What is the enterprise architecture process?
What do enterprise architects do on a daily
basis?
Let's take a look at the steps that we follow.
The first is (to) define the current state.
You collect the business mission and vision
and goals and objectives
and come up with a good baseline
for the current state.
You also take a look at the technology inventory
for the organization
whether it is in the networking infrastructure
or business architecture
or even data and information architecture.
The next step is you define the mission
for this particular initiative or change.
You take a look at the current
external and internal factors that influence
this change
or are affected by this change.
In effect that definition of the mission
is critical to allow you to go to the third
step
which is to define the target state.
Once you have an idea of what the future looks
like
you now can go back to your baseline current
state
and be able to drill down in the business
architecture,
the technology architecture,
the data and information architecture,
and application architecture, and say okay,
what do all of these look like in the future?
The next step, the fourth step is to define
the roadmap.
What is important in this whole exercise
that an enterprise architect does is
it allows the consumers of these data and
information
to come up with an idea of a clear plan of
action.
A roadmap should include items like a clear
timetable,
how these different chunks of work are put
one after the other
or in parallel, how they're organized together.
Lastly, what's I guess the most important part
of the whole process is making sure
that this roadmap is implemented properly.
What is important here is the enterprise change
that we've envisioned for the organization
actually happens.
Otherwise all of these planning will be for
naught.
Therefore, the enterprise architecture process
really is quite simple.
You define the current state of the organization.
You define the mission or the future
that this particular change in the enterprise
will fulfill.
The third is to define the target state
by refining the baseline that we've just accumulated.
Creating a roadmap is the next step.
And then finally govern(ing) this implementation
to make sure that we actually reap the benefits
of change.
