Lecture6 IS353(EA&Data Viewpoint )

Lecture 6

Enterprise Architecture and the
Data Viewpoint
(Enterprise Architecture IS353)

Abdisalam Issa-Salwe

Taibah University
College of Computer Science & Engineering
Information Systems Department

Topic subject
EA and the Data Viewpoint
Purpose and Goals
Scope
Benefits and Advantages of EA
Improved Planning
Decision making
Communications
Using EA to raise Enterprise Value
Revenue Growth
Operating Margin
Asset Efficiency
Policy Objectives
Program Delivery

Abdisalam Issa-Salwe, College of Computer Science & Engineering, Taibah University

1

EA and the Data Viewpoint
In some architectures the data viewpoint could
include information, whereas in others it is
described separately or within the business
layer;
Still other architectures leave certain business or
mission aspects less than fully defined and
instead use capabilities or operational views as
surrogates for the typical business architecture
artefacts.


EA and the Data Viewpoint (cont…)
Some typical reasons for variations in EA
approaches include:
Differing scales and scopes of EA
Levels of complexity
Business activity levels
Desired degrees of detail
COTS product implementation versus custom
components and configurations
Ownership versus custodial boundaries influencing
layer content and aggregations
“First attempt” versus mature documentation


2

The EA is intended to describe critical features and
capabilities of a configuration.
It is also a baseline to support deliberate changes.
This set of adapted and approved changes make up
a portfolio of projects and a transition plan.
Every EA should have a transition plan (also known
as implementation or migration plan) which identifies
the set of initiatives to migrate the enterprise from
the baseline to the target state.
This transition plan should feed into the IT
investment portfolio or ultimately include or
constitute it.

In EA a framework provides a high level roadmap and
provides focus while permitting efficient change.
A methodology provides an efficient and effective
repeatable set of processes or steps to develop the EA
allowing the enterprise to implement change.
Almost all EA efforts recognize the need for the use of
both a framework and a methodology for guiding their
efforts.
We say almost because there are some who believe that
frameworks and specific processes (e.g. the Open
Group’s Architecture Framework {TOGAFTM}, Enterprise
Architecture Planning {EAPTM} or the process in the U.S.
Federal CIO Council’s Practical Guide) are no longer
necessary.

3

Many practitioners of Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) believe that EA does not
need to be done or not very extensively,
because SOA to some extent incorporates the
reuse and sharing of an enterprise wide
approach.
It is not the intent here to resolve these issues
but to merely characterize them in the context of
EA concepts.


Purpose and Goals
Every EA has a purpose and/or a goal or goals to
which it is being targeted by those sponsoring and
supporting it in the enterprise, even though these
are not often articulated in literature on EA.
The purpose should be expressed as a mission
statement, describing a broad range of
achievements that the EA targets (it may also be
accompanied by a vision statement, that describes
what the world will be like when the mission is
achieved).


4

Purpose and Goals (cont…)
It is useful to think of the mission statement in three parts:
Delivery: what is the EA delivering for the benefit of the
organisation (e.g., “enabling rapid deployment of
organisational change”);
Foundation: what does the EA “believe in”.
This may summarise key principles to be achieved
(e.g., a “achieving a balance of stakeholder concerns,
optimised for the delivery of long-term value”);
Practice: what mission does the EA set for itself (e.g.,
“being up-to-date, accessible, trusted”).
Goals then provide further refinement of the mission
statement and should be purposeful and qualified, in
that they should clearly define what is and is not
being targeted by the EA effort.

It is always a good practice to have the purpose
statement and the goal(s) written down and
agreed to by the EA sponsors.
The degree of specificity can vary and whatever
the goal(s) it should be in alignment with both
the EA scope and the principles.


5

Some examples to which EA purpose or goal
statements could be written include:
Business Realignment
Enterprise consolidations
Enterprise expansion and new market penetrations
Overall enterprise mission business efficiency
Cost savings
Enterprise restructuring and/or mergers
For compliance


Scope
The scope of an EA is a critical component and input into
planning and structuring the approach, framework,
methods, support and tools for an EA project or program.
For example an EA could be broad and encompass a very large
enterprise, but only cover a business architecture viewpoint
(e.g., by covering the “planner” and “owner” viewpoints of the
Zachman framework);
EA could be comprehensive and fairly deep in relation to
a specific subject thus enabling implementation quickly
after the EA (i.e., dealing with what Zachman calls a
“sliver” and which others refer to as a solutions EA or a
segment architecture).


6

Benefits and Advantages of EA
Depending on the extensiveness of the EA
approach, organisations have traditionally
considered the following to be benefits of EA:
Improved planning
Enhanced decision making, and
Communications


Improved Planning
From a tactical (those immediate next steps in
the pursuit of the overall strategy) perspective,
EA can help to coordinate otherwise
architecturally disjoint or isolated program-level
planning activities, for example, to enhance
reuse of all enterprise assets and reduce
duplication of effort.
It provides the reference material to ensure
continuing business/IT alignment, better
solutions provisioning and improved
configuration management.


7

Decision making
EA can uniquely provide comprehensive views
of current and planned enterprise capabilities
and resources as typically it is the sole function
with a remit to work across the whole
organisation with a broad goal to support the
overall enterprise in all its facets.
While some would consider other functions (e.g.,
HR and finance) to also be in such a position,
these other functions do so only in the context of
their areas of concerns, whereas the EA
potentially has all areas of concern within its
scope.

Decision making (cont…)
These views may be further enhanced through the
provision of online repositories that provide decision
makers with real-time access to EA information in
varying degrees of detail.
The views provide the relevant reference information
to help executive, operations and development staff
with planning, acquisition, deployment and
operational activities.
This visibility and availability of higher quality
information can also provide the basis for integrating
various governance processes, viz., strategic
planning, program delivery, procurement, and other
resource planning activities.

8

Communications
Communications can be vastly improved by using
EA views to simplify the presentation of otherwise
complex architectures and regularly convey
integrated information on strategic goals, business
and technology.
A greater level of understanding is promoted with
staff able to view the enterprise from an end-to-end
perspective.
This greater level of understanding provides a richer
environment for innovation to flourish, breaks down
barriers and facilitates more meaningful
collaboration across the functions of the enterprise.


Communication (cont...)
EA can also help facilitate the creation of a common
vocabulary across all staff, and with external
stakeholders, to ensure that there is full and
complete understanding during planning,
development and management of enterprise
resources.
This is invaluable in large and complex
environments.


9

Using EA to raise Enterprise Value
When EA is regarded as a holistic method and
integrated business function with the objective of
analysing, documenting and shaping the entire
enterprise, the true value of EA is unlocked.
Using EA to capture and communicate the entire
intellectual capital of an enterprise can have a great
impact on the bottom line and hence raise value.
In a private sector organisation this could result in
increasing shareholder value, whereas in a public
sector organisation the equivalent would be raising
agency performance.


Categories where EA can deliver views and facilitate decision
support activities that would provide direct benefits by raising
values.
Category Private Sector Public Sector
(Increased (Raised
Shareholder Agency
Value) Performance)
Revenue Growth
Operating Margin
Asset Efficiency
Policy Objectives
Program Delivery
Operating Efficiency

10

Revenue Growth
Revenue growth is the key measure of a company's
operational effectiveness and involves increasing
the revenue received from the sale of company
products, services, and assets.
The opportunity to increase revenue growth can
come from the ability to create end-to-end models,
for example:
representing how product and service offerings are
provisioned and how assets are effectively deployed;
in order to improve account management and/or customer
relationship processes for different customer segments.


Operating Margin
Operating Margin is the key measure of a company’s
operational efficiency and refers to the difference
between the revenues received from the sale of products
and services and the costs of providing those goods and
services.
Some examples of raising value in this category could be
the ability to create end-to-end models on, for example:
logistics processes with a view to improvement and offset
selling, general and administrative costs;
customer-facing business processes to reduce the cost of
customer interactions across all interaction channels (such as
Internet, call center, field service, and interactive voice
response);
shared processes, to enhance reuse, and hence reduce the cost
of corporate-wide services.

11

Asset Efficiency
Asset efficiency is about the management of the
organizations assets to maximize their utility with
minimal cost. Performance excellence is driven by the
ability to effectively and efficiently manage intellectual,
physical and people assets.
The EA can provide value in the management of
assets by, for example:
Providing an inventory of intellectual property to
help facilitate the effective and efficient
management of intellectual property;


Asset Efficiency (cont...)
Promoting an understanding of current and future
state staffing requirements, and hence can help
provide a baseline reference for improving the
enterprise workforce development strategy, improving
visibility of enterprise strategy to provides for easier
identification of training needs and facilitating the
alignment and adjustment of workforce requirements
with each of the architectural domains
Improving the visibility and governance of physical IT
assets and their alignment with business goals
depends, in part, on depth of modelling. It can also
facilitate optimization of inventory by improving
procurement, management, analysis, and turnover
performance.

12

Policy Objectives
Outcome-focused approaches can help translate
policies into tactical program plans that deliver
measurable results. Combined with program
delivery, EA processes can help measures an
agency’s performance around its core programs
and services and can help answer the question,
“Does the agency effectively achieve its
mission?”


Policy objectives (cont...)
Through enhanced EA modelling, performance in
achieving policy objectives can be improved through:
Policy execution – facilitates improved governance by
modelling the alignment of architectural components with policy
goals and objectives. The resulting greater clarity of description
and understanding of enterprise components improves
intergovernmental liaison and communication in terms of policy
implementation;
Strategic alignment – facilitates better strategic planning by
providing demonstrable alignment between strategic planning
and policy/programme goals and metrics. In turn, this promotes
a clear definition, description and understanding of end-to-end
performance measures;
Accountability implementation – improves accountability by
facilitating improved governance and strategic budgeting.


13

Program Delivery
Successful programs are those that deliver real results
and essential services within their program parameters
(e.g., budget, time, impact etc). Programs should be
designed to meet or exceed the agency’s strategic goals
around effectiveness, efficiency, and increased
constituent satisfaction.
Effectiveness is the degree to which a predetermined
objective or target is met. EA facilitates alignment of
programme goals to mission by enabling strategic and
business planning. It also helps facilitate business
planning across agencies. It can also enhance program
impact by facilitating improved communication to enable
programme innovation


Program delivery (cont...)
Efficiency is the relative amount of inputs used to
achieve a given level of output. EA facilitates process
reengineering to achieve costs and cycle time efficiency.
Reuse of architectural components also promotes
efficiency.
Program delivery is also enabled, as alluded to at the top
of this sub-chapter, by providing direct support to the
program manager and team, such as through the
provision of existing EA artefacts, through the cross-
function/agency perspective EA brings, through quality
assurance and control, through risk mitigation, and
through the provision of enterprise facilities (e.g., the
repository) that program can (re)use.


14

Operating Efficiency
Operating efficiency is not restricted to public
sector organizations, but applies equally to the
private sector.
Operating efficiency is one of the key measures
used to evaluate performance and refers to
delivering maximum value for money in terms of
service levels, product quality and/or operational
support.
It ties closely to meeting budget goals.
It is important because it has a large impact on
the financial resources required to run the
enterprise.

Operating Efficiency (cont...)
Operating Efficiency adds benefits in these areas as follows:
Technology – EA (and associated governance) helps to
create value by aligning IT strategies and operations with
program goals and organization objectives. It also helps
improve the management and utilization of integrated IT
programs and systems to add value to the overall
management.
Procurement – EA (transition planning) provides reference
information to facilitate improved procurement efficiency.
Financial Management – EA (governance) can help
improve financial management by providing the reference
information necessary to integrate governance processes to
reduce financial risks and enhance strategies for risk
management. The reference information can also facilitate
improved budget execution.


15

Lecture6 IS353(EA&Data Viewpoint )

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