EA operation phase
EA is not static, it support the Enterprise Strategic direction which must be adustied to address enterprise performance gaps from the aspect of customer service, business result, process and technology. It is not a static architecture blueprint such as a large development project or an air craft carrier.EA must be useful and provide value for the enterprise to mature, otherwise it will fade and come and go. Architecture buy-in from the stakeholders is the major challenge of EA. Many EA effort has become shelfware EA in the past.
EA operation
The Operational EA section describe the operational EA work break down structure , the architecture team, the resources distribution, the notional schedule and the financial benefit.
1.0 LEA (EA 2.0) is an incremental and continuous architecture effort.
LEA, the EA 2.0, suggest the incremental solution where the target architecture serves only as a high level master plan rather than as the blueprint to design the entire enterprise. The Segment Architecture elaborate the high level target architecture in an incremental and continuous approach based on business performance gaps. It align to the high level enterprsie architecture plan and comply to the enterprsie standard to address enterprise business performance gaps.
The Target Enterprise architecture plan, which is the fundamental plan of the enterprise, is anology to the city plan as shown in the following figure; A segment architecture is partial architecture development based on business performance gaps similar to a segment in a city. It is a devide and conquer approach. A segment architecture is defined based business need rather than an categorization effort with the same line of business. A segment architecture, base on business need, contains more than one line of business.
1.1 Continuous architecture by governance and compliance
EA 2.0 is a continuous architecture development effort where the enterprise adopt new architecture standards due to rapid technology evolution. To keep up the new architecture standards, business segments in the enterprise continue to modernize their segment architecture via compliance review processes.
1.2 Incremental architecture development by segment architecture
EA 2.0 is an incremental architecture development effort via segment architecture. It is incrementally initiated to elaborate the enterprise target architecture to close business performance gaps.
2. Enterprise Target Architecture is a high level master plan
At the initial stage of EA, in instead making heavy investment to design the entire enterprise blueprint, it is more practical to establish the enterprise master plan which is similar to a master plan in city planning. The master target architecture plan do not requires significant effort of time and resources. The EA Target Architecture plan is developed based on the enterprise mission and direction and serve as the guide and the framework for the enterprise. LEA is a continuous architecture effort to elaborate the target architecture design . It can be for the development for a new segment or the modernization of an old segment.
2.1 Enterprise Target Architecture must be holistic
The Enterprise Target Architecture plan must be holistic to cover every aspect of Enterprise Architecture at the high level. LEA suggest to use enterprise architecture framework as to assure that enterprise target architecture is comprehensive to describe the high level architecture in each area
2.2 Enterprise Target Architecture describe the connectivity
The enterprise target architecture must describe the relation and connectivity between architecture components in different areas of the framework. The relation and connectivity serve as the context to relate and integrate segment architecture.
2.3 Analogy to a city plan
In the analogy of City planning, the target architecture is similar to the master city plan and the city is developed incrementally by different segment in the city. For example : The city of Washington DC was planed Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant on the year of 1800, it has been the master plan of Washington DC since then. Instead of taking Nero’s approach to design and build the city in a “Big Bang” approach, the city of Washington DC is developed in a segment architecture approach base on business need.
2.4 FEAPMO Segment Architecture has not explicitly address the concept of high level target architecture.
US OMB FEAPMO has initiated the Segment Architecture without clearly pointing out the concept of Enterprise Target Architecture is a master plan rather than the enterprise blueprint where the segment architecture is the continuous effort to elaborate the enterprise architecture based on the master plan. Fail to do so has caused significant confusion in the EA community of what is Segment Architecture. Without the concept of Target Architecture as the master plan, the Segment Architecture can be interpreted as a federated Enterprise Architecture effort, or as the LOB architecture pattern. With the concept of enterprise target architecture as the master plan, it is easy to understand that segment architecture is a divide and conquer approach to develop EA by enterprise segments driven by business performance gaps under the guide of the target enterprise architecture master plan. Describe the high level target enterprise architecture with EA framework.
3. Segment Architecture
1. A segment architecture is the engineering approach to divide and conquer a large system into a manageable scope for architecture design and making transition is reasonable time.
2. A segment architecture compartmentalize the enterprise target architecture with string attached to align with the context requirements. This is a classical engineering technique. For example : The structure engineering technique of “Taking free body of a structure member”.
3. The scope of a segment architecture is defined to close business performance gaps, it is determined based on business and engineering judgment. It is an effort to design the architecture only in time of need and before the architecture design become obsolete. The business performance gap can be in one line of business or in many line of business. The key is manageability.
4. Segment architecture design contains detail information and serve as the blueprint to establish the enterprise segment.
5. Segment architecture is not a reference architecture pattern or LOB architecture pattern for reuse.
3.1 Segment architecture elaborate the master plan based on enterprise need.
Segment Architecture elaborate a segment of the enterprise target architecture plan based on enterprise performance gap as shown in the following figure.
3.2 Initiate segment architecture to close business performance gap.
Segment architecture is initiated to close business performance gap. It can be the performance gap in mission and business result, customer satisfaction result, Process and Activity result as shown in the FEAPMO performance reference model.
3.3 Segment Architecture complies to enterprise architectures standards and share enterprise wide common resources
Segment architectures are not independently initiated without the overall enterprise overall consideration and the enterprise have to make special effort to integrated many segments. Integration is not a concern Segment Architect because it is designed under the context of Enterprise Architecture to follow the enterprise architecture standards and share enterprise common foundation and building blocks. The keys is to follow Enterprise Architecture Standards.
4.0 The segment architecture design approach
The segment architecture adopt the classical and popular EA design framework To identify the subject areas as-is environment from the big picture and design the consolidated target subject area enterprise architecture base on standards in the reference model and the enterprise consideration of workload and performance requirement. They perform the gap analysis within the subject area and plan the transition from the as-is environment to the target architecture.
as shown in the following :
The shelfware EA Traditional EA approach, evolved from application development concept, has adopted system development paradigm for enterprise architecture. Under this approach, a group of architects walk away for couple years and come back with volumes of EA documentation , spread sheet, reports and presentations with limited stakeholder participation . After all the hard effort in business process and data modeling, enterprise wide application architecture, data and technology architecture design. The Enterprise Architect find out that architecture buy-in from stakeholders is non existing. Many EA effort has become shelfware EA. It is good for inspection and display.
EA is alive and powered by the governance and compliance process to establish standards and assure the compliance of standards. Governance process is similar to the legislative process to establish the standards which can be the process standards, application standards, data standards, technology standards. Compliance process is similar to the enforcement process to assure the compliance with standards for the purpose of reuse and sharing.
EA consist of the initail phase to establish the EA foundation and operation phase to design the architecture with buy-in from the stakeholders.
The purpose of EA operation is to get buy-in from the stakeholders. The industry have realize the problem of shefware EA and sugget functional EA, operational EA and live EA. OMB in particular emphasize the use of EA. It is all a matter of Buy-in from the stakeholder.
LEA suggest to make transtion from the EA dictator to EA faciliator to overcome the challenge of buy-in via the wisdom of traditional political system because EA is all about people.
It suggest that governance is similar the legislative process to establish the EA stanadards which does not only include technology standards but also process standards, the data standards and the application standards.
It suggest the compliance is similar to the enforcement process to assure the system quality in design, reuse and sharing.
The EA operation follow the EA operation process which consist of the governance and compliance procesesses ^ TOP