Abstract on EA communication
LEA is design to overcome the chanllenge of "Stealth EA". Enterprise Arhcitects tend to says a lot about EA but come short in the area of "showing what is EA". After a long discussion, most of people would like to see what is EA but the architect have very limited offer but to show volumes of documentation or nevigate through complicate EA repository or may be a stack of reports. The information are overwhleming and do not serve well in comminication with stakeholders due to the limitation on human nature. There is a fix amount of information that human can reasonablly comprehend at one time. LEA take human factor into consideration and design the following communication products.
Enterprise Architecture is frequently described in volumes of douments. It is form with liner description that people can read and understand. The EA documents is very useful to describe the high level enterprise architecture master plan which is a static documents to decribe the Enterprise Architecture from the layer of business, data, application and technologies. ^ TOP
EA is also frequently documented in the form of spread sheets. For example : The enterpirse application catalog which describe the Application Acronym, system description, Point of contact, Type of the system, Scope of the system, system context, Support business function, life cycle status, data of release, system architecture, software architecture, software language, back end database, Front end, Middle tier, application interface and data sharing.
LEA suggest to use web technology as a web application with database repository rather than as a web publishing tool. Many organizations use web technology as web publishing tool to deliver architecture documents rather than as a facilitating tool to establish enterprise architecture with the participation from the stakeholders. As a web publishing tool, web technology is not a part of enterprise architecture development until it is completely designed with finish touched after years of effort. PEA suggest to use web technology as part of the enterprise architecture development process from the beginning to deliver EA information as soon as it is available to the stakeholders such as the current environment, standard profile and who are the stakeholders.
LEA suggest use simple and open repository application rather than a complicate and expensive systems. Most of commercial EA repository today offer a variety of complicate modeling tools for business process reengineering, data modeling and application system design to support enterprise architecture as the central planned enterprise architecture blueprint . Traditional EA has been complicate from the beginning to select the proper EA tools. PEA approach keep it simple to look at the commonality rather than analyze the differences, the major requirements of a PEA repository is straight forward to store EA information in a open database. The key to manage EA information is the data standard rather acquiring a complicate EA repository and modeling application. Establishing EA data standard in beginning of EA enable future integration to the other EA tools and IT management tools. PEA suggest to establish the data standard based on the enterprise architecture frameworks. Organize the EA standards in enterprise architecture frame work serve as the chain to link all IT management application such as document library, configuration management, project management, meta data repository , requirement management and asset management together instead of looking for a all inclusive EA repository,
EA industry leverage on web and database technology to deliver updated EA artifact in time of need. There are many EA repository products in the market. Getting information out from EA repository has been a major challenge. Enterprise Architect have invested significant time to popular the EA repository and it is a place of abundant information. However, it has been a challenge ot get information out from the repository. The EA repository contains overwhelming information and most people can easyly get lost in the deep information ocean. LEA made special effort to render EA information from repository since 1998 in the area of :
The LEA portal
The LEA portal is the gateway to access the Light Enterprise Architecture artifacts. It is designed based on LEA approach framework to know the existing environment, the governance structure, the architecture design, the governance and compliance processes , the stake holder and the performance .Each area in the following framework links for more detail. The following framework is interactive, please click on the area to access the desired information.
The LEA portal
The interactive framework
The Zachman framework has been the best known EA framework to the EA community but is is a thinking tool and requires explicit modeling to be practical. LEA suggests an explicit framework leverage on Zachman framework concept with some adjustment. The LEA artifact framework describes the enterprise in the areas of business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, and technology architecture from the attributes of why, what, how, who, where, when. LEA describes the enterprise based on this framework to see the enterprise as a whole and describe how it works. It is similar to the anatomy in the medical paradigm. Business transformation without EA effort to know the enterprise is similar to the ancient medical practice without anatomy.
The framework serves as a checklist of a comprehensive EA efforts. Many EA projects, thinking inside the box of application development, have devoted most effort on function decomposition and business process modeling and overlook the effort on defining the enterprise due to lack of an explicit enterprise architecture framework.
The framework serves as the EA portal to access the EA world. LEA has prototype an interactive LEA framework to demonstrate the practical use of the LEA framework. This framework is interactive and allows drill down.
LEA artifact framework
The framework does not suggest an EA approach. It is only a EA artifact framework to address what is in EA but not how to design EA. For more detail on the category of framework please read this LEA Book
The LEA online TRM
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