Describing Enterprise Architecture

In his seminal paper John Zachman (1987) discusses information architecture and compares it to the process of constructing a building. According to him the architecture serves the purposes of documenting the design, and then convincing the prospective owner that money should be invested in the project to create the design in reality.

Enterprise architecture should address the interests and concerns of the stakeholders. (Zachman, 1987; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1471).

Enterprise architecture has its roots in the information and software architectures. The IEEE 1471 (Recommended Practice for Architecture Description of Software-Intensive Systems) specifies that architecture should provide definitions and a meta-model for architecture, should address stakeholder concerns, that it must contain multiple views, content requirements and provide guidance on describing the architecture rationale.

Applying these principles to enterprise architecture, implies that enterprise architectures should provide definitions and meta-models that describe the enterprise, its fundamental organization, its components, the component descriptions and the relationships between them, should address different stakeholder views and interests. It should also describe the principles that govern the design and the evolution of the architecture over time. (Coetzee, 2004).

Coetzee (2004) argues that the components of the enterprise to be contained in the enterprise architecture should be a strategic view, containing strategy descriptions to be accomplished by the enterprise; a business view, which describes organizational functionality, structures and behaviour; a technology view, which describes applications architectures, information architectures and physical technology structure. From the enterprise architecture description, understanding of, and future development of the enterprise should be possible.

Giachetti (2009) specifies that an enterprise architecture description should contain a model to allow for stakeholder understanding and communication, provide a high-level holistic design of the business, express architectural and governing principles, and ensures compliance to regulation and law. The purpose of this is to enable efficiency, reduce costs and improve systems.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) describes enterprise architecture as a blueprint of the enterprise including business, information systems and technology descriptions. Enterprise architecture in this framework offers more efficient information technology operation, reduced risk, improved return on investment and improved procurement.

In conclusion, many different views exist on what should be contained in enterprise architecture descriptions, but agreement exists on the fact that it is a blueprint to establish and guide the design and development of the enterprise. The enterprise architecture description should contain aspects of business, application systems and technology.

References

Coetzee C.F. (2004), Business Analysis Concepts, Lecture

Giachetti R.E. (2009), Design for the Entire Business, Industrial Engineer, 41(6):39-43

IEEE 1471, Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1471 (Accessed 23 August 2009)

Welcome to TOGAF Version 9, Available from http://www.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/ (Accessed 23 August 2009)

Zachman J.A. (1987), A framework for information systems architecture, IBM Systems Journal, 26(3):454-470