Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Agility and the Virtual Extended EnterpriseIn the 1990s, The Agility Forum of Lehigh University defined Agility as “The ability to successfully respond to unexpected challenges and opportunities.” The forum chartered a technical committe…
Agility and the Virtual Extended Enterprise
In the 1990s, The Agility Forum of
Lehigh University defined Agility as “The ability to successfully respond to
unexpected challenges and opportunities.” The
forum chartered a technical commi…
Agility and the Virtual Extended EnterpriseIn the 1990s, The Agility Forum of Lehigh University defined Agility as “The ability to successfully respond to unexpected challenges and opportunities.” The forum chartered a technical committe…
European Interoperability Reference Architecture The European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA) is an architecture content metamodel defining the most salient architectural building blocks (ABBs) needed to build interoperable e-Government systems. On 8 June 2015, release 0.9.0 beta of the EIRA entered an eight-week public review period. Stakeholders working for public administrations in the field of architecture […]
Why the majority of Enterprise Architects are in love with the concept of “building block”. Perhaps because blocks don’t answer back and spoil the design, Aiden Ward suggested. In TOGAF 9.1 “building block” is used 349 times, not counting the separate use of ABB and SBB acronyms. There is a whole chapter devoted to building […]
Generally speaking, IT departments have all sorts of criteria to justify projects and measure their performance. They use measurements and metrics, KPIs. Going to the solution level, they commonly use indicators such as percentage uptime for systems from the System Management team, error rates for applications from the Development Support team, or number of calls resolved on the first call from the Service Desk, etc. These KPIs usually are defined at an early stage and very often delivered in dashboards from various support applications.
On the other hand it is much more difficult to define and implement quantifiable measure for Enterprise Architecture. Many activities introduced with appropriate governance will enhance the quality of the delivered products and services, but it still will be a challenge to attribute results to the quality of Enterprise Architecture efforts.
This being said, Enterprise Architects should be able to define and justify the benefits of their activities to their stakeholders, and to help executives understand how Enterprise Architecture will contribute to the primary value-adding objectives and processes, before starting the voyage. The more it is described and understood, the more the Enterprise Architecture team will gain support from the management. There are plenty of contributions that Enterprise Architecture brings and they will have to be documented and presented at an early stage.
There won’t be just one single answer to demonstrate the value of an Enterprise Architecture but there seems to be a common pattern when considering feedbacks from various companies I have worked with.
Without Enterprise Architecture you can probably NOT fully achieve:
As an example among others, the problem with most IT plans is that they do not indicate what the business value is, and what strategic or tactical business benefit the organization is planning to achieve. The simple matter is that any IT plan needs also to have a business metric, not only an IT metric of delivery. Another aspect is the ability to create and share a common vision of the future shared by the business and IT communities.
With the rapid pace of change in business environment, the need to transform organizations into agile enterprises that can respond quickly to change has never been greater. Methodologies and computer technologies are needed to enable rapid business and system change. The solution also lies in Enterprise Integration (both business and technology integration).
For business integration we use Enterprise Architecture methodologies and frameworks to integrate functions, processes, data, locations, people, events and business plans throughout an organization. Specifically the unification and integration of business processes and data across the enterprise, and potential linkage with external partners become more and more important.
To also have technology integration, we may use enterprise portals, enterprise application integration (EAI/ESB), Web services, service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM) and try to lower the number of interfaces.
In recent years the scope of Enterprise Architecture has expanded beyond the IT domain and Enterprise Architects are increasingly taking on broader roles relating to organizational strategy and change management. Frameworks such as TOGAF 9.1 include processes and tools for managing both the business/people and the technology sides of an organization. Enterprise Architecture supports the creation of changes related to the various architectures domains, evaluating the impact on the enterprise, taking into account risk management, the financial aspects ( cost / benefit analysis), and most importantly ensure the alignment with business goals and objectives. Enterprise Architecture value is essentially tied to its ability to help companies to deal with complexity and changes.
Enterprise Architecture should reduce systems development, applications generation and modernization timeframes for legacy systems. It should also decrease resource requirements. All of this can be accomplished by re-using standards, or existing components such as the architecture and solution building blocks in TOGAF 9.1. Delivery time and design/development costs can also be decreased by the reuse of reference models. All that information should be managed in an Enterprise Architecture Repository.
Data and information architectures manage the organization assets of information, optimally and efficiently. This supports the quality, accuracy and timely availability of data for executive and strategic business decision-making, across applications.
Architecture is also a set of descriptive representations (i.e. “models”) that are relevant for describing an Enterprise such that it can be produced to management’s requirements and maintained over the period of its useful life. Using an Architecture Repository, developing a variety of artefacts and modelling some of the key elements of the enterprise; will contribute to build this documentation.
Cost avoidance can be achieved by identifying overlapping functional scope of two or more proposed projects in an organization, or the potential cost savings of IT support by standardizing on one solution.
Consolidation can happen at various levels for the architectures: for shared enterprise services, applications and information, for technologies and even data centers.
This could involve consolidating the number of database servers, application or web servers and storage devices, consolidating redundant security platforms, or adopting virtualization, grid computing and related consolidation initiatives. Consolidation may be a by-product of another technology transformation, or it may be the driver of these transformations.
Whatever motivates the change, the key is to be in alignment, once again, with the overall business strategy. Enterprise architects understand where the business is going, so they can pick the appropriate consolidation strategy. Rationalization, standardization, and consolidation process helps organizations understand their current Enterprise Maturity level and move forward on the appropriate roadmap.
Enterprise Architecture should serve as a driver of innovation. Innovation is highly important when developing a target Enterprise Architecture, and realizing the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. For example, it may help to connect the dots between business requirements and the new approaches SOA and cloud services can deliver.
Building Enterprise Architecture defines the structure and operation of an organization. The intent of enterprise architecture is to determine how an organization can most effectively achieve its current and future objectives. It must be designed to support an organization’s specific business strategies.
Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David C. Robertson in “Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business” wrote “Companies with more-mature architectures reported greater success in achieving strategic goals” (p. 89). This included better operational excellence, more customer intimacy, and greater product leadership (p. 100).
Enterprises which are customer focused and aim to provide solutions for their customers should design its business model, IT systems and operational activities to support this strategy at the process level. This involves the selection of one or few high-value customer niches, followed by an obsessive effort at getting to know these customers in detail.
This approach enabled by Enterprise Architecture is dedicated to providing the best possible products from the perspective of the features and benefits offered to the customer. It is the basic philosophy about products that push performance boundaries. Products or services delivered by the business will be refined by leveraging IT to do the end customer’s job better. This will be accomplished by the delivery of new business capabilities (e.g. on-line websites, BI, etc.).
Enterprise Architecture helps companies to know and represent their processes and systems and how they correlate; fundamental for risk management and managing the regulation requirements, such as those derived from Sarbanes-Oxley, COSO, HIPAA, etc.
This list could be continued as there are many other reasons why Enterprise Architecture brings benefits to organizations. Once your benefits have been documented you could also consider some value management techniques. TOGAF 9.1 refers in the Architecture Vision phase to a target value proposition for a specific project. Here we would apply the value proposition concept to the Enterprise Architecture initiative as a whole.
Value Management uses a combination of concepts and methods to create sustainable value for both organizations and their stakeholders. Some tools and techniques are specific to Value Management and others are generic tools that many organizations and individuals use. There exist many Value Management techniques such as Cost-benefits Analysis, SWOT Analysis, Value Analysis, Pareto Analysis, Objectives Hierarchy, Function Analysis System Technique (FAST), and more…
The one I suggest to illustrate is close to the Objectives Hierarchy technique, which is a diagrammatic process for identifying objectives in a hierarchical manner and often used in conjunction with business functions. Close, because I will use a combination of the TOGAF 9.1 metamodel with the ArchiMate 2.0 Business Layer, Application Layer and Motivation Extensions Metamodels, consider core entities such as value, business goals, objectives, business processes and functions, business and application services, application functions and components. This approach being inspired by the presentation by Michael van den Dungen and Arjan Visser at the Open Group Conference in Amsterdam 2010 and I’m here adding some Archimate 2.0 concepts.
Firstly the entities from the TOGAF 9.1 metamodel:
Categories Archimate, Business Strategy, business transformation, Enterprise Architecture, IT Business Alignment, Metamodel, Open Group, togaf, Value proposition
Given the responses to my previous post ‘Guess I could do with some help here…‘, seems it’d be useful if I clarify a bit more what kind of help I most need. (Or we need, rather, as an industry and discipline: probably the only ‘I’-part here is that I seem to be one of the […]
Several people, including Nigel Green, Doug Newdick and Kris Meukens, picked up on my comments about architecture versus design in my earlier post ‘Great conversations on enterprise-architecture‘. Nigel kindly wrote a follow-up post on his Posterous blog, and Kris pointed to an earlier blog-post of his own, whilst Doug also added useful comments to both of those […]
Quite often people wonder where a Solution Architect fits within the TOGAF Framework and it is not obvious that there is a single answer. I suggest we look first at a generic profile for a Solution Architect.
Companies such as Oracle, Cisco, SAP and others have roles called Solution Architect but with little apparent agreement to what that role is.
Some commonalities between various skills are:
Building Block – A (potentially re-usable) component of business, IT or architectural capability
o A constituent of the architecture model that describes a single aspect of the overall model
o Describe required capability
o Shape the specification of SBBs
o Represents components that will be used to implement the required capability
o A candidate physical solution for an Architecture Building Block (ABB); e.g., a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) package that is a component of the Acquirer view of the architecture
All ABBs will be stored in the Architecture Landscape of the Architecture Repository. These ABBs will have different levels of granularity to suit different architectural objectives.
The Architecture Definition Document which describes an architecture will contain all artifacts describing as views the building blocks.
During the Phase E, Opportunities and Solutions, we identify work packages and group them into projects, consolidate the gap analysis results from phases B to D, identify the building blocks to be developed or acquired reusing the existing ones (stored in the Architecture Repository) as much as we can. From there, we identify the SBBs which could potentially address one or more gaps and their associated ABBs. Existing SBBs have obviously also to be considered taking the interoperability requirements and dependencies into consideration.
The Solution Architect has a key role in this phase as (s)he will probably be the best qualified to identify the appropriate SBBs. He or she participates in the definition of any Transition Architectures, identifies potential solutions, and helps to formulate a high-level implementation and migration strategy.
During the Migration Planning phase they also have an important mission to ensure that SBBs are properly designed or that acquired solutions support business requirements. The Solution Architect may work closely with the vendor if a COTS solution is considered. A solution includes the hardware, software, and supporting people and documentation to solve a problem.
“The gaps in the existing enterprise solutions framework need to be identified and the specific Solution Building Blocks (SBBs) required to fill these gaps will be the identified by the solutions architects. These SBBs may have a one-to-one or many-to-one relationship with the projects. The solutions architects need to define exactly how this will be done. There may be other projects working on these same capabilities and the solutions architects need to ensure that they can leverage best value from these investments.”
Source: TOGAF 9 (15.4.1)
When the Implementation Governance phase is started, the Solution Architect will work in partnership with the procurer/acquirer in addition to the development team and/or the vendor. He will ensure that the development will comply with the target architecture.
When the solution building blocks are developed or integrated with other existing solutions, the Solution Architect will be working with the development team. His role will be to contribute to the design, development, integration and testing of the new components. This may be considered as being the Solution Architecture activity.
A Solution Architecture typically applies to a single project or project release, assisting in the translation of requirements into a solution vision, high level business and/or IT system specifications and a portfolio of implementation tasks.
Solution architecture starts with an understanding of the problem, which should be documented in the business scenario, and this is where so many projects fail. Too many people have the idea that solving a problem is all about coding.
The Solution Architect is a member of the Enterprise Architecture team but becomes at a later stage also a member of the Development team. His role is mixed; he is the bridge between concepts and implementation. However, the Solution Architect does not operate at the Strategic Architecture level (at the level of the Enterprise) but mostly at Segment and Capability Architecture levels.
“The Solution Architect has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation
at a system or subsystem level, such as management or security. A Solution Architect may shield the Enterprise/Segment Architect from the unnecessary details of the systems, products, and/or technologies. The focus of the Solution Architect is on system technology solutions; for example, a component of a solution such as enterprise data warehousing.”
Source TOGAF9 (52.6.3)
There is no mapping for a Solution Architect in the TOGAF Skills Framework, but I would suggest, based on my experience, the following proficiency levels:
TOGAF proficiency levels:
Source TOGAF9 (52.4.4)
This approach is related to the current situation in the market for Solutions Architects, where we see that most of their activities are limited to phases E to G. Another approach would be to consider a Solution Architect being involved in all phases of the TOGAF ADM from phase A and on-wards. A follow-up paper will describe how to address solutions from Phase A , when constraints exist, defining the role and responsibilities of a Solution Architect.
Quite often people wonder where a Solution Architect fits within the TOGAF Framework and it is not obvious that there is a single answer. I suggest we look first at a generic profile for a Solution Architect.
Companies such as Oracle, Cisco, SAP and others have roles called Solution Architect but with little apparent agreement to what that role is.
Some commonalities between various skills are:
Building Block – A (potentially re-usable) component of business, IT or architectural capability
o A constituent of the architecture model that describes a single aspect of the overall model
o Describe required capability
o Shape the specification of SBBs
o Represents components that will be used to implement the required capability
o A candidate physical solution for an Architecture Building Block (ABB); e.g., a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) package that is a component of the Acquirer view of the architecture
All ABBs will be stored in the Architecture Landscape of the Architecture Repository. These ABBs will have different levels of granularity to suit different architectural objectives.
The Architecture Definition Document which describes an architecture will contain all artifacts describing as views the building blocks.
During the Phase E, Opportunities and Solutions, we identify work packages and group them into projects, consolidate the gap analysis results from phases B to D, identify the building blocks to be developed or acquired reusing the existing ones (stored in the Architecture Repository) as much as we can. From there, we identify the SBBs which could potentially address one or more gaps and their associated ABBs. Existing SBBs have obviously also to be considered taking the interoperability requirements and dependencies into consideration.
The Solution Architect has a key role in this phase as (s)he will probably be the best qualified to identify the appropriate SBBs. He or she participates in the definition of any Transition Architectures, identifies potential solutions, and helps to formulate a high-level implementation and migration strategy.
During the Migration Planning phase they also have an important mission to ensure that SBBs are properly designed or that acquired solutions support business requirements. The Solution Architect may work closely with the vendor if a COTS solution is considered. A solution includes the hardware, software, and supporting people and documentation to solve a problem.
“The gaps in the existing enterprise solutions framework need to be identified and the specific Solution Building Blocks (SBBs) required to fill these gaps will be the identified by the solutions architects. These SBBs may have a one-to-one or many-to-one relationship with the projects. The solutions architects need to define exactly how this will be done. There may be other projects working on these same capabilities and the solutions architects need to ensure that they can leverage best value from these investments.”
Source: TOGAF 9 (15.4.1)
When the Implementation Governance phase is started, the Solution Architect will work in partnership with the procurer/acquirer in addition to the development team and/or the vendor. He will ensure that the development will comply with the target architecture.
When the solution building blocks are developed or integrated with other existing solutions, the Solution Architect will be working with the development team. His role will be to contribute to the design, development, integration and testing of the new components. This may be considered as being the Solution Architecture activity.
A Solution Architecture typically applies to a single project or project release, assisting in the translation of requirements into a solution vision, high level business and/or IT system specifications and a portfolio of implementation tasks.
Solution architecture starts with an understanding of the problem, which should be documented in the business scenario, and this is where so many projects fail. Too many people have the idea that solving a problem is all about coding.
The Solution Architect is a member of the Enterprise Architecture team but becomes at a later stage also a member of the Development team. His role is mixed; he is the bridge between concepts and implementation. However, the Solution Architect does not operate at the Strategic Architecture level (at the level of the Enterprise) but mostly at Segment and Capability Architecture levels.
“The Solution Architect has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation
at a system or subsystem level, such as management or security. A Solution Architect may shield the Enterprise/Segment Architect from the unnecessary details of the systems, products, and/or technologies. The focus of the Solution Architect is on system technology solutions; for example, a component of a solution such as enterprise data warehousing.”
Source TOGAF9 (52.6.3)
There is no mapping for a Solution Architect in the TOGAF Skills Framework, but I would suggest, based on my experience, the following proficiency levels:
TOGAF proficiency levels:
Source TOGAF9 (52.4.4)
This approach is related to the current situation in the market for Solutions Architects, where we see that most of their activities are limited to phases E to G. Another approach would be to consider a Solution Architect being involved in all phases of the TOGAF ADM from phase A and on-wards. A follow-up paper will describe how to address solutions from Phase A , when constraints exist, defining the role and responsibilities of a Solution Architect.
This #eavoices post is the first in a series of n posts about enterprise architecture today and tomorrow. In this first post, I will dig into the EA Voices database and look for some trends. With 3.2 million words in over 5400 posts, written by 135 authors over the past 5 years, EA Voices is …
Enterprise Architecture has a reputation problem. Not because it lacks rigor or structure — quite the opposite. But because too often, architecture feels like something that exists next to the organization rather than within it. Diagrams live in tools, standards sit in documents, and architectural knowledge slowly fragments across folders, platforms, and people’s heads. It’s kind of like an intangible scrapbook of past projects.
The Architecture Repository, as described in the TOGAF® Standard, is an attempt to fix that. Not by introducing yet another tool or database, but by introducing a way of thinking. A way of treating architecture as a coherent, evolving body of knowledge — one that can be reused, governed, and continuously refined.
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