EA frameworks

As we all know, there are four main frameworks (Zachman, TOGAF, FEA and Gartner) which are frequently adopted by enterprises now. Many comparisons have been made between the four frameworks. And certainly each of them has its own pros and cons and applied occasions. This week I have explored and studied the most popular frameworks, which, fortunately, can be used together in building up an Enterprise Architecture.

Zachman

As it is shown in the following picture, Zachman gives you a overall picture (what, how, where, who, when and why) of the enterprise from different perspectives(scope, business model, system model, technology model, detailed representations) for different stakeholders(planner, owner, designer, builder, subcontractor).

Horizontally, it's a complete description of the enterprise for certain stakeholder.
Vertically, it is the different representations of the same thing accomplished by different actors within the enterprise.

In this way, we can easily identify the gaps between different stakeholders which help us to fix them. And every level of the enterprise can align with each other and have a clear understanding of their current situation.

The most important thing for you to understand Zachman is that it is not a methodology but taxonomy. It doesn't give you the way on how to analyze or get the information of each cell but a guide of what kind of information you need to find and how to organize it in a picture that make the gaps more explicit.

Different kinds of artifacts are listed in each cell of the picture above, which can be used as the method to solve the certain issue.

TOGAF

The following video gives a brief introduction of TOGAF.

TOGAF gives a process and methods to develop Enterprise Architecture. It is easier for enterprise to implement and there are plenty of supported software to work on to build up an Enterprise architecture under TOGAF framework. 

Zachman is a static descriptive view of the whole enterprise, while TOGAF is a dynamic process for EA development. Supported by the Open group, there are great quantities of detail practicing examples on their website. 

By following the steps, enterprise can not only figure out their business architecture, application architecture, data architecture and technical architecture but also find solutions and implementation & maintenance plan for future strategic transformation.

Here is a specific example in using TOGAF in EA development. In contrary to theoretical description, this video shows how the phrased mentioned before be articulated by certain artifacts, which gives me a practical idea about TOGAF.

Besides, this week I read that EA is specially needed by those who are facing business transformation or radical infrastructure change. In this case, the stakeholders can greatly gain from identifying and refining their requirements, showing how this requirement be addressed and what kind of trade-offs will be made in order to get these.