Saturday 30 January 2010

What does Enterprise Architecture mean to you?

I delivered some enablement yesterday for my colleagues and one item that resonated is Alan Brown's list of possible interpretations of what EA might mean to any given organisation:

1. An IT-driven initiative to define the IT application landscape

2. One source of the truth via an integrated view of the enterprise, across all lines of business

3. Assessing current and future states of the enterprise, along with the programs and controls to achieve desired capabilities

4. Architecture framework governance and reporting (e.g. Zachman, TOGAF, EA3, FEAF, MoDAF, DoDAF)

5. Portfolio planning for resources, projects and initiatives

6. “Uber-architecture” for development teams

7. Architectural conformance

8. Model-Driven Architecture (MDA)

9. Alignment of strategy, business, information, applications and technical infrastructure in support of a strategic intent

I prefer the last definition :)

- Pete