Summary of "EA paradigm"
1. EA is an emergin paradigm2. Enterprise Architects are the glue not the guru.
3. The skill set of Enterprise Architect
The following paragraphs ellaborate the EA discipline. For online reading purpose, each article is only partially displayed, please click on the read_more for the full article.
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EA paradigm
3.5 CEA defined a distinctive EA paradigmCEA has clearly defined a distinctive EA paradigm and answered the question of “What is EA?”. Enterprise Architecture is an emerging paradigm to integrate the power of business and engineering. Enterprise Architects are the professional help both the leaders and executor to know the parts and see the whole. They are trained to communicate and get buy-in from both business and engineering community. They render the invisible enterprise big picture for all to comprehend. They find the linkage between business and engineering at all level and they enable agility by aligning common services to business need.
EA industry has not evolves as expected due to lack of a distinctive EA definition. Some EA experts has defined EA professional in a Mr. know all approach, it does not serve well to the business need as the second tier experts of many discipline and It is also not possible to supply the demand of EA professional via institutional training.
Deny EA as a emerging paradigm
The business centric EA approach suggest EA as a system architecture dicipline instead of EA as an emerign paradigm. The concept of "architecting the enterprise" is the effort to apply system architecture principle in business. The believe is that an architectued enterprise will be more efficient than the traditional business which is not systematically organized. Under this concept, EA become a project to architect the enterprise via strategic planning, system engineering and business process reengineering rather than EA is not an emerging paradigm.
Strategic planning
System engineering
Business process reengineering
Business transforamtion
An important sustaining factor for EA is to recognize that EA is an emerging paradigm with special discipline to distinguish from the other paradigm. Some EA experts would like to consider that EA is an enterprise wide application architecture effort within the system engineering paradigm. The fact is that the challenge of stovepipe system can not be overcome with the same system engineering solution which create the stovepipes system at the first place. It only ends up with larger stovepipe systems. System engineering is a top down solution, EA learns the experience from the others and provide the common resources to enable agile automation system development.
EA is not a redundant effort of business transformation or enterprise wide system engineering. To justify the existence and avoid the fate of “Come and go” as many business improvement effort, EA must provide added value to the community rather appears to be a redundant effort of many existing paradigm. EA has being struggling for recognition not only from the general community but also from the EA professional with the burden of their past profession. The uncertainty of EA is more contributed by the EA professionals themselves rather than the community.
EA is a emerging paradigm rather than the overlap of business transformation. EA enable the agility to support business transformation automation in time of need. IT managers should not assume the responsibility to transform the enterprise.
Business transformation has been an established paradigm
Business transformation which is a management discipline for decision makers, has been an established paradigm for many years through the evolution in strategic planning, industrial engineering, operation research, BPR, TQM Enterprise Engineering. Information age business transformation is essential to take advantage of the rapid change of technology evolution as described in BPR, TQM and Enterprise Engineering and many others. It has been an on going effort for many years.
EA applies system architecture principle on the enterprise to analyze the enterprise elements, the relation between enterprise element and their connectivity. Target Business Architecture is the effort is the business transformation effort to design idealistic Business Architecture.
Business transformation which is a management discipline for decision makers, has been an established paradigm for many years through the evolution in strategic planning, industrial engineering, operation research, BPR, TQM Enterprise Engineering. Information age business transformation is essential to take advantage of the rapid change of technology evolution as described in BPR, TQM and Enterprise Engineering and many others. It has been an on going effort for many years.
IT managers should not assume the responsibility to transform enterprise
Recently, many EA experts try to raise the stake of EA beyond IT to architect the enterprise as part on the business transformation paradigm. This direction have pretty much denied EA as an emerging paradigm and it become a redundant of business transformation paradigm.
There is a great risk for the IT manager to assume the responsibility of transforming the enterprise.
Susan grovangt [] state that "System implementations make business and break through process change possible and business managers should partner with IT, not the reverse. But the reality is that when there is not clear business vision driving decisions with an organization, it is often difficult for IT to decline the leadership role in Enterprise Engineering efforts.
As a result, IT is often blamed for the failure to successfully transform an organization through implementation of systems when in fact, it is the lack of strategic business vision and leadership from the outset that led to the failure to achieve desired outcomes. Thus IT managers and organizations should not accept responsibility for driving an organization transformation without understanding the accompany risks and only after failing to recruit the necessary business leadership and vision to lead the effort."
EA is an emerging paradigm
Enterprise Architecture which initiated to overcome the challenge of stove pipe systems and automation island in the information age, is a emerging paradigm in the IT discipline. EA should not be confused as the information age business transformation although both related to technology. Information age business transformation is a management discipline for decision makers. EA is an IT discipline for total participation. It resolve the challenge of stove pipe systems by establish common services, components and building blocks to reuse, share and improve interoperability .
EA enable the agility to support business transformation
EA is the missing link for the success of information age business transformation. In the past two decades, the effort of information age business transformation have limited success due to lack of agility to support the dynamic of business transformation. Stove pipe oriented application development takes many years to automate the reengineered business process. EA is the effort to prepare the common services, building blocks and components to enable the agility of supporting the dynamic of business transformation. James Martin in Enterprise Engineering [] state that :
“ Information technology provide the infrastructure and tools, which fundamentally change organizations, but management provide the strategic and business vision and transform technology into competitive advantage”
IT managers should not assume the responsibility to transform enterprise
Recently, many EA experts try to raise the stake of EA beyond IT to architect the enterprise as part on the business transformation paradigm. This direction have pretty much denied EA as an emerging paradigm and it become a redundant of business transformation paradigm.
There is a great risk for the IT manager to assume the responsibility of transforming the enterprise.
Susan grovangt [] state that “System implementations make business and break through process change possible and business managers should partner with IT, not the reverse. But the reality is that when there is not clear business vision driving decisions with an organization, it is often difficult for IT to decline the leadership role in Enterprise Engineering efforts.
As a result, IT is often blamed for the failure to successfully transform an organization through implementation of systems when in fact, it is the lack of strategic business vision and leadership from the outset that led to the failure to achieve desired outcomes. Thus IT managers and organizations should not accept responsibility for driving an organization transformation without understanding the accompany risks and only after failing to recruit the necessary business leadership and vision to lead the effort.”
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The skill of Enterprise Architects
4.0 THE EA DISCIPLINESEA is the relation between business and technologies where the EA professional must know enough about the both side of business and technology to analyze their relation. EA is also the effort of cross-cutting solution where the EA professional must be trained to learn experience of the other, the engineering of reuse and the engineering of consolidation. The following disciplines are identified as the fundamental skill for the EA professional to distinguish them self from the other professional and enable institutional EA training to meet the market need in EA industry. From institutional training aspect, It is suggested to teach EA in the department of information management.
• To see the forest of the enterprise.
• EA model and framework
• Overcome the challenge of buy-in.
• EA communication
• Business modeling
• System Architecture
• Information management .
• Learning experiences of others.
• The engineering of reuse
• The engineering of consolidation.
• EA tool and automation
• EA utilization
4.1 To see the forest of enterprise
Enterprise architecture are trained to facilitate the collaboration to see the whole rather than trained to see the whole. Seeing the whole is an collaborate effort. No one can really see the whole by themselves. The challenge is that each individual believe that they are correct about the whole as they describe in the story of blind man and the elephant. Each individual can only comprehend a part which they may think it is the whole. Human being can not comprehend when the object is too small or too large. In a essence, no different to a blind. In the story of the blind man and the elephants, each blind man thinking his own perception of the elephant was correct. The Rajah listened for a few moments, and then said, "The elephant is large. Each man touched only one part. You must put all parts together to find out what an elephant is really like." [Young 1993] Under the concept of EA as information city planning, The Light Enterprise Architecture (LEA) approach [] suggest to see the whole using the EA Maps which is similar to the topology in the traditional city planning.
4.2 EA model and frameworks
EA professionals must be trained to understand with major EA framework and models. For example: The Zachman Framework The federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) , Department of Defense Enterprise Architecture Framework (DoDAF) and the Open Group enterprise architecture framework (TOGOF). EA framework serves two purpose. It is for the EA professional to comprehend the overall structure of EA and use the EA model and framework as a check list for the completeness and homogeneous of their EA projects. The other purpose of EA model and framework is to support the communication between professionals and only between the EA professional. EA model and framework do not serve well to communicate with general stakeholders. The Light Enterprise Architecture has developed the LEA model and the LEA framework
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