Abstract
The first generation EA architect the enterprise blueprint as if it is the mechanical design of an aircraft carrier. It requires significant resources and time, only large organization can afford it. However, they also discover that the expensive architecture blueprint become obsolete before the ink dry because Enterprise is organic. It does not serve well to describe an organic enterprise with an mechanical architecture design concept.
Instead of architect a full blown enterprise blueprint, The Light EA, suggest a light approach with the concept of Notional target architecture, Reference architecture, Service Orin ted Architecture and Segment Architecture to enable a practical EA approach. It is light for both large and small organizations. The light EA approach enable large and small organization not only to overcome the challenge of stovepipe system but also the capability to adapt change in time of need.
By saying the world change constantly does not mean it is futile to plan ahead. In the changing world, not every thing change rapidly, there are some thing with mild change such as the primitives or every some thing do not change such as the principle. The strategy to adapt change is to enable agility by leveraging on the common primitives that relatively static. LEA distinguish the agility architecture in the horizontal direction.
LEA serves as a bridge between business and engineering community to overcome the challenge of buy-in from the stake holders. It adopt a human centric EA approach to deliver tangible EA architecture drawing and use communication professional as the EA liaison in the business community. As the bridge, LEA can further integrate the power of left/right brain for business community to achieve business excellence.
The significant of EA is more more than IT or business, it steps into the domain of holism which is very different from the traditional ontological world. Modern physic recognize the limitation of classic mechanic and the holistic physics come to fill the gaps. In the twentieth century, under the evolution of quantum mechanic, the classic physic has undergone major supplementation and transformation. In the same token, architects have encountered the limitation of traditional architecture principle to architect an organic system. EA is a modern architecture concept to architecture organic system from holistic aspect. It is an to see the whole and find the parts rather than work on the parts to assemble the whole.
Light EA put different architecture effort into perspective. To overcome the redundant effort of silo system phenomenon and adapt the constant changing enterprise, the industry have come up with the concept of enterprise architecture, reference architecture, services oriented architecture, segment architecture and solution architecture. In the industry, every one only touch a part of the architecture approach and tend to insist on their righteousness from the parts they have touched as we have experienced in many architecture discussion as noted in the collection of EA definition. The only way to overcome the challenge of silo system, is to understand the value of each architecture effort and put them into perspective.
enterprise architecture
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Introduction
To overcome the redundant effort of silo system phenomenon and adapt the constant changing enterprise, the industry have come up with the concept of enterprise architecture, reference architecture, services oriented architecture, segment architecture and solution architecture. In the industry, every one only touch a part of the architecture approach and tend to insist on their righteousness from the parts they have touched as we have experienced in many architecture discussion. The only way to overcome the challenge of silo system, is to understand the value of each architecture effort and put them into perspective.Instead of architect a full blown enterprise blueprint, the Light EA suggest to plan high level and notional target alignment architecture, establish enterprise common services and initiate segment architecture based to close business performance gaps in time of business need. The Light EA approach put EA, SOA and Segment Architecture into prospect. In the past decades, for practical purpose, the architecture approach have logically evolved in the stages of EA blueprint, Service Oriented Architecture and Segment Architecture. instead of thinking EA is replaced by SOA or Segment Architecture, it is important to know that EA, SOA and Segment are closed related. In an expanded EA concept, The Light EA approach suggest EA is consist of the enterprise master plan to take advantage of the information technology evolution, the service oriented architecture to enable agility and the segment architecture to closed business performance gaps due to constant changing enterprise environment.
LEA serves as a bridge between business and engineering community to overcome the challenge of buy-in from the stake holders. It adopt a human centric EA approach to deliver tangible EA architecture drawing and use communication professional as the EA liaison in the business community. As the bridge, LEA can further integrate the power of left/right brain for business community to achieve business excellence.
It distinguish EA from an enterprise wide solution architecture. EA is an emerging paradigm as a cross cutting architecture paradigm.
The first generation of Enterprise Architecture is an holistic architecture approach to overcome the challenge of stovepipe system where holistic is defined as"
"Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts".
The holistic Enterprise Architecture is best illustrate in the John Zachman framework to describe whole of enterprise and the interdependence of its parts.
The Light Enterprise Architecture suggest that EA is not only holistic but also coherent in adapting change. Coherence is defined as:
"The quality or state of cohering, especially a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts.
Enterprise is a living thing, it is futile to practice EA as Enterprise wide solution architecture. An enterprise tends to be emergent rather moving in a planned manner. The Author draw upon the modern complex adaptive system(CAS)theory and learning experience from ancient Chinese wisdom to propose the Light Enterprise Archtiecture method as the next generation EA direction.
The Gartner group, in 2009, have announced a new style of enterprise architecture (EA) to respond to the growing variety and complexity in markets, economies, nations, networks and companies, according to Gartner, Inc. It is based on the complex adaptive system theory.
Instead of using profound complexity system terminology to describe the property, the author explain LEA in plan English.
THE LEA overview
Enterprise Architecture a holistic architecture approach to overcome the challenge of stovepipe system. It emphasize the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts. LEA see the whole via a collaborative business architecture effort to define the enterprise. It is a paradigm shift from the traditional ontology culture in the study of hierarchical being. The holistic architecture does not only applies to IT but also for business, financial, human resources.
A business is an organic system rather than a mechanical system. It is futile to architect the enterprise in a mechanical design approach in the same way of designing a jumbo jet or an aircraft carrier. The organic enterprise change constantly to the business environment, the change of Enterprise Architecture is to embrace change. LEA suggest to adapt change with the principle of Holistic, Agile and Coherence. it enable the enterprise to adapt change in time of need via the top down alignment architecture, the cross cutting agility architecture and the circular coherence architecture as described in the following summary of LEA models and framework.
4. The Light EA overview
The author take advantage of blog technology to develop the LEA book online science 2005. It is a working area to capture the on on going innovative and evolving EA concepts with the convince of online technology. It contains many raw concept without editing. The LEA book is organized in the following sections where each section is developed as an individual blog. The Overview section is a highlevel description of Light EA.
1. The LEA overview The LEA composed of the holistic business architecture, the top down alignment architecture, the cross cutting agility architecture and the iterative Coherence architecture.
2. 2. LEA fundamental
3. 3. LEA Planning
4. Enterprise Topology is a unique EA approach to see the true enterprise big picture, provide tangiable EA artifact and facilitate collaboration. "Knowing in part may make a fine tale, but wisdom comes from seeing the whole" []. The whole is the key to constitute EA as an emerging paradigm. Without seeing the true whole, It is difficult to distinguish EA from other architecture discipline. The current EA approach see the whole based on what they know without knowing what they do not know. Organic EA suggest to see the whole via collaboration and reconciliation from the stakeholders.
5. Business Architecture define the enterprise. EA can not be called EA without an enterprise definition. is not business process centric but also regard to business strategy, reorganization and office consolidation. Application development is business process centric to automate the business process. In EA, the Business Architecture must also take business strategy, process, business information, business organization, location and workload into account.
6. Alignment Architecture enable business to take advantage of technology evolution via aligning technology to business need. rather than how to development and application system. EA is not a enterprise scale application system design. It align application, data, security and technology to business need. Alignment architecture help business manager in taking advantage of technology evolution. It must be intuitive to the business managers. Enterprise architecture align automation solution from the high level of the whole, it is notional.
7. Agility Architecture enable agility via the engineering of reuse and consolidation on the principle to keep it simple. It is not only the result of engineering but also political process to earn buy-in from stakeholders.
is the effort to enable agility in adapting change by learning the right experiences of the others via reference model and reference architecture, reuse and consolidate common resources via reusable pattern and service oriented architecture. Recognizing reuse and consolidation as a horizontal architecture effort rather than a side kick of alignment architecture can clearly distinguish EA from application architecture. The horizontal architecture is not only the result of engineering but also the political process of standardization and compliance.
8. Coherent Architecture deliver the right architecture to the right people on the right place at the right time via performance measurement, strategic planning, segment architecture and solution architecture.Coherent architecture is the effort to deliver the right service to the right person on the right place at the right time. It is a continuous and organic effort to adapt the constant changing enterprise. It identify enterprise need via business performance gap analysis, IT strategic planning, segment architecture, transition plan and solution architecture. Under the context of coherent architecture, the scope of a segment architecture is defined based on business performance gap rather than a divide and conquer approach in engineering practice.
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