An Enterprise Architecture Management Method

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract:

There are several methods and frameworks which are developed and designed for enterprise architecture and each of them have a particular plan in order to represent As-Is (current architecture), To-Be ( should architecture), and migration plan ( move to To-Be). But, there are lacks of concern about migration plan in existing EA methodologies, so the problem is how to manage the migration plan due to recognizing several projects. In order to solve this problem, this paper presents the management method for EA project. The Proposed method is inspired by agile architecture in order to be a flexible, iterative, and faster. Our purposed method provide inventory for maintaining all models and documents which are developed during the EA project in order to use them in appropriate place.

The main advantages of this scheme are facilitating the level's identification of activities related to enterprise architecture, capacity to develop activities, performing activities in accordance with the enterprise's scale and reducing overhead cost of implementing enterprise architecture.

Key words: Enterprise Architecture- Enterprise Architecture Management Method- Agile Architecture

Introduction

Enterprise Architecture is a set of technical diagrams and documents which are used in order to define the missions, the necessary information to perform them, the essential technologies to implement the aforementioned missions, and the transitional processes necessary for launching new technologies in response to changing in missions. Enterprise architecture includes, As-Is Architecture, To-Be architecture and a Migration Plan [1].As is architecture contains a set of definitions which illustrate the current state of the enterprise's mission, business processes and technology's infrastructure [1]. To-Be Architecture includes a set of definitions to represent the desired future state of the enterprise. This type of architecture is the result of enterprise's long-term strategies and plans [1]. Migration Plan is a document that demonstrates the essential strategy and timetable for the transition from the current state to the desired one [1].

To put it in another words, enterprise architecture is an overall approach toward enterprise's duties and missions, activities' process, information's entities, communications network, the order of activities in an enterprise which are performed in order to create an integrated and efficient information systems.

The importance of Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to align business and Information System (IS).Information systems architecture provides a uniform framework, through which different persons with various viewpoints, can view or organized the main constituent information systems' blocks. Enterprise Architecture includes regulating a set of terms to define a unified structure, including components, their relationships, and how these components interact with each other [4].

The domain of Enterprise architecture is to designing business and IT systems alignment. EA discipline has emanated from business and IT best practices. Thus EA frameworks are mostly different structure.

Several EA frameworks have been defined in recent years. EA frameworks are identified by a modeling paradigm where the multidisciplinary characteristics of the business and its IT systems are designed in several levels. Each level represents the fact as viewed by a different attitudes, e.g. marketing, business process, and IT developers.

1-1 Why Enterprise Architecture

The main reasons that enterprises tend to take advantage of enterprise architecture are:

Variety of new technologies that are applied in organizations.

The rapid development of hardware and software environments

No infliction in technical standards and working environments of foreign contractors

Budget constraints and financial resources for investment on information technology

1-2 Benefits of Enterprise Architecture

The resulting benefits of proper implementation of enterprise architecture are:

Improve methods and processes in organizational missions

Reducing the complexity in information systems

Information integration and eliminating data redundancy

Adapting the management's demands with advances in information technology

Facilitating and managing the change's implementations

Flexibility of enterprise in facing with external changes

Changes have no effect on interaction with the customers

Facilitating changes in information systems by means of predicting components

Preventing the adverse impact of business and technology on each other

Reducing the maintenance costs of information systems

Production of information systems with the ability to interact with each other with comprehensive information environment

Problem in managing EA

According to this fact that EA must be covered all aspect of each enterprise, thus EA team includes various types of specialists such as business analyzer, IT analyzer, upper management, architecture and others. In other word, EA team is multi-disciplinary. Hence, the significant item in EA project is that how each part of EA project (including: business strategy, business process, business model, software engineering, and data modeling) are fulfilled. In other words, when EA project acquire all needed information and data form each aspect of enterprise. Unfortunately, most of EA projects fail respect to they could not achieving integration between business and IT.

There are lacks of concern about migration plan and EA management in existing EA methodologies, thus the problem is how to manage EA project particularly the migration plan due to recognizing several projects. In order to solve this problem, this paper presents the management method for EA project. The rest of this research is organized into three sections, presenting proposed method, utilizing proposed method in one case study, and conclusion of this research.

3- Proposed method

The Proposed method is inspired by agile architecture in order to be a flexible, iterative, and faster. These features support proposed method to manage EA project properly.

Agile architecture is easy in the documentation, adaptive to changes and customer-based. Agility is a systematic and deliberate approach toward software development. High-risk projects with variable demands are fully applicable in agility. Agility has been successful because it credits importance on customer concerns and promote team work. The most interesting aspect of all agile methods is in repetition and the same rules [3].

3-1 Reducing the Risk:

Due to using agile approach in this research, proposed method is adapted. Thus proposed method reduces EA project risk by means of agile management to adapt itself by the text development. Next, the step assessment plays a major role as a basis for decision making "go" or "not to go" in any major changes applied to the original project (figure 1), whereas other method reduce risk in EA project by means of very detailed and accurate planning, from the beginning stages. Eliminating the risks, indicates that the application requirements, is constant.

Hence, the proposed method provides a dynamic method that is appealing for both the customer and the developer. Customer finds himself in the central role of development; also developers will participate in all aspects of development. In fact both work as part of a real team.

Looking for technical method

Develop

Requirement Statement

Estimate

Pursuit of development

Detailed design and develop simultaneously

Adapt or Perform

Information

GO/Not Go

Requirements

Design

GO/Not Go

GO/Not Go

General features

Accurate aligning estimation

Constraints and dependences

Figure1.

In large enterprises, the problem of information system's development is not creating and technical project management .however the problems are official satisfactory expression of the requirements and common responsibilities among many participants. These problems can be resolved through agile methods. Second assessment plays a major role as a basis for decision making "go" or "not to go" in any major changes applied to the original project.

3-2 Managing the EA Project

Enterprise Architecture perspectives about principles of agility management:

Investment's efficiency would increase by focusing more on processes of permanent value. Conclusively EA project has found a special importance when many enterprises are implemented enterprise architecture in order to use its benefits in their organization. When an enterprise architecture method is applied, it should return values quickly ​​to ensure rest of its activities.

Reliable results will be presented by customer satisfaction and repetition of interactions. Acceptable results of this project and its business value make the stakeholder more willing to use this plan.

Predicted deficiencies are resolved through iterations, anticipation and adapting them with the situations. These deficiencies not only capture from weak performance and inappropriate management plan, but also rapid business changes play significant role too.

مدل‌های همگن : متدهاي چابک با توجه به دغدغه هاي كلي مدير پروژه، شمولي را پيشنهاد مي‌كنند كه يا بسيار كامل هستند و يا از تكامل نسبتاً کاملی برخوردار هستند]28[،]3[:

Homogeneous models: agile methods includes general concerns of project manager, propose an inclusion which is totally complete or is almost completely developed [28], [3]

Concerning the environment (put the project in to information system)

Management (resource management, planning, monitoring, quality, reporting, visual possibilities)

Application engineering (requirements management, creating ,development and evaluation)

Change management (organizational effects and preparation)

3-3 Enterprise Architecture Management Method (proposed method)

The proposed method is based on philosophy either top-down or down-up due to iterative pattern. This method is composed three distinct layers which each layer of them is connected to other close layer. The concern of this method is to provide a management plan to maintain all developed artifacts during the EA project and use them on the right situation. Current EA projects are developed based on their architect's experiences that are come from previous projects. Thus there is no academic and theory for this purpose. Our method gets concepts and principles from agile architecture due to create fast development and easy understanding method.

Proposed method as shown in figure 2 use three type of principles including: Business models, IT models, and IS. It like three gears which are moved each other. It means that each layer can influences other layers due to change circumstances.

Figure2. Three principles which are used in proposed method

The proposed method attempts to capture knowledge and expertise from specialist which are participated in EA project and keep them into the repository. The purpose of usage a repository is to keeping all developed artifacts. The deficiency of EA artifacts will be solved due to iterative proposed method. Proposed method contains six segments which are defined as below.

Figure 3- Proposed EA management method

Mission: the term of mission in this method use for describing the enterprise targets and goals. Thus is it important for each enterprise to define accurate and holistic mission. The characteristic of mission is shown in figure 4.

Business Architecture:

3-3 الگوواره توليد و ارزيابي معماري سازماني چابك

3-3 production patterns and agile enterprise architecture assessment

شکل شماره 8-1- رویه‌ی پذیرش ارزیابی / تصمیم گیری]26[

سازمانی به لحاظ عملياتي، چابک است، زماني كه مولفه هاي عملياتي آن (منابع انساني، فرآيندهاي عملياتي، سيستم هاي اطلاعاتي و تكنولوژيكي) در قالب اشتراك مساعي، همكاري مي‌كنند،‌ پيش بيني يا جمع آوري با هدف جبران كردن به شيوه‌ي پويا براي آن، تغيير مي‌كند و سپس آن را ادغام مي‌كند. بدين ترتيب، سازمان رابطه‌ايي است كه به طور مداوم، اهدافش را تنظيم مي‌كند. در اين تحقیق، برنامه چابک، تأثير و كارآمدي را براي آينده فوري براساس عملكرد منجر به عمل‌گرايي نشان داد]3[،]26[.

Enterprise is agile in operations. When its operational components (human resources, operational processes, information systems and technology) corporate in terms of synergies. Prediction or collection is changed for it, by means of dynamic method in order to compensate, and then integrating it. Thus, the enterprise is a relationship that continuously regulates its goals. In this research, the agile plan, effectiveness and efficiency for the immediate future, are illustrated in terms of activities resulted in activism [3], [26].

اين الگو بر اساس تهيه و استخراج اطلاعات مناسب و جامع مورد نياز و همچنين برخورداري از خاصيت بازگشتي بهمراه تداوم همكاري معماران سازماني و بخش توليد تا اتمام كار ، مي تواند باعث هدايت و پيشبرد معماري سازماني به سمت موفقيت بشود. لزوم شناخت و بكارگيري دقيق فعاليت ها بر اساس نيازمنديهاي شناسايي شده به منظور تاييد براي عبور از يك مرحله به مرحله ديگر سبب پويايي و همچنين كاهش ريسك در هر مرحله و در مجموع پروژه مي باشد.همچنين با دخالت دادن صاحبان سهام (ذينفعان پروژه) در مراحل مختلف طرح، حمايت همه جانبه به همراه افزايش رضايتمندي آنها را بواسطه اخذ تاييديه مرحله اي سبب مي شود.

By means of supplying and extracting proper, comprehensive and required information, also whit the ability of reversion and continuing cooperation of the enterprise architectures with production section to the end of project, this method can guide enterprise architecture and make progress toward successful.

Recognizing and accurate implementation of activities based on the identified requirements in order to approved transition from one stage to the other cause dynamicity and risk reduction in each stage and the in entire project. Also involving stakeholders (project beneficiaries) in various stages of the project, cause to absorb overall support along with increasing satisfaction received through the approval in each stage.

Conclusion

The following results are obtained by implementing agile management model presented in this study:

This pattern turns stakeholders' monitoring into consultation and corporation also they would feel more effective in activities so they are more interested in finishing the job and fully support the project teams

Ensure the successful end of the business by concerning interaction and corporation between architecture's teams and working teams is the other benefits of this framework. Here it is essential that all the teams continue their activities in one place. They should be also compatible with each other in order to have a common understanding of the activities while performing them.

Reduce the project risks through the use of agile methodologies in production.

Another advantage of this pattern is formalizing the resulted works. By presenting the prototype model of activities, a better assessment can be performed so the essential technological requirements can be provided .then it can be implemented and the resulted processes are evaluated and confirmed. These all take place with the participation of key stakeholders in order to perform the activities with satisfaction.

Finally, the agile enterprise architecture originated by this framework cause the enterprise to finish its architecture better, faster, cheaper and with full satisfaction of those involved in the project. and surpasses in competition with other equal rank enterprises.