Link: http://theknowledgeeconomy.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/five-cs-of-enterprise-architecture/
A complete Enterprise Architecture that effectively supports the business cannot be purchased as a fully realisable off-the-shelf commodity. This statement should of course be qualified by at least considering the possibility of acquiring a hypothetical ‘business-in-a-box’ with everything already defined and requiring the business to change to fit.
To be useful for the majority of businesses the Enterprise Architecture must be crafted with particular care.
As it takes time to craft well it is not reasonable to expect the business to wait until the Enterprise Architecture is fully formed. If it is to gain credibility and maintain momentum, should be used as it is being built.
To ensure that the Enterprise Architecture is indeed usable there are five key areas that should be considered:
- CONTENT: What should be included within the Enterprise Architecture and in what order should it be captured.
- COVERAGE: How much of the business should be initially covered to provide real, shorter term, value to the user of the Enterprise Architecture. Initial content captured should provide and end-to-end slice through the business.
- CONSISTENCY: Ensure standards for capturing, recording and reporting on information have been defined and are consistently applied. Information captured must also not be ambiguous or open to misinterpretation.
- CONTROL: Provide mechanisms by which information which has been captured, to be included within the Enterprise Architecture, is accurate and has been validated. On-going governance is key to the success of an Enterprise Architecture and consequently to the business.
- CURRENCY: It is crucial that content held within the Enterprise Architecture be maintained. The consumer of content must have confidence that what they see is current and has not been superseded. Unless currency is maintained the Enterprise Architecture, instead of being of value, can become a liability.
It is imperative that the Enterprise Architecture be constructed and populated with a view to support the business.
By choosing what will be be included first and then maturing the content iteratively, the business will reap maximum value earlier. With a realised value identified and quantified earlier, the Enterprise Architecture has a very real chance of providing significant and long term business benefit.
