Getting Started

What are the benefits of Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise Architecture will deliver significant improvements in the following areas:

• The ability to rapidly adjust and adapt to new business circumstances
• The efficient and strategic use of applications & technology across the merged legal entities, and realisation of the Target Enterprise Architecture.
• The management of information/data and knowledge as a corporate asset
• The alignment between IT and business for planning and execution purposes
• The transparency, impartiality, quality and objectivity of architecture decision making (re: architecture requirements - Topics & Gaps)
• The management of change based on a clear understanding of its impact
• The optimisation, cost effectiveness, efficiency of the IT solutions
• The reduction of application complexity, and increased reuse of existing IT assets
• The reporting of performance results, and auditing of changes

Risks of no Enterprise Architecture

Failure to implement an Enterprise Architecture will present the following risks:

• Inability to rapidly respond to challenges driven by business changes
• Lack of focus on enterprise requirements
• Lack of common direction and synergies
• Incomplete visibility of the current and future target enterprise architecture vision
• Inability to predict impacts of future changes
• Increased gaps and architecture conflicts
• Lack of commonality and consistency due to the absence of standards
• Dilution and dissipation of critical information and knowledge of the deployed solutions
• Rigidity, redundancy and lack of scalability and flexibility in the deployed solutions
• Lack of integration, compatibility and interoperability between applications
• Complex, fragile and costly interfaces between incongruent applications
• Decision-making gridlock
• Piece-meal and ad hoc software development driven by a tactical and reactive approach

The Enterprise Architecture is …

The Enterprise Architecture is :

• An analysis tool to provide abstraction and modelling capabilities at all levels and perspective of the enterprise architecture
• A planning tool to translate strategic thinking into architecture roadmap of future development and integration
• An analysis tool to clearly plot the key relationships and dependencies between the business services, business processes, applications and technology
• A decision-making tool to provide a framework for evaluating-, selecting and justifying strategic development options (Topics) and solutions (architecture decisions)
• A design tool to provide the required support, in the form of industry best practice design approaches, patterns, guidelines, and reference models
• A change management tool to provide a framework for synchronising and coordinating development activities across multiple development projects and initiatives
• A governance tool to provide a sole architecture design authority and a master repository for the target enterprise architecture, and a single architectural blueprint of principles, standards, patterns, policies, guidelines, reference models, reusable assets and templates
• An alignment tool to provide an essential bridge between business strategy and IT delivery, and to furnish business managers with a non-technical over view of the enterprise architecture and how it supports the operating model