Enterprise architecture is Definition and principles of governance

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Many organizations experience constant difficulties and are in constant search of synchronization of the goals and objectives of the business and the development processes of their information systems. It is for this purpose that enterprise architecture is used. What is it?

Definition and interpretation

Enterprise Architecture is a process with specific practice for performing collective review, design, planning in order to effectively develop a strategy and its subsequent implementation. It applies principles and methods to guide an organization through the changes in business, information, processes, and technology needed to implement its strategies. Enterprise architecture is precisely that practice that uses different aspects of each organization to identify, motivate and achieve change.

Professionals are responsible for analyzing the structure and processes of a business, and they often need to draw conclusions from the information they collect in order to achieve the goals of the enterprise:efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility and durability.

Overview

In the literature and the community, according to the architecture of the company, there are various points of view regarding the meaning of this term. As of 2018, there is no official definition. There are only various organizations (public and private) that understand and use this term in practice. Consequently, the enterprise architecture literature offers many definitions. Some of them complement each other, while others explain the nuances.

Informative Concept Learning Organ

This organization believes that enterprise architecture is a pattern of a company, entrepreneurship and IT infrastructure, reflecting the requirements of integration and, of course, standardization of the company's operating model. This is the desired state of the process for inserting parts of business processes to deliver goods and services to customers.

Enterprise architecture is a body of knowledge that analyzes areas of common activity within or between organizations where information and other resources are shared to guide the future state, from an integrated perspective of strategy, business and technology.

IT analytics company Gartner defines a term as a subject in which any organization is driven by change. So, according to their glossary…

The enterprise architecture model is the discipline for projectively and holistically managing an organization's activities inresponse to disruptive impacts by identifying and analyzing the implementation of changes towards the desired vision and business results.

So, EA (Electronic arts) delivers value by providing signature-ready policy recommendations and blueprints for large enterprise executives and IT professionals to achieve targeted results based on relevant front office disruptions.

EA is used to guide the decision-making process towards the development of the architecture of the future state.

Summary

Each of the above definitions reflects:

• a historical reality in which enterprise architecture emerged from the methods of documenting and planning information systems;
• current realities that most professionals report to their CIO or other front office manager.

In today's business organizational structure, the enterprise architecture team has an ongoing business function that helps managers find the best strategies to support and enable business growth and change in relation to business information systems. The future of the enterprise depends on them.

Terms

According to the Zachman model, an "enterprise" can be defined as a description of an organizational unit or population that shares a set of common goals and collaborates to provide specific products or services to customers.

In this sense, the term"enterprise" encompasses various types of organizations, regardless of their size, ownership model, operating system, or geographic distribution. It includes the full socio-technical resources, including people, information, processes and, of course, technology.

And the term "architecture", according to the Zachman model, refers to the fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its scope, expressed in its elements, views and principles of its design and development.

Applications

The perspectives or beliefs held by enterprise architecture practitioners and scholars about the meaning of the term tend to lean towards one of three schools of thought.

Corporate IT Design - EA's goal is to create more alignment between front office and business tasks. The primary purpose of enterprise architecture is to guide the process of planning and designing an organization's capabilities to achieve desired professional goals.

Community integration

According to this point of view, the task of EA is to achieve greater alignment between the various tasks of the enterprise (HR, IT, operations and the front office itself). Including the link between strategy formulation and its implementation. As a rule, architectural proposals and solutions cover all aspects of the enterprise.

Adaptation of the corporate ecosystem

The purpose of EE is to develop and support learning opportunitiesenterprises so that they can be sustainable. Consequently, much attention is paid to improving the ability of any organization to improve, innovate and grow with the environment. As a rule, proposals and solutions cover both the production area and its components.

Outcomes regarding enterprise architecture development will influence how people see the purpose and scope of this development. As well as the means to achieve it, the skills required to implement it, and the responsibility for its implementation.

Description of the enterprise architecture

In practice, it can contain many lists, tables and charts. In the case of an enterprise architecture, these models describe a logical business function or capability, processes, human roles and the physical structure of an organization, data flows and storage, communications equipment and infrastructure.

The UK National Computing Center's EA Best Practice Guideline states that an EA is typically configured with a limitless set of coupled modifications that describe the structure and functions of the company. The individual systems in the EA are laid out in a logical manner that provides an ever-increasing level of organization detail.

Sponsor Mission

Enterprise architecture elements are described to improve the manageability, efficiency, effectiveness, or agility of a business. As well as ensuring the justification of the costs spent on information technology.

Paramount to re-architecting a business is identifying a sponsor. Its mission, vision and strategy, as well as the governance structure, assign all the roles, responsibilities and relationships associated with the expected transformation. Changes considered by enterprise architects typically include:

1. Innovation in the structure or processes of an organization.
2. Integration and typification of entrepreneurship.
3. Innovation in the use of information systems or technology.
4. Improve the quality and timeliness of business mail.

A methodology for developing and using an architecture to guide the transformation of a business from a baseline to a target state, sometimes through multiple transitions, is commonly referred to as enterprise architecture building. The platform provides a structured collection of processes, methods, artifact images, reference models, and guidelines for creating and using an enterprise-specific architecture description.

Benefits

The benefits of enterprise architecture are its direct and indirect contributions to organizational goals. The most notable benefits were found to be observed in the following areas:

1. Organizational design. Enterprise architecture provides support in areas related to the design and redesign of structures during mergers, acquisitions or general changes.
2. All processes and their standards. Enterprise architecture helps to enforce discipline andstandardization of business processes, and also organizes the consolidation, reuse and integration of systems.
3. Project portfolio management. The enterprise architecture supports investment decisions and prioritization of work.
4. Project management. The architecture of the enterprise expands the possibilities of cooperation and interaction between the participants of the entire enterprise or its individual structures. It also contributes to effective planning of tasks and the definition of more complete and consistent results.
5. Development of requirements. Enterprise Architecture increases the speed of identifying various tasks and the accuracy of the definitions of various processes by publishing documentation.
6. System development. Enterprise Architecture promotes optimal enterprise design and efficient allocation of resources for development and testing at certain points.
7. IT management and decision making. An enterprise architecture has been found to help discipline and standardize IT planning activities and reduce the time it takes to make technology-related decisions.
8. The value of IT. The enterprise architecture helps to reduce the cost of implementation and operation of the system, as well as to minimize the replication of infrastructure services between departments.
9. IT complexity. Enterprise Architecture helps reduce issues, consolidate data and applications, and improve system interoperability.
10. IT openness. The enterprise architecture contributes to the creationin a more open and responsive manner, which is reflected in increased data availability for regulatory compliance and increased transparency of infrastructure changes.
11. IT risk management. Enterprise architecture helps reduce business risk from system failures and security breaches. And it also helps to reduce the various dangers of project implementation.