Enterprise Architecture Planning

While Enterprise Architecture (EA) defines what needs to be done, planning defines when Enterprise Architecture Frameworks will be implemented. Enterprise Architecture planning is a process of defining the architecture for the use of information in support of the business and plan for implementing them. An Enterprise Architecture Life Cycle (EALC) is the basic planning format applied to Enterprise Architecture and strategic planning.

Enterprise Architecture:

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the practice of designing, analyzing, planning and implementing enterprise analysis to successfully execute on business strategies. EA began in the 1960s, born from ‘various architectural manuscripts in Business Systems Planning (BSP) by Professor Dewey Walker. The Enterprise Architecture framework came as a response to the increase of business technology, especially in the 1980s when the computer systems taking hold in the workplace.

The modern EA strategies now extend this philosophy to the entire business, and not just IT, to ensure the alignment in business with digital transformation strategies and technological growth. EA is especially very useful for large businesses going through digital transformation as it focuses on bringing legacy processes and applications together.

Architecture is an area of science in information systems that basically meant to build the foundation of a structure, behaviour characteristics and principles as well as a guide, alteration and operation in developing the system in the long term. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a representation of the structure and behaviour of a company’s business processes. EA includes:

1. An insight into the utilization of current information technology in business operations.
2. A vision for the future utilization of information technology in business operations, and
3. A roadmap for the evolution of information technology landscape from the current state to the future state, along with the transient states in between.

What is Enterprise Architecture Planning?

Enterprise Architecture Planning is a collection of architectural and strategic fields that include information, business systems, and architectural engineering. EAP is a modern approach for the planning of the quality data in order to achieve a mission of Information Systems. It is also a process of defining a number of architectures, that is: data architecture, application architecture, and architecture in using information technology to support a business.

Benefits of Enterprise Architecture Planning:

1. Improves a company’s operations: Implementing the enterprise architecture gives a business a clearer picture of how all of its IT components work together most effectively and improve the staff productivity and communication, eliminating redundant and unnecessary technology solutions.
2. Improves business agility: The technology team is able to adjust both more quickly and less disruptively when they need new solutions or make changes to the existing ones when the organization has developed a holistic view of its IT infrastructure.
3. It can help the IT team earn stakeholder to buy-in: Enterprise Architecture planning typically involves relevant stakeholders across the organization as it affects everyone across the company.

Enterprise Architect Role:

Enterprise architects typically report to the CIO or other IT managers as they are responsible for analyzing business structures and processes to see whether it aligns with business goals effectively and efficiently. As an Enterprise Architect, you’ll be responsible for ensuring the structures and processes that are agile and durable, so that you can swiftly adapt and withstand major change.

Enterprise Architecture as Strategy:

What you sell today may not be what you sell tomorrow. There are five common areas that benefit from implementing Enterprise Architecture: data management, IT infrastructure, application development, business processes and organizational impact. The data management, application development, IT infrastructure when combined with enterprise architecture- influences cost, redundancy, integration, agility, reuse, and standardization. The business process injects modularity, integration, automation and redundancy benefitting impact enterprise architecture maturity and governance.

Enterprise architecture improves organizational impacts through productivity, product and service timeliness, revenue growth, cost reduction. And each of these individually makes your case for enterprise architecture and its benefits for a business.

Methodology for Enterprise Architecture Planning:

1. Identify and Validate: Engage sponsors and access business-partner needs, analyze and validate needs, identify and engage governance.
2. Research and leverage: Identify the organizations and service providers to engage, opportunities to leverage, and determine whether to leverage.
3. Define and plan: Formalize collaborative planning-team and launch planning; define the visions for performance and outcomes, analyze the current state, determine adjustments, and plan the target state and initiate execution.
4. Invest and execute: Define the funding strategy and make obtain resources and validate the plan with executing.
5. Perform and measure: Operate with new capabilities and measure performance against metrics with analyzing and providing feedback.