The best approach for planning and migrating your services, processes, and IT, lowering costs, and mitigating risks!
What is Enterprise Architecture?
According to Dragon1, an Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a coherent set of concepts (with their principles) applied to a whole organization, enterprise system, or structure. AS-IS (current state) and TO-BE (Future state). The types or domains of concepts and principles commonly comprise governance, business, process, data, application, system, IT/technology, and cybersecurity. Enterprise Architecture should always be visualized and managed as a conceptual blueprint, architecture blueprint, or another integral design that uses strategy as input.
Enterprise architecture often refers to the overall design and structure of the systems, processes, data, applications, and IT of an organization.
Another way to define what is the enterprise architecture is that it is a total concept for an enterprise structure consisting of coherent constructive, operative, and decorative concepts (and their principles) for governance, business, information, applications, data, and technology.
Anyway, EA is like building architecture, a coherent set of concepts and principles, but now for business concepts, data concepts, IT principles, and security principles.
EA is often used in organizations employing a method, framework, and dossier with products (like concept design sketches, principle details diagrams, heatmaps, roadmaps, blueprints, and landscapes).
EA is mostly always used as a strategic approach to align technology with the business goals and objectives and to create a conceptual blueprint of the tech infrastructure of the organization.
The programs and projects that carry out the transition use these data driven decision making visualizations and views of the Enterprise Architectures (the Designs). EA, with that, directs and guides strategic change and innovation.
This page explains why the Dragon1 vision on Enterprise Architecture is Decision-Making and how Visual Enterprise Architecture, when effectively used, increases the overall Enterprise Performance.
EA as the Bridge between Strategy and Transformation
The only legitimate reason to be busy with EA (spending time and money) is to increase the performance of the enterprise, whether it is for the short term or the long term.
In the Enterprise Architecture Performance Framework, the two most important parts of the strategy are the objectives and goals to realize and the directions for achieving the goals.
Enterprise Architectures bridges the gap between strategy and transformation to improve performance.
Positioning Enterprise Architecture between strategy and transformation or business change of the organization or business unit has been increasingly accepted. The strategy outlines what the owners, clients, and stakeholders want to achieve in terms of their goals, objectives, priorities, and requirements.
The strategy, as a coherent whole, is the perfect input for architects and engineers to build and visualize architectures, like business architecture, information architecture, IT architecture, data architecture, and security architecture. The most important EA products are the AS-IS and TO-BE Blueprints (an integral conceptual enterprise design) and the Enterprise Architecture Framework diagram. On top of that, a solution architecture blueprint is required for each project, solution, or change. These products are used in strategic change or digital transformation projects.
Projects use roadmaps, solution architectures and EA to create perfect-fitting solutions as a result. Changing or transforming the enterprise with these intelligent business solutions enables the planning and realization of business goals and objectives in the defined strategic direction.
A brief Enterprise Performance example: If the target is to become the world leader in selling bakery products online via social media, managing successful projects will need a solution architecture and roadmap on how to embed social media as a selling platform for the company. This sounds much simpler to do than it is!
Architecture Diagram at Conceptual Level
Enterprise Architecture consists of a set of concepts applied to an enterprise system. Therefore, EA diagrams at the conceptual level should only depict the concepts necessary for implementation within the organization, given its strategy and business model.
Visualizing and mapping diagrams.
Layered Enterprise Blueprint at Logical Level
When it is clear what the essential concepts are to be implemented in the organization (as part of the architecture), every concept can be detailed into elements at a logical level. One can create and visualize concept diagrams showing the impact of change or implementation costs. One can also visualize and show all the concepts' elements together in a layered blueprint for digital transformation or cyber security.
What Architects and engineers often encounter is the necessary input they need for modeling and visualizing EA. The strategy is usually fragmented, inconsistent, has no status, is without ownership, is outdated, unfindable, is a big secret, and is inaccessible.
Across government organizations worldwide, federal enterprise architectures as layered blueprints are being created to mitigate risk, manage complexity, and ensure compliance.
Example Blueprint of a Digital Twin Organization: Strategy on the left, Architecture in the middle, Transformation on the right.
It is a real challenge for architects and engineers not to become the next strategy developers but only the catalyzers of the process of increasing coherence and consistency in the strategy. If they complete this process effectively, they will have a perfect starting point for designing and visualizing data for EA at a specific moment. After creating the EA (or other architectures), they are tasked with creating communicative and visual products that help tell the story and ensure that the visualizations are used in digital transformation projects to manage risk, projects, strategy, data, and change for decision-making in, for example, federal agencies or healthcare organizations.
One of the biggest challenges of architects is that their EA products aren't used because they are too hard to understand for project managers and project workers who don't see the benefits
Holistic Organization View
Dragon1, as an open method, helps you look at the organization holistically. Below is an example reference model:
Discovering and solving weaknesses within a Holistic organization.
Existing but often not visible relationships between strategy, business model, objects, and artifacts that block or enable transformation and innovation are transparent with business enterprise architecture.
EA Principles
Principles describe how concepts work and produce results (principles are enforced working mechanisms). Concepts are selected based on stakeholders' goals, objectives, and requirements. A principle is always true, so it guides behavior and innovation. Principles are normally translated into standards and norms.
Principles are NOT general rules and guidelines.
Principles inform and support how an organization fulfills its mission.
Principles are established in all domains.
Business Principles – provide a basis for decision-making throughout the business:
Business Principles
- Principle 1 – Principle of Primacy
- Principle 2 – Compliance with Statutory Obligations
- Principle 3 – Maximize Benefits
- Principle 4 – Information Management is Everybody's Affair
- Principle 5 – Business Continuity
- Principle 6 – Common Use Applications
- Principle 7 – IT Responsibility
Data Principles
- Principle 8 – Data Security
- Principle 9 – Data is an Asset
- Principle 10 – Data is Shared
- Principle 11 – Data is Accessible
- Principle 12 – Data Trustee
- Principle 13 – Data will be Analyzable
Application Principles
- Principle 14 – Technology Independence
- Principle 15 – Ease of Use
- Principle 16 – Purchase Rather Than Develop
Technology Principles
- Principle 17 – Requirements-Based Change
- Principle 18 – Control Technical Diversity
Enterprise Performance: A single starting point of reference
We will now dive into the three parts of the Enterprise Performance Framework:
- Strategy
- Enterprise Architecture
- Transformation
1. Strategy: Start with Strategy as Input
Strategic Planning can be defined as a set of coherent goals and objectives and the directions to realize these goals.
That said, one can recognize various entity classes that comprise the reference metamodel for Enterprise Strategy. Below, you see the Reference Metamodel for Strategy from the Dragon1 Method. You see entity classes that include a significant part of the strategy.
It is your job to create a Program of Requirements as input for federal enterprise architectures, enterprise system architectures, or enterprise software architectures. Ensure that the strategy information is included in the requirements program.
Dragon1 software platform provides you with an EA Repository tool, Visual Designer tool, Data Manager tool, and Viewer tool with which you can administer, model, visualize, and manage all the information from various strategic documents you obtain and glue them together using this model as a reference.
You may have a different opinion about strategy. In that case, you can easily modify the model to align with your vision of enterprise strategy.
When enterprise architects ask for a coherent and consistent strategy to match the Dragon1 models, they often get a zip file with documents. They must create a cohesive and consistent version of this.
If architects do not get the strategy handed over by the owners/clients or stakeholders as input, they might get on a drift. This means that they start filling in the blanks, and without intending to do so, they become strategy designers.
When architects have blanks or gaps in the strategy, you should better create dynamic enterprise visualizations for the stakeholders to show them the gaps and request them to fill them in. As long as the stakeholders are not ready, you work with assumptions. That is fine. Make sure they know.
2. Enterprise Architectures for Agile Lean Companies
Dragon1 considers the total concept of your enterprise as a coherent whole of constructive, operative, and decorative governance, business, information, and technology concepts. In short, Dragon1 defines Enterprise Architecture as a blueprint for your company. Architecture equals Concept!
Below is an example conceptual model: an EA overview. Architects seek the right concepts for their strategy.
Below is an example of a mixed conceptual & logical enterprise architecture reference model with standard entity classes in almost any company. These entity classes need to be recognized and modeled.
The Enterprise Architecture Reference Model should not be missing in your enterprise metamodel.
Architects are defined as the designers of a total concept for a structure and the supervisors of its realization. So, they need a specialized design tool to visualize the enterprise architecture capabilities and responsibilities.
Dragon1 provides an innovative enterprise architecture tool with which architects can design, visualize, analyze, and manage any product they need, such as a landscape, blueprint, roadmap, dashboard, map, architecture diagram, and matrix.
As Solution / Business / Project / Technical / IT and Security Architects, they design total concepts for integrated solutions that improve company performance.
When designing and visualizing enterprise architecture reference architecture, you need to use requirements from stakeholders. Architects must always use the strategy as the most important set of requirements.
These total concepts are designed at four different levels of abstraction: conceptual, logical, physical, and implementational. They are done in close collaboration with the owner/client and stakeholders. In the model, you see common logical-level entity classes.
On the page about the EA Core Reference Model, you can read about the levels of abstractions. You will learn how architects apply concepts, principles, and patterns to create building blocks that enable the design, visualization, and implementation of high-quality, integrated solutions. We will note that every architectural design will result in tangible data products, including blueprints, landscapes, visions, impressions, and diagrams. These products communicate enterprise architectures to stakeholders, like project workers who build the solutions and implement change.
3. Transformation: Solution & Roadmap based
At this point, the strategy has served as input for EA. Solution requirements from stakeholders have served as input for the solutions architecture. Blueprints, landscapes, maps, diagrams, or matrices are created to communicate the architectural designs.
It all comes down to realizing/building the solutions integrally and implementing them as change, transforming companies for the better.
The Enterprise Transformation reference model shows that integral design and change are key. Finally, the projects must have deliverables as outcomes that can be placed in a business or IT plateaus.
A best practice for working on a project effectively with architecture and designs and keeping them conforming to integral ideas is to create roadmaps. A roadmap dictates what should be done when, at best, and when it is needed by something else.
Dragon1 performs intelligent enterprise architecture management for effective mapping, measuring, monitoring, managing, and visualizing data for strategy, solutions, and projects.
You can create or even generate product-breakdown structures and work breakdown structures from your solution architecture and provide your stakeholders with interactive click-through roadmaps so their hunger for progress information can be fulfilled any time they want.
Making your Business Model explicit becomes more critical
New technologies like 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and smart machines are emerging and combining with recent technologies like big data, mobile devices, and the cloud.
Digital Business is the new word, meaning your organization digitizes and virtualizes on the internet, whether you want it or not. Your competitors will do so, too!
The challenge for modern digital architects is to try to deliver new business value, with sustainability as a starting point, for their organizations in an exciting new way. The more quickly you, as an organization, apply these new technologies, the more you will be on the right side of the game-changing process in various industries.
If your business becomes more digital, it is wise to express it in models and to visualize data to gain a better grip. Creating data visualizations enables you to communicate about your business model and accelerate decision-making in complex environments.
Intelligent Enterprise Architectures with the Data Visualization tools.
Architects Innovate Digital Twins and Digital Ecosystems
The professionals for these new types of organizations are called Digital Architects. Digital Ecosystems offer new opportunities for innovation and growth and thus offer competitive advantages. Architects use enterprise architecture for digital transformation and digital twins in LMEs and SMEs. For that to happen successfully, they must place EA between strategy and transformation.
Strategists and IT innovation teams are also becoming Digital Architects. Exciting times are ahead. Let us all look forward to the ventures that will arise.
More EA Resources: