Enterprise architecture framework: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:37, 16 February 2019

Revision as of 22:56, 6 April 2019

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Since the 1970s people working in IS/IT have looked for ways to engage business people – to enable business roles and processes - and to influence investment in business information systems and technologies – with a view to the wide and long term benefits of the enterprise. Many of the aims, principles, concepts and methods now employed in EA frameworks were established in the 1980s, and can be found in IS and IT architecture frameworks published in that decade and the next.<ref name="GB 2013">Graham Berrisford (2008-13) "[http://grahamberrisford.com/A%20brief%20history%20of%20EA.htm A brief history of EA: what is in it and what is not]" on ''grahamberrisford.com'', last update 16/07/2013. Accessed 16/07?2003</ref>

By 1980, IBM’sIBM's [[Business Systems Planning]] (BSP) was promoted as a method for analyzing and designing an organization’sorganization's information architecture, with the following goals:

# understand the issues and opportunities with the current applications and technical architecture;

# develop a future state and migration path for the technology that supports the enterprise;

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In 1992, a paper by Zachman and Sowa<ref name="JZ 1992">Zachman and Sowa (1992) ''Extending and formalising the framework of information systems architecture'' IBM Systems Journal, Vol 31, No 3</ref> started thus "John Zachman introduced a framework for information systems architecture (ISA) that has been widely adopted by systems analysts and database designers." The term enterprise architecture did not appear. The paper was about using the ISA framework to describe, “...the overall information system and how it relates to the enterprise and its surrounding environment.” The word enterprise was used as a synonym for business.

In 1993, Stephen Spewak’sSpewak's book [[Enterprise Architecture Planning]] (EAP) defined a process for defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business and the plan for implementing those architectures. The business mission is the primary driver. Then the data required to satisfy the mission. Then the applications built to store and provide that data. Finally the technology to implement the applications. Enterprise Architecture Planning is a data-centric approach to architecture planning. An aim is to improve data quality, access to data, adaptability to changing requirements, data interoperability and sharing, and cost containment. EAP has its roots in IBM’sIBM's [[Business Systems Planning]] (BSP).<ref name="HISTORY" />

In 1994, the Open Group selected [[TAFIM]] from the US DoD as a basis for development of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), where architecture meant IT architecture. TOGAF started out taking a strategic and enterprise-wide, but technology-oriented, view. It emerged from the desire to rationalize a messy IT estate. Right up to version 7, TOGAF was still focused on defining and using a Technical Reference Model (or foundation architecture) to define the platform services required from the technologies that an entire enterprise uses to support business applications.<ref name="GB 2013"/>

In 1996, the US ''IT Management Reform Act'', more commonly known as the [[Clinger-Cohen Act]], repeatedly directed that a US federal government agency’sagency's investment in IT must be mapped to identifiable business benefits. In addition, it made the agency CIO responsible for, “...developing, maintaining and facilitating the implementation of a sound and integrated IT architecture for the executive agency.”

By 1997, Zachman had renamed and refocused his ISA framework as an EA framework; it remained a classification scheme for descriptive artifacts, not a process for planning systems or changes to systems.

In 1998, The Federal CIO Council began developing the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) in accordance with the priorities enunciated in Clinger-Cohen and issued it in 1999. FEAF was a process much like TOGAF’sTOGAF's ADM, in which “The architecture team generates a sequencing plan for the transition of systems, applications, and associated business practices predicated upon a detailed gap analysis [between baseline and target architectures].”

In 2001, the US Chief CIO council published ''A practical guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture'', which starts, “An enterprise architecture (EA) establishes the Agency-wide roadmap to achieve an Agency’s mission through optimal performance of its core business processes within an efficient information technology (IT) environment."

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In 2002/3, in its ''Enterprise Edition'', TOGAF 8 shifted focus from the technology architecture layer to the higher business, data and application layers. It introduced structured analysis, after [[information technology engineering]], which features, for example, mappings of organization units to business functions and data entities to business functions. Today, business functions are often called business capabilities. And many enterprise architects regard their business function/capability hierarchy/map as the fundamental Enterprise Architecture artifact. They relate data entities, use cases, applications and technologies to the functions/capabilities.

In 2006, the popular book ''Enterprise Architecture As Strategy<ref>[[Jeanne W. Ross]], [[Peter Weill]], and [[David C. Robertson]] ( (2006) ''Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution''. Harvard Business Review Press</ref>'' reported the results of work by MIT’sMIT's Center for Information System Research. This book emphasises the need for enterprise architects to focus on core business processes ("Companies excel because they've [decided] which processes they must execute well, and have implemented the IT systems to digitise those processes.") and to engage business managers with the benefits that strategic cross-organisational process integration and/or standardisation could provide.

A 2008 research project for the development of professional certificates in enterprise and solution architecture by the [[British Computer Society]] (BCS) showed that enterprise architecture has always been inseparable from information system architecture, which is natural, since business people need information to make decisions and carry out business processes.<ref name="GB 2013"/>