TOGAF, as I learnt now, is a popular framework of enterprise architecture. Framework is a structure about how the information is organized to be gathered and present to the readers.What matters is not certain framework, but the enterprise architecture itself can help the organizations realize streamlining the business, increasing the efficiency and expending the capability.
But actually, how can this happen? Why EA can realize these ambitions? Just lining up these benefits cannot prove that it can indeed achieve these.
Here is another video give us an overview of how EA works.
In this short video, we can see that every time we make a decision, the EA can give us a simulation of how this action impacts the enterprise in different levels and perspectives, including strategy, business process, system logic, technology physics and tool component, which can help us shorten planning circle, reduce connection ambiguity and improve cost control.
The framework used in the video is Zachman, which also proves that framework is just a tool to organize the information within an enterprise. It should be customized to fit the real needs so as to establish comprehensive enterprise architecture.
Today, we finally met the clients of my team project. After chatting with them, I found that the problem is those end-users or stakeholders just have no idea about IT systems, they don't understand what's going on within the multiple legacy systems. In other words, the basic value created by EA is to improve the understanding of the systems -- what's its functionality; what's the interaction with the other systems; what's its input, output, data elements; how does it serve the business operation; how does it realize the strategic requirements of the business?
With fully understanding of this, we can easily identify the gap between the actual IT capability and the desired functionality; quickly navigate to the technology we truly needed that can make a difference to our business performance and avoid meaningless expense on other attractive new technologies, which can save a lot of money.
Len Fehskens from the Open Group defines 3 levels of IT usage within an enterprise. Level 1 is the state that IT department are struggling to make its systems function. In level 2, the systems are doing the right thing. In level 3, the IT facilities optimize its benefits to the organization. Most corporations currently stay in Level 1. A commentary from Forbes wrote that enterprise architecture can help organizations move from level 1 to lever 2 or 3. [1]
Besides, I studied an enterprise architecture successful case of Canadian credit agency. [2] In order to improve its service and build up a customer-centric business model, it evaluated its current application portfolio, built up a core value chain then mapped the applications to it to find out redundancy. Considering that it is very difficult to share data between different systems, the agency applied a EA tool, called Metastorm ProVision, to integrate and align legacy systems. The tool decomposed the systems into lowest function levels and discrete business services and established a SOA platform on them. The core value chain serves as the baseline and mapped the functions to corporate strategy and organizational units, which supported by actual systems. In this way, the agency collapse the duplicate functionality in various systems into a single instance for maintenance and upgrade, prepared to meet the future IT needs and improve strategic planning. Through this example, I got a clear picture of how EA worked and helped.
P.S. I have found some other useful websites that can help us with EA study.
Business Week - Enterprise Architecture
Institute for Enterprise Architecture Developments
Reference
[1] Enterprise Architecture: Moving From Chaos To Business Value
[2] Canadian credit agency uses enterprise architecture software to create customer-centric business model
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