Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviours of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use businessdata. The international definition according to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations is "a well-defined practice for conductingenterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, andtechnology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."[1]
TheUnited States Federal Government is an example of an organization that practices EA, in this case with itsCapital Planning and Investment Control processes.[2] Companies such asIndependence Blue Cross,Intel,Volkswagen AG,[3] andInterContinental Hotels Group also use EA to improve their business architectures as well as to improvebusiness performance andproductivity. Additionally, theFederal Enterprise Architecture's reference guide aids federal agencies in the development of their architectures.[4]
As a discipline, EA "proactively and holistically lead[s] enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change" towards organizational goals. EA gives business and IT leaders recommendations for policy adjustments and provides best strategies to support and enable business development and change within the information systems the business depends on. EA provides a guide fordecision making towards these objectives.[5] TheNational Computing Centre's EA best practice guidance states that an EA typically "takes the form of a comprehensive set of cohesive models that describe the structure and functions of an enterprise. The individual models in an EA are arranged in a logical manner that provides an ever-increasing level of detail about the enterprise."[6]
Important players within EA include enterprise architects and solutions architects. Enterprise architects are at the top level of the architect hierarchy, meaning they have more responsibilities than solutions architects. While solutions architects focus on their own relevant solutions, enterprise architects focus on solutions for and the impact on the whole organization. Enterprise architects oversee many solution architects and business functions. As practitioners of EA, enterprise architects support an organization's strategic vision by acting to align people, process, and technology decisions with actionable goals and objectives that result in quantifiable improvements toward achieving that vision. The practice of EA "analyzes areas of common activity within or between organizations, where information and other resources are exchanged to guide future states from an integrated viewpoint of strategy, business, and technology."[7]
The termenterprise can be defined as anorganizational unit,organization, or collection of organizations that share a set of common goals and collaborate to provide specific products or services to customers.[8] In that sense, the term enterprise covers various types of organizations, regardless of their size, ownership model, operational model, or geographical distribution. It includes those organizations' completesociotechnical system,[9] including people, information, processes, and technologies. Enterprise as a sociotechnical system defines the scope of EA.
The termarchitecture refers to fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment; and embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution.[10] A methodology for developing and using architecture to guide thetransformation of a business from a baseline state to a target state, sometimes through several transition states, is usually known as anenterprise architecture framework. A framework provides a structured collection of processes, techniques,artifact descriptions, reference models, and guidance for the production and use of an enterprise-specific architecture description. Open-source tools supporting EA practice, such as the Essential Project, have also been evaluated for suitability in academic and commercial training contexts.[11]
Paramount tochanging the EA is the identification of asponsor. Their mission,vision, strategy, and the governance framework define all roles, responsibilities, and relationships involved in the anticipated transformation. Changes considered by enterprise architects typically include innovations in the structure or processes of an organization; innovations in the use of information systems or technologies; the integration and/orstandardization of business processes; and improvement of the quality and timeliness of business information.[citation needed]
According to the standardISO/IEC/IEEE 42010,[10] the product used to describe the architecture of a system is called anarchitectural description. In practice, an architectural description contains a variety of lists, tables, and diagrams. These are models known asviews. In the case of EA, these models describe the logical business functions or capabilities,business processes, human roles and actors, the physical organization structure,data flows anddata stores,business applications and platform applications, hardware, and communications infrastructure.
The first use of the term "enterprise architecture" is often incorrectly attributed toJohn Zachman's 1987A framework for information systems architecture.[12] The first publication to use it was instead aNational Institute of Standards (NIST) Special Publication[13] on the challenges of information system integration.[citation needed] The NIST article describes EA as consisting of several levels.Business unit architecture is the top level and might be a total corporate entity or a sub-unit. It establishes for the whole organization necessary frameworks for "satisfying both internal information needs" as well as the needs of external entities, which includecooperating organizations,customers, andfederal agencies. The lower levels of the EA that provide information to higher levels are more attentive to detail on behalf of their superiors. In addition to this structure, business unit architecture establishesstandards,policies, andprocedures that either enhance or stymie the organization's mission.[13]
The main difference between these two definitions is that Zachman's concept was the creation of individual information systems optimized for business, while NIST's described the management of all information systems within a business unit. The definitions in both publications, however, agreed that due to the "increasing size and complexity of the [i]mplementations of [i]nformation systems... logical construct[s] (or architecture) for defining and controlling the interfaces and... [i]ntegration of all the components of a system" is necessary. Zachman in particular urged for a "strategic planningmethodology."[12]
Within the field of enterprise architecture, there are three overarching schools: Enterprise IT Design, Enterprise Integrating, and Enterprise Ecosystem Adaption. Which school one subscribes to will impact how they see the EA's purpose and scope, as well as the means of achieving it, the skills needed to conduct it, and the locus of responsibility for conducting it.[14]
Under Enterprise IT Design, the main purpose of EA is to guide the process of planning and designing an enterprise'sIT/IS capabilities to meet the desired organizational objectives, often by greater alignment between IT/IS and business concerns. Architecture proposals and decisions are limited to the IT/IS aspects of the enterprise and other aspects service only as inputs. The Enterprise Integrating school believes that the purpose of EA is to create a greater coherency between the various concerns of an enterprise (HR, IT, Operations, etc.), including the link between strategy formulation and execution. Architecture proposals and decisions here encompass all aspects of the enterprise. The Enterprise Ecosystem Adaption school states that the purpose of EA is to foster and maintain the learning capabilities of enterprises so they may be sustainable. Consequently, a great deal of emphasis is put on improving the capabilities of the enterprise to improve itself, to innovate, and to coevolve with its environment. Typically, proposals and decisions encompass both the enterprise and its environment.
The benefits of EA are achieved through its direct and indirect contributions to organizational goals.[15] Notable benefits include support in the areas related to design and re-design of the organizational structures during mergers, acquisitions, or general organizational change;[16][17][18][19] enforcement of discipline and business process standardization, and enablement of process consolidation, reuse, andintegration;[20][21] support for investment decision-making and work prioritization;[17][22][18] enhancement of collaboration and communication betweenproject stakeholders and contribution to efficientproject scoping and to defining more complete and consistent projectdeliverabless;[19][20] and an increase in the timeliness ofrequirements elicitation and the accuracy of requirement definitions through publishing of the EA documentation.[23]
Other benefits include contribution tooptimal system designs and efficient resource allocation during system development and testing;[17][18] enforcement of discipline and standardization of IT planning activities and contribution to a reduction in time for technology-related decision making;[18][21] reduction of the system's implementation and operational costs, and minimization of replicate infrastructure services across business units;[21][24] reduction in IT complexity, consolidation of data and applications, and improvement ofinteroperability of the systems;[20][21][24] moreopen andresponsive IT as reflected through increased accessibility of data forregulatory compliance, and increased transparency of infrastructure changes;[21][25] and a reduction ofbusiness risks from system failures and security breaches. EA also helps reduce risks of project delivery.[21][26] Establishing EA as an accepted, recognized, functionally integrated and fully involved concept at operational and tactical levels is one of the biggest challenges facing Enterprise Architects today and one of the main reasons why many EA initiatives fail.[27]
A key concern about EA has been the difficulty in arriving atmetrics of success because of the broad-brush and often opaque nature of EA projects.[28] Additionally, there have been a number of reports, including those written byIvar Jacobson,[29]Gartner,[30]Erasmus University Rotterdam andIDS Scheer,[31]Dion Hinchcliffe,[32] andStanley Gaver,[33] that argue that the frequent failure of EA initiatives makes the concept not worth the effort and that the methodology will fade out quickly.
According to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO), EA interacts with a wide array of other disciplines commonly found in business settings such asperformance engineering andmanagement,process engineering andmanagement,IT andenterprise portfolio management,governance and compliance, IT strategic planning,risk analysis,information management,metadata management,organization development,design thinking,systems thinking, anduser experience design.[1][34][35][36] The EA of an organization is too complex and extensive to document in its entirety, soknowledge management techniques provide a way to explore and analyze these hidden, tacit, or implicit areas. In return, EA provides a way of documenting the components of an organization and their interaction in a systemic and holistic way that complements knowledge management.[37]
In various venues,[38] EA has been discussed as having a relationship withService Oriented Architecture (SOA), a particular style of application integration. Research points to EA promoting the use of SOA as an enterprise-wide integration pattern.[39][40] The broad reach of EA has resulted in this business role being included in theinformation technology governance processes of many organizations. Analyst firm Real Story Group suggested that EA and the emerging concept of thedigital workplace are "two sides to the same coin."[41] The Cutter Consortium described EA as an information and knowledge-based discipline.[42]
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