CoherentEA.com

The Coherent Enterprise Architecture has been a proponent of the stone soup approach. I am taking the stone soup approach to write this book with participation from the EA community. The challenge of stone soup approach is how to raise the villagers curiosity and participation. This time, instead of a pot with water and magic stone, I have set up many blog sections with CEA”s initial thoughts and expecting the global EA community to contribute their EA wisdom in the blog sections. Together, we can figure out the future direction of EA and achieve the goal for EA to become an emerging paradigm.

Who

Any one who generally agree with the CEA direction is welcome to be a coauthor. For overall consistency purpose, CEA reserve the right to terminate the relationship in case of significant deviation from CEA principle.

Why?
• Propose the future of EA together.
• Facilitate EA professional to write paper based on their experience and CEA concept.
• Facilitate graduate students and PHD candidates on research topic.

Benefit
• Become the host of the section.
• Write a paper for formal publication or school projects.
• You will be the primary author with CEA as the coauthor.

Effort
• Write this section based on the suggested outline.
• Each section requires certain effort of research.
• The content must generally follow CEA principle and concept.
• Leverage on Blog capability to write the section with public inputs.
• Become the host of this section and respond to comments.

How?

• Select the preferred section from the www.coherentEA.com website based on your interest.
• Prefer one section per person to allow more participation.
• Sent your request to peaitce@yahoo.com
• Please allow me to know more about your interest and establish mutual understanding.
• CEA will create your account to access your section and add your name to the section title.
• CEA will explain to you on how to access and edit your section.
• Communicate the CEA concept with you.
• You can update the section on line any where and any time.
• Encourage traffic to your section.
• Address comments.
• Write your research paper based on the content.

The Coherent Enterprise Architecture is looking for coauthors of the many different sections as shown on the coherenet EA website. I am looking for help to finish the draft sections. Each section is a blog of it own for the coauthor to complete. The flowing links are some example of these sections.

If you are interested to sponsor any of the sections please send email to peaitce@yahoo.com. Upon your request, I will create your account in CEA and grant access to the appropriate section to update the section.

Each section can become be published as a booklet rather Instead of large book of CEA, I am considering section as a book under the umbrella of CEA. Thanks.


• The See the big picture section

• The Preserving Institutional Knowledge section

• The Business Architecture section

• The Alignment Architecture Section

• The Agility Architecture Section

• The segment architecture section

Akshaya Bhatia has generously accepted my invitation as one of the Coherent EA advisors. They are my mentors to guide and encourage me in the development of Coherent EA.

Akshaya Bhatia is globally well known EA specialist, Business Analyst and business management consultant. He has nearly 22 years of comprehensive IT experience with expertise in Project Management, IT and Business Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, MIS, System Design and Development, Internet, Web and Telecom technologies, Network Security, Web services, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), EDA (Event Driven Architecture), CEP (Complex Event Processing), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), ERP, distributed data processing, database strategy, plan and implementation, Master Data management, CRM, and Change Management.

He has thoroughly researched on various approaches to Enterprise Architecture and practically involved in implementing the optimized IT system in total alignment with the Business. He has thoroughly studied and experimented with the well known EA models such as Zachman Framework, TOGAF ( The Open Group Architecture Framework), PRISM (Partnership for Research in Information Systems Management) Architecture Framework, Capgemini Integrated Architecture Framework, AGATE (Atelier de Gestion de l'ArchiTEcture des systθmes d'information et de communication), DODAF (Department of Defense Architecture) Framework-US, FEA (Federal Enterprise Architecture)-US, Microsoft EA etc. He has reviewed and contributed to the course material used in training used in several Institutions for EA, MIS and Web and networking technologies.

He has participated in design, development and implementation of variety of information system packages such as Inventory control, Accounts Receivable system, Payroll, Marketing Survey Analysis, Order Processing and Project monitoring systems in variety of industries such as Hardware manufacturer/distributor, Software developer/testing, customer support, Manufacturing, Real Estate, Finance, Event Marketing, Hospitality and Services.


He has thorough acumen in implementation as well as management of the financial, marketing, HR systems and also has comprehensive knowledge of theoretical, practical and operational aspects of each sub-system.


He has authored many a books on MIS that are prescribed in well known universities and management institutes for the post graduate management degree courses. He have provided assistance to numerous research scholars doing path breaking research in the field of engineering, mathematics, computer sciences and management.

The website is hereby renamed to Coherent Enterprise Architecture (CEA) to realize that Enterprise Architecture is the coherent Effort of business architecture, system architecture and agility architecture rather than the toggling war on EA is about Business or Alignment or Agility. In addition, I have just discovered Lightweight Enterprise Architecture by Fenix Theuerkorn. I would like rename my work to show my respect.

The new URL of Coherent Enterprise Architecture is :

http://www.coherentEA.com

US OMB has lead EA in a segment architecture approach rather than the traditional big ban effort. It is a divide and conquers approach;

The challenge is how to keep the segment architecture logically together to avoid segmented stovepipes architecture. Segment architecture is an further detail EA effort to elaborate the enterprise target architecture whcih is a highlevel master plan.

The other challenge is how to define a segment? Segments are defined to closes business performance gaps rather than engineering convenience. It is an incremental enterprise architecture effort to address business need rather than the architect’s ideology. Many EA experts have suggested to define segment based on architecture category in a bird of the same feather approach.

Please review The segment architecture article for more detail.

John Chi-Zong Wu has been an Enterprise Architecture advocate since 1998. He has actively participated and witnessed the EA evolution occurred in the Washington DC area and around the world. To navigate in the jungle of EA definition and looks for the truth of EA, he has kept his EA thoughts in the web site of Light Enterprise Architecture (LEA). John has describe the light enterprise architecture approach in the LEA book and the LEA guidance . The Light Enterprise Architecture approach is developed with hands on and prototype effort in EA Maps , EA portal, EA framework, EA architecture drawings and the web technical reference manual .

John has initiated the e-cio organization. He suggest, in the notion of " eat your own dog food", the office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO) must demonstrate their transition from stove pipe solution to EA culture. It is difficult to convince and get buy-in from the stakeholders when the OCIO has yet making the transition.

John is also a contributing author of the Cutter Consortium and has actively contribute EA thought to the ITtoolbox blog He is also the membership chair of the Association of Enterprise Architects DC chapter which provide regularly present EA seminars in Washington DC area.

John has earned a M.S. in Civil engineering form Howard University in 1979 and M.S. in Computer Science from Florida Institute of Technology in 1984. He was a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Florida since 1981. The inter discipline of engineering and computer science enable him to develop the Light Enterprise Architecture approach

He has built his strength in Enterprise Architect via hands on experiences in broad areas of application development, system engineering, database administration, and system administration and computer support management.

EA is a coherent effort of business modeling, IT solution alignment and the ability to privide value in time and manageing ambiguity as shown in the following concept.

Architecture by definition is the Orderly arrangement of parts. Enterprise Architecture adopt architecture as the mean to the end of overcome the challenge of stovepipe system and island of information. The EA industry has applied business architecture to design the enterprise business and system architecture to align technology with business However, enterprise is not static as a building or an application system. The nature of ambiguity and continuous change has been the major challenge of Enterprise. EA must also enable the agility to manage ambiguity and continuous change in addition to system architecture and business architecture.

The capability of agility does not just happen; it is the result of architecture and engineering effort. The architecture of agility is the effort to analyze the structure of agility. It is a cross-cutting solution to looks for commonality via the engineering reuse and consolidation. EA is the coherent effort of the business architecture, system architecture and agility architecture as shown in the following.





A presentation is developed to elaborate what is a coherent.

EA is the relation between Technology and Business to align IT with business need. Mathematically speaking, it is more topology than geometry.

A topology (from Greek topos meaning place) is a description of any kind of locality in terms of its layout. It is:

A mathematical branch that deal with position. Topology is contrary to common geometry, which puts emphasis on how points, lines and planes are composed in order to create ideal solid forms. Topology does not deal with single object and it visual attributes, but pays attention to how an object may be connected to or situated in relation to another object. []

EA is the study of the relation between technologies and businesses rather than developing a large scale application system.

Under the understanding of EA as the topology rather than a geometry, the study of topology relies the set theory. The Light EA suggests to study the intersections set rather than the union set. It is an effort to establish the common foundation and building blocks to enable the agility and simplicity on taking advantage of technology evolution.

Topography (Greek topos, "place", and graphia, "writing") is the study to render topology in schematic presentation. EA topography is the effort to render a comprehensive EA topology between business, application, data and technology. For more information please read:

EA Maps

Light Enterprise Architecture (LEA) suggests that EA is the relation between technology and business which align technology solutions to enterprise business need. Enterprise Architecture is not all about technology, it is not all about business either.

EA is not only all about technology. In the early stage of information age, many automation efforts are technology driven because the way that technology has change how business doing business. However, gradually, the community realizes that the evolution of information age got carried away in the technology driven approach to departure from what business need. Under this concern, EA was initiated to align technology and business and resolve the challenge of stovepipe systems. Even so, the technical world still interprets EA as the enterprise scalable system which is technology oriented.

EA is not all about business either. In the last few years, the EA community have swing the definition of EA to the other extreme to suggest the EA is all about business by interpret EA as "Architecting the enterprise" and it is all about business. The notion of EA is all about business has totally missed the point of what EA was initiated. It interprets EA by the word of "Enterprise Architecture" rather than by the origin of EA in the information age. It is unfortunate that it only scratch the surface of the words rather go to the depth of the root. EA is not in cosmetic business. Under this on going movement, EA has become the new name for old paradigm of business transformation which can be accounted from the old days bloody revolution, industry engineering, information engineering, enterprise engineer , business process reengineering and continuous improvement.

Enterprise Architecture is an emerging paradigm rather than enterprise large scale system architecture or the new episode of business improvement and transformation effort. EA aligns technology with business need, see the enterprise big picture to know the enterprise environment, learn experience of the others and establish common foundation and building blocks to enable agile and simple business transformation. Enterprise Architects is an emerging discipline o map technology with business need, the enterprise architect have to know the technology side and the business side enough to establish the relationship.

Thanks to Akshaya bhatia comment on LEA.

Having read about the LEA concept, albeit in pieces, the concept seems to be interesting. Lot of thoughts and efforts must have been gone into suggesting an approach that advocates the agility in the enterprise architecture. Thrust on business alignment and mapping technology solutions with the business processes, which most other models of EAs also suggest, is apt. May be a bit of refinement and openness in integrating the enterprise solutions in some form ,albeit in the background, into the EA domain will make it more interesting and comprehensible. Also, one to one comparison with other EA models will strengthen and not weaken the innovative idea of having a light weight EA model. Just some thoughts.

Wishing all the best to John Wu for working on innovative ideas on EA, which at onset look adventurous but may emerge pragmatic with a bit of more refinement and openness.

regards,