This document presents a method for using benchmarking in the enterprise architecture planning process. It discusses benchmarking best practices from other organizations to help develop the target architecture and transition plan. The method uses the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework reference models to identify benchmarkable domains across the business, data, application and technology layers. A multi-step benchmarking model is then described that involves normalizing data, calculating distances between options, and restricting options to identify best practices for the target architecture. The goal is to reduce risks and speed up the enterprise architecture planning process by leveraging benchmarks from successful organizations.

1. Presenting A Method for Benchmarking Application
in the Enterprise Architecture Planning Process Based
on Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework
Abbas. Akkasi Mir ali. seyyedi
Computer Engineering Department Computer Engineering Department
Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch Islamic Azad University, Tehran-South Branch
Tehran, Iran Tehran, Iran
Akkasiab84@yahoo.com maseyyedi2002@yahoo.com
Fereydon. Shams
Computer Engineering Department
Shahid Beheshti University
Tehran, Iran
f_shams@sbu.ac.ir
Abstract— One of the main challenges of the enterprise
architecture planning process is its time consuming and to some I. INTRODUCTION
extend having unrealistic results from this process under heading Currently, enterprise architecture is considered as one of
target architecture products. Getting best practices in this area the important key in enterprise mission [2]. In order to reduce
can be to a large extent effective in speed up and quality costs and various risks, to enhance effectiveness, profitability
enhanced of the results of enterprise architecture planning. and efficiency, the chief officers are required to document a
Utilization of best practices in most methodologies and the
comprehensive information technology programs focused on
enterprise architecture planning process guidelines namely EAP
Methodology presented by Steven Spewak [14] also BSP
enterprise architecture. Currently the majority of enterprises
Methodology produced by IBM [15], have been recommended. particularly large ones are in difficulty in getting enterprise
However there have been no presentation of any process or a architecture process especially enterprise architecture planning
specific method which would lead to benchmarking at enterprise process done. Enterprise architecture planning process is a very
architectural planning level. In this paper, a systematic and slow and tedious procedure and hence leads to
documented approach to employ benchmarking in the enterprise misrepresentation of enterprise architecture process and even to
architecture planning process is being presented which can be its failure [7]. Utilizing benchmarking from the best practice in
used to assess the equally successful enterprises as best practices the enterprise architecture planning process can to a large
in target architecture documentation or by building a transition extent speed up the process. From a different perspective the
plan , utilize the enterprise architecture planning process. No value of the benchmarking in enterprise architecture process
doubt in order to have a basic and specific framework and also become evident when we know that by using benchmarking we
because of its vast application in governmental and can get to know the structure of other enterprises as progressive
nongovernmental organizations, federal enterprise architect or successful organizations or to examine the current
reference models are utilized, though other frameworks and their benchmark able applications in the above mentioned
presented reference models can also be used. Results obtained organizations. Also the techniques and procedures in other
from proposed approach are indicative of reduced enterprise organizations based on benchmark able IT are being examined
architecture planning process time especially the target and finally the current projects in other organizations which are
architecture documentation, also risks reduction in this process
related with information technology which are benchmark able
and increased reliability in production.
are being studied[5]. Various methodologies which are being
Keywords- Terminology – benchmarking; Best Practice;
presented for benchmarking are all centered around process
and there is no methodology or approach for benchmarking has
Enterprise Architecture Planning Process; Architecture
ever presented at enterprise architecture level. In this paper
Reference Models; Federal Enterprise Architecture
effort has been made to present a documented method to use
Framework benchmarking in the enterprise architecture planning process
so that the current risks in target documented architecture and
in the transition plan will be reduced. In the 2nd section a short
review on the enterprise architecture planning process as one of

2. the enterprise architecture process phases is made. In the 3rd is of prime importance as it presents suitable standard for
section, the federal enterprise architecture framework and its future progress evaluation. On this basis it can be concluded
reference models are discussed and in the 4th section the that what changes have taken place in the state [2, 3]. At this
benchmarking process is introduced. The benchmarking stage of enterprise architecture planning process no need is felt
method in the enterprise architecture planning process, in the for benchmarking as these descriptions and modeling must be
5th section and in the 6th section, the outstanding challenges in based on the present and current facts of the enterprise.
this area is expressed. Finally the conclusion is presented in the
7th section. It must be said that in order to prove the validity of B. Develop target enterprise architecture
this work, the results of this study have been implemented on
several enterprise architecture projects as case studies which in The target architecture must provide a vision of the future
every one of them the outcome agrees with expectations.
operation and its technological support. At this stage of
enterprise architecture planning process making use of the
II. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PLANNING PROCESS experiences of successful organizations or put it differently,
Enterprise architecture planning process is part of benchmarking the successful experiences can help effectively
enterprise architecture process that is shown in Fig. 1. to reliability, agility and being close to reality of the
documentation of target architecture. In next sections, after
The enterprise architecture planning is a process used to having familiarized with the benchmarking process we have
define the essential architecture (business architecture, data presented a method which would be used to document the
architecture, application architecture and technology target state of architecture.
architecture) and planning for the implementation of the above
architecture and its objective is to bring about state where C. Implementing the Transition Plan (develop sequencing
information can be used more effectively to support the plan)
enterprise mission [2]. The enterprise architecture planning is a
process which in the end results in missions and architecture The changes that must be carried out in order to transfer the
definition of an organization [3]. As it can be seen in fig. 1 this present state to the target one cannot be happened at once. To
process consists of four elements of encouraging the transfer from the present state to the target one, having a
organization's top management, to create baseline architecture, transfer plan is the best. The transfer plan must include a step
document an architecture for the target state and the by step process to transfer from present state to the target one.
implementation of transition plans. Of course, in this paper The particulars of the transfer plan are that while it includes the
because encouraging the top management is considered to be present state, it also embraces the development plan. The above
part of management system, is not discussed here. mentioned plans are either currently being implemented or will
be implemented in the future [1, 2]. This plan is mainly
implemented on the basis of identified architectural
requirements of the target state [2]. In this part of enterprise
architecture planning process, it seems that it will be possible
to benchmark the successful experiences. Since in the
enterprise architecture process the organization is studied in
four layers of business, data, application and technology, or in
other word, the present state and the target one are
implemented in four layers and the transfer plan must be used
to transfer from the above four layers architecture in the
present state to the four layers architecture in the target state
[6]. In benchmarking, these four layers must be born in mind as
it will be referred to in the sections to come, for this purpose,
the reference model offered by architecture frameworks will be
utilized. Because the federal architecture framework is more
popular in governmental and nongovernmental organizations ,
in this paper, this framework is considered to be the reference
framework.
III. FEDERAL ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 1. Enterprise Architecture Process
FRAMEWORK(FEAF) AND REFERENCE MODELS
In order to have a well defined enterprise architecture it
must be somehow possible to bring the complexity of the
enterprise under the control and to determine what views or
models are required to do the enterprise architecture. In this
A. develop baseline enterprise architecture way it would be possible to bring the enterprise architecture
The first logical step towards the enterprise architecture under the control and manage large volume of information
planning is to describe the present state of the enterprise. This hidden in enterprise architecture. This is how John A.

3. Zachman, the creator of Zackman framework defines the Benchmarking, Process Benchmarking and strategic
architecture framework [13]: benchmarking [11].
“ the enterprise architecture framework is a logical structure From the point of view that who is being benchmarked,
used to categorize and organize the various descriptions of an benchmarking is divided to four kinds: Internal Benchmarking,
organization which are important for the management and the Competitive Benchmarking, Non Competitive Benchmarking
development of her systems” . Various types of architecture and Best Practice Benchmarking [9, 10, 11]. What has been
frameworks have been created depending on their application considered in this paper so far as benchmarking, was the
namely Zachman, FEAF, TOGAF, …which in this section we benchmarking of the best practice type, hence it is necessary to
generally introduce federal framework.The goal of FEAF is to fully understand the meaning of the best practice. There are
ease , develop common processes and common information many definitions of best practices; some of them are as follows
between federal agencies and other governmental agencies. [9]:
This framework is suitable for governmental application and
profit making and nonprofit making organizations. Federal • Something which is effective.
framework is depicted in fig. 2. As can be seen, various parts of • Something which works perfect.
this framework are [6, 16]: architecture drivers, strategic
direction, current architecture, target architecture, transitional • Something which repeatedly demonstrate
processes, architectural segments, architecture models and effectiveness.
standards. Best practices can be identified outside or inside the
organization.
V. THE BENCHMARKING METHOD IN ENTERPRISE
ARCHITECTURAL PLANNING PROCESS
What this paper has been focusing on is the utilization of
benchmarking using the best practices in the enterprise
architecture planning process. As has been described in
sections 2-2 and 3-2, the benchmarking may be used in two
sections of target architecture and transition plan from
enterprise architecture planning process. In this section the way
they were presented in two above sections are being studied.
A. Benchmarking in target architecture from enterprise
architecture planning process
As has been mentioned in the previous sections because the
Figure 2. Federal architecture framework target architecture is being developed in four layers (business,
data, application and technology), the benchmarking process
It can be said that reference models are a list of best must observe these four layers in development of the target
practices of other organizations and makes the organizations architecture. In order to achieve this aim, the reference models
consistent with their own architecture drivers. In fact the main which have been offered by ّ EAF, must be utilized which has
F
aim of reference models FEAF, is to standardize the been covered in section 3. The benchmarking model that has
organization's components, to make better use of mission goals been presented is depicted in fig. 3 which every stage will be
and to enhance the effectiveness [16]. Since the enterprise explained along.
architecture study the organization in layer style, for every
layer a reference model in considered. Reference models that Since benchmarking is one of the sustained improvement
are provided by federal framework are: Performance Reference approaches [8], it must be carried out gradually and
Model (PRM), Business Reference Model (BRM), Service continuously and the model may be repetitive however it
Reference Model (SRM), Data Reference Model (DRM) and results in evolution.
Technology Reference Model (TRM) which can be referred to 1) Identifying Benchmark able Domain
references [6, 7, 16] for further study. In this stage, those sections and domains of the four layer
enterprise architecture that have added values for
IV. BENCHMARKING benchmarking are selected. We can use the reference model
Benchmarking is a continuous evaluation process and the when we want to search for these domains. In order to choose
comparison between the home business processes and the the benchmark able domains we use taxonomy approach [5,
corresponding processes in the progressive organizations to 12].
obtain information which will help organizations to identify the
improvements and put them into action [8]. Benchmarking can
be divided into various kinds depending on what or who is to
be benchmarked. Based on what is to be benchmarked, the
benchmarking process is divided into three types; Functional

4. TABLE II. NORMALIZED DATA TABLE
STANDARD A B C
CASE
BA1 1.21 -0.45 0.17
BA2 0.72 2 1
BA3 -1.21 1.35 1.54
BA4 -0.75 -1.35 -0.51
1.21 1.35 1.54
DO j
( is the positive ideal value for each standard)
DO j
Figure 3. the Benchmarking Model of the Target Architecture 4) Determination of compound distance between options
basis on formula [2]
Since the federal framework reference models are
m
∑ (z − zbj )
hierarchical we are facing a multilevel priority with various 2
standards. In order to prioritize the leaves of hierarchy of every Dab = aj
reference model, we calculate the priority of every node and j ==1
(2)
then to calculate the priority of leaves, take the average of each
hierarchical node and its parents to calculate the priority of 5) Shortest distance determination (in the above table, the
leaves. As an example, in this section, we demonstrate how last column represents the shortest distance)
taxonomy approach can be used to calculate the first level
priority of the business reference model, i.e. business domains 6) Option restriction (option homogenous)
for three hypothetical standard A,B,C . In the following At this stage, the upper and lower boundaries of the
section, each of the eight stages approach is being applied: distance are obtained and the values outside this range are
1) Having unknown options with respect to the aim of the removed from data table and go through the process once
subject in question and determination of the various indexes for again. To determine the upper and lower boundaries, the
selecting the options (supposing we have four options ;BA1, following formula is also being used:
BA2, BA3, BA4 where we want to measure their priorities on (Upper boundary)
the basis of three criteria A,B,C). The value of each option with
respect to every criterion is represented by a figure ranging
from zero to five.
or+ = d r + 2δ d r (3)
2) Forming data matrix and calculate the mean and standard
deviation. (Lower boundary)
3) Resulted data normalization matrix based on formula [1]
or− = d r − 2δ d r (4)
X IJ − X I
Z IJ = ` (1)
δI Which in this example the upper boundary becomes 2.81
and the lower 0.29 . We do not need to remove any value as the
distances are within the required range.
TABLE I. DATA TABLE
STANDARD A B C TABLE III. DISTANCE BETWEEN OPTIONS
CASE BA1 BA2 BA3 BA4 (shortest
BA1 5 1 3 gap)
BA2 4 2 1 dr
BA3 0 3 5 BA1 0 1.56 2.44 2.23 1.56
BA2 1.56 0 3.31 2.4 1.56
BA4 1 0 2 BA3 2.44 3.31 0 3.72 2.44
BA4 2.23 2.4 3.72 0 2.4
2.5 1.5 2.75
1.55 1.81 2.36 2.08 1.55
dr
δJ 2.06 1.11 1.46
δd r 0.47 0.44 0.41 1.67 0.63

5. 3) The study of the Best Practice and Current Informal
Organizational State
The domains which have been selected in the first part are
being examined in organizations that are chosen as a best
practice. Also the informal organizational state must be
examined in the same domains.
4) Gap Analysis
After having studied the best practices and the informal
organizational state, the distance between them must be
analyzed. Various approaches of gap analysis mentioned in [4]
can be used to carry out the task.
5) Feasibility Study
After having studied the gap analysis, it is the time to
investigating whether it is possible to transfer the best practices
Figure 4. Benchmarking partner selection process of the progressive organization to enterprise architecture
planning process , related to informal organization or not? This
7) Determination of pattern or exemplar. (At this stage the stage is of prime importance because of the limitations and
pattern of every option is calculated according to formula [5]) constraints that similar organizations encounter, It is not always
possible to transfer other's experiences to another organization.
This stage must be considered from three view points of
m 2 technical, operational and economical.
Cio = ∑ (z
j =1
ij − DO J ) (5) 6) Planning to Apply
Providing that the results of feasibility study prove positive,
the transfer and customization of the good practices of the
successful organization to informal organization must be
8) Sort or categorize the spreading out of options .(at this planned [8, 9].
stage using the formula [6])
7) Acceptance and Reviews
At this stage, the formal acceptance of the top management
in order to make changes will be sought. The project team must
Cio not wait till the project is completed rather they have to assess
Fi = , CO = cio + 2δCIO (6) the progress of the project during the benchmarking period
CO [11]. Making use of analysis SWOT during the information
preparation for review is extremely useful.
Calculate the priority of each option which in this example
is as follows (has shown in table IV):
B. Benchmarking for Transition Plan Creation
This way the priority of each node is calculated and finally Benchmarking the transition plan of benchmarking process
in order of priority, the benchmark able domains will be kind is considered to be the best practices, because it examines
specified. and benchmark the ways and means of reaching the aim in
2) Identifying Best Practice Candidate and Benchmarking progressive organization. Certainly the work requires to
benchmark for the transfer plan is less than the work required
Partner for target architecture documentation, since in this case it is not
In this section , with regards to criteria and benchmarking required to examine the other reference models.
domains that we have chosen in the previous stage, a number
of progressive organization are chosen as best practices
candidate [9]. The process shown in figure 4 illustrates clearly VI. CHALLENGES
this stage of benchmarking. Despite the presented approach for benchmarking in
enterprise architecture planning process, there are challenges
TABLE IV. OPTIONS PERIORITY and problems which deserve considerations and study. Two
instances of these challenges are:
Cio
F i
priority
• Assessing the best practices and customizing their
BA1 2.26 0.59 1 experiences for transferring to informal
organization is not an easy task.
BA2 2.91 0.76 3
• In benchmarking the best practices, normally the
BA3 2.42 0.63 2
current state of the progressive organizations is
BA4 3.9 1.02 4
taken as a desired state for the informal
organization.

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