores. Each stakeholder
would produce in isolation artifacts which represent own concerns. They are
usually poorly linked, if at all, to diagrams of the Enterprise from other
stakeholders. The consequence is the lack of navigation..
A tool or tool-set would enable a repository, a common vocabulary, consistency in
representation and data integrity.
Often the sheer size of the diagrams discourages EA consultation, take for
instance, A0 paper formats. Not everyone has equipment to print them (in fact very
few), space to display them or is patient enough to discover in the maze solely the
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aspect of concern. The diagrams are too big, they look and are too complex for
everybody. In the end they are forgotten and forgiven.
The vast knowledge required and paucity of Enterprise Architects
Only a few EA architects are able to deliver. To develop an EA the knowledge
stretches across the business and technology domains in fields such as Value
Chains, Business Models, Strategy, Operations, Business Processes and BPM,
Technology, EA frameworks, architecture design, IT, ITIL, IT Applications and
Infrastructure, ERPs, CRMs, SOA, outsourcing, BPO, SaaS, Web Services, modeling
and tools, performance and change management (Human Performance)
organization design, and maturity models. These are some of the challenges
Enterprise architects face. In the corporate transformation phase many other
resources have to be involved. The EA governance and the quality of the
Enterprise Architects are key to the process and a major risk as a result.
Roadblocks recap and recommendations
To succeed, an EA architecture needs to address business concerns, to be
sanctioned, supported and have visibility at the business and management board.
EA needs the wider scope to include and provide motivation to business to defeat
the Enterprise inertia, cross the silos, the business-IT divide and commit
resources.
EA needs to be clearly defined and scoped to consider all stakeholders views
such as owners, partners, employees, community, not only customer's products.
Avoid returning discussions by providing a business case in financial terms.
Employ an EA team having a vast knowledge of the Enterprise. Consider EA
governance from start.
The Enterprise discovery should be initiated from stakeholders' interaction, Value
Chain and business model.
EA should include people and organization, in alignment to business processes
and technology and aim to cover the whole Enterprise operation rather than solely
IT architecture and all technologies rather than only IT.
It should cover many views besides the over simplified four layers, a logical
architecture, content & knowledge management, MDM, DW/BI, Governance,
decision making, Financial/Accounting, HR, fleet views…
The EA effort should be jointly governed by business and IT, since IT alone has little
authority to get traction from firm's management and business, drive the business
architecture, influence corporate strategy, facilitate decision making, planning and
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investment or recommend organizational changes.
Be unambiguous with regard to other Enterprise related technologies : BPM is part
of the business architecture, SOA is an architecture style and integration
technology for the target EA, ITIL is only the EA of the IT department, and ERPs
provide the applications and process layer of the EA support functions.
Employ EA tools that support consistency in definitions, inputs/outputs and look
and feel of all EA artifacts by employing a single vocabulary, metadata, repository
and set of architectural patterns, principles and conventions; they also enable
process simulation for business process improvement, dependency reports,
navigation, "zoom in/out", configuration, change management, collaboration,
access control and web presentation.
Enterprise Culture and EA
The Enterprise Architecture development has to be supported by the organization
and its culture. People are the company; they can make or break the EA. To
succeed one has to adapt the organization and subtly sniff and influence the
culture. SOA for instance, requires a new governance based on services. People
are accountable for the service they deliver, its roadmap, business, IT technology,
usage, defects, service continuity and for acquiring internal or even external
customers. Here are a few definitions for culture, from the web:
- "The set of learned beliefs, attitudes, values and behavior that are characteristic
of a particular social group or organization."
- "A set of shared norms and values which establish a sense of identity for those
who share them".
- "The sum total of the ways of life of a people; includes norms, learned behavior
patterns, attitudes, and artifacts; also involves traditions, habits or customs; how
people behave, feel and interact; the means by which they order and interpret the
world; ways of perceiving, relating ..."
And an own attempt at definition: company culture is a set of principles and values
that drive the behavior of a group and shape the way people respond to events
and get things done beyond established procedures. It consists of, and is
transmitted by rites (ceremonials), traditions (established ways of doing things),
legends (heroes and deeds people treasure) and education (training). It is
reflected in the way people solve issues, communicate, celebrate, approach
management (direct call/email, kick the door open…).
It is the unwritten code of behavior in a firm; it determines the attitude towards
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colleagues and work; it lives in people's minds and hearts; it is determined by the
successes and history of the company; it makes people proud, ready to identify
with the company and set its interests first. Culture becomes tradition.
The culture is the collective soul of the organization. It is influenced by: type of
governance, internal regulation, empowerment (liberty to act in some established
limits) and recognition policies, height of the organization tree (bureaucracy),
clarity of accountabilities and roles, freedom of communication, right of opinion…
Recognition makes employees happy which in turn make the company successful.
Company values are the principles or rules of behavior which determine culture;
they have to be meaningful, realistic, even measurable - unlike the values of most
companies, today -. It is important what happens if people ignore or even act
against values.
An Ethics code, based on values, represents the code of law preserving the
culture; it has to be communicated and policed, because otherwise it becomes a
"lip service" of, and for the powerful and the manipulator: insider trading,
networking, nepotism begin to manifest until, like societies, the company begins to
disintegrate.
God had created people in his own image, it is said. In a similar manner, a top
Executive determines the culture in the organization through personal example,
choice of direct reports - in his own image - of governance, business strategy and
ethics code. Empty words won't do! People, intuitively, have an 6th sense, the
ability to feel the truth from gestures, expression, phrasing and intonation.
A few known organization cultures:
- "Meritocracy" is the culture of reward and recognition associated with rapid
progress and pride in the organization.
- The "can do" culture characterized by achievement, as opposed to the "can talk"
culture.
- "Innovative" culture where invention is rewarded and praised
- "Agile" where formalism is replaced by people’s empowerment to immediately
act
- "Blame culture" where if anything goes wrong a scapegoat is found; the
consequence is that people rarely assume accountability
- "silo " where the departments don't care about the greater, collective good.
Some of these types can co-exist.
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The best culture is meritocracy that worked so well for societies. Everyone
achieves the position deserved in an organization with optimum results for the
individual and the company. It is the ideal win-win balance of benefits between the
company and employees. There is mutual respect (we respect achievers), and
everyone knows their own place (promoting the right individuals rather than self
promotion). Collaboration is the norm and people care for each other.
A good culture polarizes individual behaviors towards the company goals first
(rather than personal gains) from which all other individual rewards come,
proportionally. The secret of good culture, in short:
♦ a history of success, conserved and taught
♦ a code of ethics and values that are enforced
♦ freedom of speech
♦ transparency of decision making
♦ clear governance, thin organization
♦ fair participation and repartition of benefits (unlike the CEO/employee salary
ratio today >> 50:1!)
♦ empowerment, recognition and fair promotions
The wrong culture can ignore or make fruitless the EA efforts and for what it
matters, can wreck the company. In a difficult culture the personal interest comes
first against the Enterprise. The company sinks under the weight of the many
individual benefits working against each other and the common company goals.
Not only a firm, but a society falls apart under the weight of an incompetent or
corrupt administration fighting solely for power and personal benefits. The disease
spreads quickly downwards, by example rather than discourse.
If formal mechanisms are not set in place, culture tends to deteriorate with people
tending to take advantage of the honest, the trustful, the weak or the unaware.
Action is necessary to enforce ethics, transparency, empowerment and recognition
in support of a positive culture.
How can you change culture? That is, change it in a positive sense since it may
often happen otherwise. The cultural change starts at the top. It requires honesty
(as opposed to political spin), justification, communication, openness (information
available to anyone concerned) that is, all in all, transparency (information
available to anyone) enforced by a Freedom of Information like act. Accountability
(the ability to associate people’s performance to task accomplishment) and
recognition of merit are essential to enforce a successful culture.
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Chapter 21: EA Roadblocks, Culture and Politics
Practices like "networking" are clearly working against meritocracy since the best
available are not selected. Positions are not advertised, only a few are in the know,
and only a few can occupy the position in an exchange of favors. These people
team to maintain power and the phenomenon grows with a viral behavior until the
company suffers the worst, the end. This works against the freedom of information
principle and employs "spin" to project the appearance of " politically correctness".
The spin culture uses media to distort messages, the truth and hide the sources of
information.
Management at all levels has to pay attention to atmosphere and open
communication channels so truth can be told with immunity. Freedom of speech is
key to evaluation of culture. Personal performance evaluations have to be
performed by customers and colleagues rather than managers alone who can spin
the outcome from fear for their positions.
In times of hardship, un autocratic culture with a cult for a leader, may succeed
though, like in time of war. So cultural changes may be beneficial depending on
existing conditions and the place of the Enterprise in its lifecycle.
Often governance issues generate an unhealthy culture. For instance, silos or the
division between business and IT. It exists because there are two different
organizations with different objectives, plans and roadmaps. So they do not concur
to deliver together. They have different missions and products, it is that simple.
The EA governance and organization have to be set up so that the concerned
business and IT groups have same leadership and goals.
EA Politics
The culture can be a fertile ground for politics. Nothing is achieved without playing
the game.
Rumors abound about IT fearing the business reaction to the EA/SOA program,
unfortunately, too often initiated without a business case. IT, avoiding
confrontation is probably substituting the EA and SOA terms with a discourse on
benefits. Politicians, as well, in avoiding sensitive topics, come back with
convoluted answers to respond to simple, closed questions.
Too many prophets have jumped in the EA/SOA bandwagon adding to the IT
pressure on business. “Do EA/SOA or …!” Over-hype has already placed EA and
SOA at the top of the hype curve where the credibility is not sustained yet by
realizations. The IT history lessons would not concur to support the EA far-reaching
claims; the result is that the business doubts it!
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Although business is reacting to the technology push, they do not contest the
benefits but they are painfully aware of the potential cost of disruption, which
might break rather than make the company. Business requires solid justification
and careful planning before moving from the “status quo” to such a revolutionary
course, as SOA.
Without critical business input, the resulting IT only Enterprise Architecture would
mainly provide the Applications, Infrastructure and may be the Data architecture,
which is frequently the case, but not sufficient for releasing the goods of the EA:
process improvement, agility, strategic planning etc. The business people will have
little reason to consult it, the word spreads, and, progressively, the EA loses its
momentum. The loop is closed now. The business was right to doubt it, after all.
Business, as well, got tired of the exotic IT acronyms like WS, SOAP, REST, UDDI,
WSDL, mashups, AJAX, ESB, BPM, BPEL, XML, UML, TOGAF… some badged 2.0
now (and technology is changing at an exponential rate these days - Ray Kurzweil’s
law-, i.e. the situation is getting worse). Furthermore, IT is not talking about Value
Chain, business models, process improvement, Six Sigma, regulation, customer
satisfaction, Balanced Scorecard, SWOT, KPIs, NPV, payback, the terms the
business can understand.
On the other hand, is the business providing the Business Architecture (process
architecture, business information and vocabulary) necessary for IT to
comprehend and align the technology? No.
The net result of all this is the great Business and IT divide and an increasingly
highly charged atmosphere progressing towards a blame culture.
And the solution is the EA, which ought to mend all the evils of the Enterprise, to
cure the silo culture and patch the divide between Business and IT. In a nutshell,
EA becomes the ground of the already existing political battle but, at the same
time, the tool to mediate the political divide.
While the EA encompasses alignment of business, strategy, technology and
people, the IT takes the driving role without business and top management
support. How is this supposed to happen? After all, more than half of the EA is not
IT, i.e. business processes (how), strategy (why), information (what), organization
(who)… In fact, without a strong business leadership and participation, EA would
lack political support and fail to deliver on its promise since IT alone cannot specify
SOA services, improve processes, determine usefulness of information.
In this phase, the best you can do is be convincing i.e. gain support for the EA
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Chapter 21: EA Roadblocks, Culture and Politics
business case which you should express in financial terms. Spend energy to rally
critical stakeholders’ support in business and top management. Involve them by
planning adequate EA artifacts, in response to specific requests, explaining what is
in it for them.
Thinking in many Enterprises is tactical, at best. Firefighting would better express
the facts. The EA is strategic and accepted because of its strategy promise but it
may become a lip service only, with its execution ever postponed in order to cope
with tactical crisis. In truth, EA will compete for resources with many other
activities which have not been included in the EA scope, in the first place.
Supposing the EA development moves slowly; it will be generating lots of tactical-
strategic conflicts: people need solutions yesterday, the market cannot wait and
the EA will provide the feature who knows when! Tactical projects are approved
then and co-exist and compete for resources with the EA program.
There is no easy solution to this except delivery on time and fit for purpose. To
reassure everybody have a clear, simple plan in place that you are confident you
can deliver to. You probably have one single try. Deliver often, iteratively,
emphasize value returned. Prioritize business needs, deal with the EA trigger
causes first, and deliver what the stakeholders requested. This is a program, so
business process discovery projects will probably have to be executed in parallel to
Applications, Infrastructure, Data architectures and other streams. Then add views
as DW/BI, Content Management, procurement processes, network architecture
etc. With a delivery plan in front, people can wait, if they trust you. Otherwise,
tactical projects win.
There are execution mistakes: ignoring important stakeholders, not
communicating properly or enough, not consulting relevant people, not referencing
and recognizing contributions, to name a few, provoking the syndrome of "not
invented here” i.e. you have not consulted us, where did this come from"?
Enterprise knowledge is locked in people’s minds. To release this collective
wisdom you need negotiation skills, “selling not telling”. Otherwise the information
you may get for the EA may be of little value.
Define an EA vocabulary and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to avoid confusion
and display the progress dashboard on the Web for transparency.
From your side, lack of EA development experience and poor definition of scope,
deliveries, not fit for purpose, i.e. (typically large documents with poor focus) can
increasingly deteriorate credibility as the development process is stalled by
unusable outputs and by disputes about how the artifacts are to be used.
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Agile processes with frequent deliveries and wide consultations will help make the
process transparent and accountable. EA roles and responsibilities have to be well
designed to avoid overlaps generating confusion and conflicts and, in the end,
politics. Work as a team is crucial as the domain and span of activities is much too
large.
Bottlenecks have to be quickly discovered and eliminated. Observe EA inhibitors
since they could stop your EA development early, and find ways to conquer them
from the beginning.
Accountability and empowerment, recognition and award as company values will
pave the way to progressive success in eliminating a culture of politics.
After the first few deliveries, it is important to police all other development work,
install EA compliance controls (checkpoints) in all relevant business processes,
provide training and easy access. Otherwise your EA may be ignored, forgotten.
EA Risks and Change Management
EA is perceived as a threat as, in reducing duplication in process, platforms and
projects, it creates people redundancies, it brings change.
Change Management (CM) becomes essential in the Enterprise transformation
execution process since people can and will resist, will do partisan fighting since,
after all, their job is at stake for no grander purpose. CM has to work along to
provide a path forward for all affected by the migration process to expose the
greater good, to motivate. Early preparation is essential to avoid problems.
The EA team must have a vast knowledge spanning business, IT and people issues
and be socially and politically astute. Selection of the proper EA team constitutes
the major risk in this development. This team will not only have to develop the EA
properly, but will have to explain it in simple terms everybody can understand, and
then gracefully deploy EA compliance controls in all major business processes
defeating the inherent resistance.
The Enterprise Architect has to be politically literate to justify EA/SOA, argue the
business case, rally support from stakeholders, keep management informed and
optimistic, do the work and survive the process!
Review checklist
1. List EA triggers.
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Chapter 21: EA Roadblocks, Culture and Politics
2. Enumerate and explain EA roadblocks and give recommendations.
3. Talk about culture and politics.
4. How do you select an Enterprise Architect?
5. What do you need to sell the EA?
6. What are the political factors which have to be considered in EA development?
7. Culture, what are the key elements?
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Chapter 22
13. EA State, future Outlook and the Virtual Enterprise
The Future Outlook for EA
This looks like a legitimate question. Is Enterprise Architecture going anywhere? It
is, albeit slowly in the absence of an agreed practical framework and clear proof of
its business case. The reason is straightforward: EA is a necessary "evil". Any
system needs a blueprint enabling proper operation, maintenance, planning...
To fulfill the expectations, EA needs to satisfy its many stakeholders in top
management, business, technology/IT and organization. Here are a few
directions, I can see the Enterprise Architecture progressing, in no particular order:
A. EA will finally be recognized as a business discipline, having incorporated
Value Chains, Business Models, Strategic Planning...
B. The EA evolves to increasingly cover business architecture rather than IT alone;
the Enterprise Architecture will be the result of the fusion of IT, Business and
Organization/People architectures; what is the value of an applications
architecture, without the process it implements or the people operating it?
C. The governance for EA will be more & more business and top management
heavy; this is because it would be used in mapping the strategy to
components, to derive the enterprise transformation portfolio, make
investments and take strategic and tactical decisions.
D. The EA development will be increasingly triggered by Mergers & Acquisitions
and outsourcing activities; IT BPO, SaaS(ASP) are riding a strong current right
now.
E. The Enterprise Architect would be more and more called in the business
decision making process; because the EA architect deals with the business
logic, technology operation and strategy, is able to understand both worlds and
use both business and IT vocabularies.
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F. A combined EA framework emerges to take advantage of the strengths of
various frameworks, such as Zachman, TOGAF, FEA and others.
G. SOA is recognized as part of the EA program as the target EA style of
architecture and technology, rather than executed in isolation as it often
happens
H. EA would be increasingly required by shareholders/owners/investors to
provide the blueprint of the business operation to describe assets, provide
proof of regulatory compliance, map costs and profits on various operations
and align strategy. The US government mandates EA to the public sector. EA
would become a regulatory feature for public listed companies.
Review checklist
1. Describe the current situation in the EA field.
2. What is usually not in scope of EA and how does it affect adoption?
3. Why is the Enterprise more and more virtualized?
4. Explain the EA layers virtualization.
5. What is the role of SOA in virtualization.
6. Describe the link between virtualization and outsourcing.
7. What are the suggested trends for EA evolution?
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129
References
I. described by M. E. Porter in his book, “Competitive Advantage”
II. http://www.value-chain.org/en/cms/?1960
III. http://www.supply-chain.org/cs/root/home
IV. Kurzweil’s Law – Ray Kurzweil: KurzweilAI.net March 7, 2001
V. Concepts of Framework for Enterprise Architecture – John Zachman, 1996
VI. ANSI/IEEE Std 1471-2000
VII. GAO6-831, August 2006, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06831.pdf
VIII. SearchCIO.com - CIO Definitions, June 8, 2005. October 13, 2006
IX. TOGAF FAQ 8.1
X. Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David C. Robertson, Enterprise Architecture As
Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, 2006
XI. Enterprise Architecture-Achieving Business Value with IT - MS Solutions ,
1999
XII. You Can’t Cost-Justify Architecture - John Zachman, 2003
XIII. described by M. E. Porter in his book, “Competitive Advantage”
XIV. 1993, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton published the Balanced
Scorecard. In 1996
XV. "Concepts of Framework for Enterprise Architecture" 1993- Zachman
International
XVI. TOGAF v 8.1.1 Enterprise Edition, http://www.opengroup.org/togaf. a
summary
XVII. https://www.tmforum.org/browse.aspx
XVIII. more information available at http://www.enterprise-architecture.info/
XIX. http://www.pera.net/
XX. Zachman on architecture frameworks, 1996
XXI. From www.ashlandschool.org
XXII. http://www.doi.gov/ocio/architecture/documents/core/rpt-FEA_TRM.html
XXIII. http://www.opengroup.org/sib.htm
XXIV. Ostenwalder , Y. Pigneur, and C.L. Tucci
http://www.businessmodeldesign.com/
publications/Preprint%20Clarifying%20Business%20Models%20Origins,%20
Present,%20and%20Future%20of%20the%20Concept.pdf
XXV. Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David C. Robertson, "Enterprise Architecture As
Strategy" book, Harvard Business School Press, 2006. Posted October 3,
131
Acronyms
TERM DESCRIPTION
Authentication Authorization and Accounting – a framework
AAA
for controlling access to computer resources
ABC Activity Based Costing
Application Programming Interface - A language and message
API
format used by an application program to communicate with
the operating system or other control programs
B2B Business to Business - E-commerce models that help
companies work together via the Internet
Business to Consumer - E-Commerce models for selling to
B2C
consumers over the Internet
A framework with recommendations by bank supervisors and
Basel II central bankers from the 13 countries making up the Basel
Committee on Banking Supervision to revise the international
standards for measuring the adequacy of a bank's capital
BC/DR Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
BFM Business Functions Map/Model
BI Business Intelligence
BRM Business Reference Map
BOA Business Oriented Architecture
BoB Best of Breed
Business Process Execution Language - standard XML based
BPEL
language
BPEL4People BPEL for Human Interactions
133
TERM DESCRIPTION
BPM Business Process Map/Model
Business Process Management - Monitoring and altering
BPM business processes that span multiple applications and
systems within and across the Enterprise
Business Process Modeling Language - a platform
BPML independent XML based language for modeling business
processes
BPO Business Process Outsourcing
Business Reference Map; the generic Enterprise Business
BRM
Functions Map
CAPEX Capital Expenditure - Money spent to acquire or upgrade
physical assets such as buildings and machinery
CDI Customer Data Integration
Chief Executive Officer - The executive responsible for a
CEO
company's operations
Chief Information Officer – The executive responsible for
CIO management information systems or data processing in a
company
Clinger-Cohen The Clinger-Cohen Act (or Information Technology
Act Management Reform Act legislation) was created to improve
the way the US Federal Government acquires and manages
information technology
CMDB Configuration Management Database
Capability Maturity Model: organizational model describing 5
CMM levels in which an organization manages its processes (usually
used in IT)
Customer Relationship Management - An integrated software
CRM system used to plan, schedule and control the pre-sales and
post-sales activities in a company
134
Acronyms
TERM DESCRIPTION
CRUD Create, Read, Update, Delete
Critical Success Factors - Key areas of activity in a company in
CSFs which favorable results must be achieved to successfully
meet objectives
Chief Technology Officer - The executive responsible for a
CTO
company's technical part
DoDAF Department of Defense Architecture Framework (US)
DPMO Defects Per Million Opportunities (Six Sigma)
DW Data Warehouse
E2AF Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework from IFEAD
EA Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Application Integration - connecting multiple
EAI applications within the Enterprise for the purpose of
interchanging data and coordinating business processes
EAP Enterprise Architecture Planning, Spewak
Enterprise Portfolio Management - how the organization is
EPM managing investment portfolios and makes investment
decisions
Enterprise Resource Planning - a multi-module software
ERP application used by companies to manage inventory,
resources, and business processes across departments
Enterprise Services Bus - open standards-based distributed
ESB messaging middleware that provides secure interoperability
between Enterprise applications via Web Services interfaces
enhanced Telecommunication Operations Map - a business
process model or framework that describes all the Enterprise
eTOM/NGOSS processes for a service provider in the Telecommunication
Industry
Next Generation Operations Systems Support
135
TERM DESCRIPTION
Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office,
FEA PMO
Reference Model
US Federal Enterprise Architecture - an EA framework used by
FEAF
US government
FFLV Function-Flow-Layer-View - author’s proposed EA framework
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis – a formal industry analysis used
Five Forces
in marketing strategies
Governance Operations Development Support – author’s Main
GODS
Functions classification in an Enterprise
GUI Graphical User Interface
HR Human Resources
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - a communications protocol that
HTTP
enables Web browsing
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Internal Rate of Return - A present-value based measure used
IRR for determining the compounded annual rate of return on
investments held for a time period of one year or more
ISO International Organization for Standardization
IT Information Technology
IT Infrastructure Library - Developed for the UK Government, is
ITIL
a set of best practices in IT services
ITSM IT service management, based on ITIL
Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition - developed by SUN
J2EE Microsystems is a platform for the development and operation
of web-based applications
Java Database Connectivity - An IT standard for database-
JDBC
independent connectivity between a computer platform or
136
Acronyms
TERM DESCRIPTION
device operating in the JavaTM environment and a wide range
of databases
Key Performance Indicators - Indicators used by an
KPIs organization to define and measure its progress toward the
goals and objectives
LoB Line of Business, Business Area
MDM Master Data Management
MOF Microsoft Operations Framework
Net Present Value - The future stream of benefits and costs
NPV
converted into equivalent values today
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
OASIS Standards – an organization that drives the development and
adoption of e-business standards.
ODBC Object Data Base Connectivity
Operating Expenses - Expenses incurred in conducting normal
OPEX business operations like wages, salaries, administrative,
research and development costs
Open System Interconnect - a reference model for
OSI
communications and computer network protocol design
Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental,
PESTEL Legal – a strategic analysis framework used by a company to
identify the key influences of its environment and industry
Payback Period - The amount of time taken to break even on
Payback
an investment
PMO Program Management Office
Return on Enterprise Architecture – author’s proposed
RoEA
financial indicator to measure Enterprise Architecture benefits
Return on Investments - a financial ratio used as a measure
ROI
of company’s performance
SaaS Software as a Service, outsourced, off premises application a
137
TERM DESCRIPTION
successor of the Application Service Provider, ASP
Supply Chain Management - An integrated software system
SCM used to plan, schedule and control the supply chain of an
Enterprise
SEI Software Engineering Institute
Service Level Agreements – agreement between an
SLAs
Application Service Provider and an end-user
SMB Small to Medium Business
Service Oriented Architecture - Provides a blueprint for
SOA
services-based, Enterprise business solutions
Simple Object Access Protocol - a XML based protocol for
SOAP exchanging information in a distributed environment
SOEA Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture
Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance - U.S. Public Company Accounting
SOX
Reform and Investor Protection Act
SPEA Single Page Enterprise Architecture
SQL Structured Query Language
SSL Secure Socket Layer
Single Sign-On – An authentication process that permits a
SSO user to identify himself once in order to get access to multiple
applications
SWOT Analysis - a strategic planning tool used to evaluate the
SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of a
company
138
Acronyms
TERM DESCRIPTION
TCO Total Cost of Ownership
Universal Description Discovery and Integration - a directory
UDDI
model for Web Services
Unified Modeling Language - an object-oriented analysis and
UML
design language
VPN Virtual Private Network
eXtended Mark-up Language - language used to design a
XML markup language for easy interchange of documents on the
World Wide Web
WOA Web Oriented Architecture
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
Web Services - self-contained, modularized functions using
WS open standards that can be accessed across a network
independent of technical architecture.
Web Services Description Language - an XML formatted
WSDL
language used for describing Web services
WS-Human Web Services process specifications for Human Tasks
Task interaction
139
The book is intended to be a document summarising w more
The book is intended to be a document summarising why and how to build an Enterprise Architecture. It attempts to answer a few of the common questions related to Enterprise Architecture (EA) and SOA. What are the issues? What is EA? Why should an organization consider EA? How to build the Enterprise Architecture and document it. What are the roadblocks, politics, governance, process and design method? How to measure the value deliverd by EA and its maturity and and how to select an Enterprise Architect?
An innovative EA Framework, the associated metamodel and generic Enterprise Reference Maps (templates) for the business process, applications and infrastructure layers are proposed. The framework looks like a content page showing the chapters of a book or, in this case, the components of the Enterprise Architecture without actually describing them but showing how they fit into the whole.
The book then identifies and summarises Best Practices in the Enterprise Architecture and SOA development, EA patterns, IT Architecture templates, the integration to the mundane solution architecture, delivery checklists…
Available here:
http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000152541
http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Architecture-Development-Framework-Practices/dp/1412086655 less
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