Enterprise Architecture (EA) is process and act of developing a strategic information repository or database of enterprise assets from an integrated strategy, business, and technology perspective to support enterprise improvement or transformation decisions and plans.
Organizations need to follow the 9 steps outlined below in order to establish an effective EA program.
Successful enterprise architecture (EA) functions or programs create four major types of deliverable or architectural work products. The first sets of deliverable are those that are required to run or operate the EA program (e.g., policies, program charters, solution architecture definition process, stakeholders map, business case, communication plan, repository maintenance plan and so forth).
Following the development of the deliverable that are sufficient or just enough to run or operate the EA program, the program must now develop deliverable that will be required to diagnose and transform the organization (e.g., current state inventory or catalog of business, information, data, application and technology assets. Information about enterprise assets already exist in one form or the other, an EA function only need to collect, validate, organize, store and continuously keep the information up-to-date.
The documented enterprise information is used by EA functions to create those deliverable that are required to diagnose the organization (e.g., business motivation model, business and IT capabilities gap assessment, improved or transformed business processes, application integration diagrams and so forth). Following the diagnosis of the organization or enterprise, an EA function or program need to now create those deliverable that will enable the business and/or IT management to fix the issues or close the gaps that were identified as a result of the diagnosis (e.g., 3-5 years business/IT investment roadmap, IT portfolio rationalization plan, business functions consolidation plan and so forth).