Enterprise architecture institutionalization_and_assessment

9th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science

Enterprise Architecture Institutionalization and Assessment
Hyunkyung Song and Yeong-Tae Song
Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences
Towson University, Towson, MD USA
ysong@towson.edu

Abstract and the principles governing its design and
The topic of enterprise architecture (EA) has evolution." Similarly, enterprise architecture may
been gaining significant attention from both be understood as the fundamental organization of
academia and industry due to the inefficiency of a government agency or a corporation, either as a
current IT architectures to cope with rapid whole, or together with partners, suppliers and /
changes in business environment. In order to or customers, or in part as well as the principles
turn existing EA into efficient and agile one, it is governing its design and evolution.
necessary to institutionalize an EA based on There are quite a few EAFs that define EA.
well-established enterprise architecture Most definitions share commonalities that EA is
frameworks (EAFs) into the enterprise. about a set of models including their components
In this paper, we propose EA institutionalization and how these components integrate and work
processes and its metric based assessment for together to achieve a specific goal.
implemented EA based on the currently available
EA frameworks. In the EA processes, we define 2. EA Frameworks
institutionalization strategies specific to Since the Clinger-Cohen ACT, many enterprise
organizations’ goals, target architecture based architecture frameworks (EAFs) were introduced
on their baseline architecture, and transition [1, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13]. EAFs help organizations
plan for institutionalization. to build target-conformant EA that is flexible,
Keywords: Enterprise architecture frameworks, adaptable and efficient. EA is intended to be
enterprise architecture process, assessment of used by organizations to perform strategic
enterprise architecture institutionalization planning and develop “blueprints” of their
future-state. EA is also used as a management
1. Introduction tool to ensure planning and activities are aligned
with the strategic goals of the organization, and
One of the challenging issues facing modern
industries today is how to cope with the rapid to identify opportunities for collaboration and re-
changes in business environment and IT use resources across an organization.
technology. As much of the current software The IEEE 1471-2000 [4] provided building
systems were not designed for changes, when the blocks for constructing enterprise architecture.
organization with such system goes through The Zachman Framework [1] helps in
changes such as merging with other organization, identifying the purpose of building EA. It is
the inefficiencies and unpredictability may occur. described in a matrix that provides multiple
One of the main reasons for the inefficiency perspectives of the overall architecture on the
would be the result from not following “off-the- vertical axis and classification of the various
shelf” standardized solution. Instead major artifacts of the architecture on the horizontal
companies tried to build “one-of-a-kind” system axis. It provides specification for each cell in the
for their major functionalities resulting matrix. However, it is independent of any
inflexibility and incompatibility. specific methodologies and does not define a
The guidelines for building flexible and efficient metamodel to integrate the information within
each cell. The Open Group Architecture
IT systems were proposed in the form of EA that
Framework (TOGAF) is an industry standard
covers from business process to infrastructure.
architecture framework [6] focused on
IEEE Standard 1471-2000 [4] defines
performance. It provides the Architecture
architecture as "The fundamental organization of
Development Method (ADM) for developing
a system, embodied in its components, their
enterprise architecture descriptions that meets the
relationships to each other and the environment,

978-0-7695-4147-1/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE 870
DOI 10.1109/ICIS.2010.127

needs of a specific business. Some guidelines for Table1: Some Business Questions
the development are supported by the federal and Corresponding Views
government [9]. Business Decision Objects in
In order to utilize the full benefit of an EAF, it is Question support view
important to assess how well the implementation phase
of EA to an organization is done according to Which system Baseline, Infrastructure,
given EAF. The process of implementing EA support Transition Business
specific to particular organization is called components planning Process,
institutionalization. The level of should be System
institutionalization may be assessed by following upgraded or Interface,
EA capability maturity model [3] and framework modernized? Standard
[14, 15]. The result of assessment should be Profile
applied to future EA planning for the
How can the IT Business IT business
organization.
organization Plan, plan, strategic
manage IT Architecture goals, essential
3. EA Process for Institutionalization costs more alignment elements
EA is a good means for integration and effectively?
alignment between information technology and As the second step, we should establish EA
business objectives as discussed in [2, 5]. strategies according to the business questions
However, without proper tuning, EA may not be and distinguish between business strategy and
as useful as it should, which means EAF may IT strategy. EA is mainly about the important
need to be customized according to their own assets of organizations, which include people in
culture, policy, and procedure. This process is the environment who may or may not directly
called EA institutionalization. In this section, we interact with the software system, business
illustrate our EA institutionalization process as process, various hardware devices, technology
shown in the Figure 1. infrastructures, and other IT resources. Finally
we should establish an EA team who can carry
3.1. Initiation process out entire EA transition process.
This step helps to ensure initial determination
of entire processes and to validate whether IT 3.2. Defining baseline architecture
investment meets all technical requirements and This step describes the current or as-is state of
business goals. The sub processes of the an enterprise. This is an essential step for
initiation phase can be: institutionalization because future progress will
1. business questions be measured against baseline architecture. To
2. establish business strategy and IT strategy describe the baseline architecture, it is necessary
3. build an EA team to identify hidden assets, gaps and redundancies
of the different architectures as in the Figure 2.
First of all, the organization must establish EA One method to define baseline architecture is to
strategy according to the scope of the project organize information structure according to the
such as what to include, who to be involved and architectural views as in ANSI/IEEE Standard
how to do it. EA process should start from the 1471-2000 [4]. The standard helps architects to
business questions as in the Table1, which define viewpoints explicitly. We incorporated
defines the direction of EA. basic concepts from IEEE 1471-2000 and
The business questions may be classified as in transformed to EA domain. Each of these four
the field of requirements engineering where we architecture domains is composed of distinct
adopt the ideas on the relationship among a architecture building blocks, which in turn
software system specification, requirements and decomposed into the level of modules, systems,
the environment of a software system as in [11]. and components. EAFs give a comprehensive
Understanding goals, problems, requirements, description of all relevant elements of EA
software specification, and its environment helps providing a principle structure and classification
create the strategies of organizations. schema that can be used as a reference for
architecture development.

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Figure1: Enterprise Architecture Process for Institutionalization
The dimension of strategic alignment is the link
between business strategy and IT strategy,
reflecting the external focus and directing
towards administrative structures. The other
dimension of functional integration separates the
corresponding internal domains, namely, the link
between organizational infrastructure and
information system (IS) infrastructure. The
model defines four domains that have been
harmonized for the purpose of better alignment.
This dimension specifically considers how
choices made in the IT domain impacted those
Figure 2: Alignment of four architectures made in the business domain and vice versa.
However, current organizations focus only on the
3.3. Designing target architecture issues of integrating the internal IS strategies
This step defines the target business with internal organizational requirements as a
architecture according to the business strategies response to business strategies. This model calls
of the organizations. The target architecture for the recognition of cross-domain relationships,
should define a vision of future business where business strategy is viewed as a driver,
operations and supporting technologies. and IT strategy as an enabler. The model helps to
Organizations’ business strategy and IT strategy define target architecture.
should be applied to the feasible and traceable When defining the target architecture, the
target architecture that is based on the baseline analysis of architectural differences between the
architecture of the organization. Another factor baseline and target architecture related to
to consider in defining target architecture is the business strategy must be performed. A gap
alignment between the strategy and the four analysis identifies the differences between the
baseline architectures. The alignment model that baseline and target architectures.
we have considered is in [2]. It describes the
alignment between architectures and strategies.

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The gaps between the current status of an and specification of Enterprise Architecture
organization and the future goals need to be Management System (EAMS). The organization
analyzed. The results should be applied to design should define workflow according to the target
target architectures e.g., business, data, architecture and identify redundant investments
application, and technical architecture. The gap on IT. Each EA project may be decomposed into
analysis develops user requirements and segmented projects. The segmented projects
identifies political and technical constraints, and should be transferred to the implementation
assesses migration risks and feasibility. teams. EA operations should facilitate sharing of
Consequently, the target architecture should different business activities and information
include the feasible strategy and goals of the between departments or between business
organization according to the gap analysis result. manager and IT manager. EAMS should be
As a process in architectural alignment, implemented to be shared while securing
organizations should incorporate enterprise information of organization. The fundamental
standards such as data standard, development EAMS includes various tools such as
standard, and IT standard. Standards provide architecture modeling, dictionary/repository;
inter-operability across different systems. development, management / control of the
information resources, CASE and modeling
3.4. Planning architecture transition tools.
This step defines the transition process from
the current architecture to target EA. The 4. Assessing EA
architect must assess the organization’s existing EA institutionalization is an iterative,
technology as well as new technology to incremental and continuous process.
determine whether the latter can support the Organizations should perform that continuously
required capabilities. Assessment of the through the assessment of EA.
organization’s technology maturity should be The principle goals of EA assessment are to
done in order for the successful implementation document the significance of the EA to decision-
of target architecture. Design constraints should makers, and to identify the development needs of
also be identified and applied to the the EA. Furthermore, the impact on products and
implementation. Design constraints are typically services are monitored in relation to IT
non-functional requirements (NFRs) such as investment decisions, collaboration and reuse,
performance, interoperability, reliability, and standards compliance, stakeholder satisfaction,
maintainability. and other measurement areas and indicators are
The EA team should understand the included in value measurement.
dependencies of applications and perspectives The organization operating EA should assess
and review design constraints across all projects. its elements, or work products. Enterprise
The architecture transition should be planned by Architecture elements include vision, current
incorporating the results from the architecture baseline, target architecture
aforementioned processes. definition, gap analysis, transition strategy,
implementation and maintenance. These
3.5. Implementation planning and operation elements serve as key inspectors in the
Architectural implementation plan including assessment of Enterprise Architecture. We
resource management and EA system propose a metric for the assessment of EA based
development should be done in this step as on these elements and four architectural views -
shown in the Figure 3. This step can be further business, data, application, and technology. The
divided into a set of system development US Department of Commerce (DoC)’S EACMM
projects. The stakeholders of EA should get defines assessment elements. The DoC has
involved in conducting detailed design, develop,

Figure 3: Implementation Planning and Operation Phase

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developed an EACMM to aid in conducting currently available EA frameworks. We
internal assessments [8]. We adopted EACMM suggested practical institutionalization processes
for assessment of the EA of an organization that help organizations to adopt EA
quantitatively. The EACMM provides elements systematically. In the Enterprise Architecture
that represent the key components of a Process, we identified the specific strategies
productive assessment. The goal of EA according to organizations’ goals, defined target
institutionalization process is to achieve target architecture based on baseline architecture that
architecture for each organization by identifying shows current architectural status of
weak areas and providing a defined evolutionary organizations, and defined transition plan from
path to achieve the overall architecture process. baseline to target architecture. Finally we
The Figure 4 shows nine characteristics of proposed implementation plan and assessment
architecture that are needed for an optimized EA. metric for EA.
We proposed its additional sub characteristics
from the nine characteristics of the DoC. These 5. References
sub characteristics are detail elements that (1) J. A. Zachman, The Zachman Framework for
strengthen the validity of the assessments. The Enterprise Architecture: Primer for Enterprise
Table2 shows the relationship between four Engineering and Manufacturing, Zachman
architecture views and nine assessment International, electronic book, 2003.
characteristics. The relationship, we suggested, (2) J.C. Henderson and N. Venkatraman, “Strategic
can be customized according to organizations’ Alignment: Leveraging Information Technology
architecture views. Also, we propose that this for Transforming Organizations,” IBM Systems
relationship can be used for scorecard of Journal 32, no. 1, 1993.
assessment. To assess enterprise architecture of (3) United States Department of Commerce,
organizations, they should establish metric for “Enterprise Architecture Capability Maturity
Model,” DoC, 2007
assessment based on the relationship between
(4) IEEE Standard 1471-2000, “IEEE Recommended
architecture views and elements. This step
Practice for Architectural Description of
should evaluate Enterprise Architecture ROI Software-Intensive Systems,” IEEE, 2000
(Return On Investment) through the quantitative (5) Pedro Sousa, Carla Marques Pereira, Jose Alves
benefit of the Architecture. This has the expected Marques, “Enterprise Architecture Alignment
effects such as IT solution delivery time Heuristics,http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
reduction, integration between systems us/architecture/aa480042.aspx, 2005
improvement, better leverage of legacy systems, (6) The OpenGroup, TOGAF version
rapid change, provision of direction future 9,”http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/”, 2009
investments, and reduction of needless (7) CIO Council, “Federal Enterprise Architecture
complexity. These factors can also be used to Framework”, The Chief Information Officers
evaluate quantitatively. Also, ROI is a very Council, 1999
popular metric because of its versatility and (8) United States Department of Defense, “DoD
Architecture Framework 2.0”, “http://cio-
simplicity. It provides a performance
nii.defense.gov/sites/dodaf20” May, 2009
measurement that is used to evaluate the
(9) FEAPMO, Business reference model version 2.0.
efficiency of an investment or to compare the Retrieved December, 15 2005
efficiency of a number of different investments. (10) Hanifa Shah, Mohamed El Kourdi, “Frameworks
for Enterprise Architecture”, IT Pro, pp.36-41.
4. Conclusion IEEE, 2007
The topic of enterprise architecture has been (11) Lawrence Chung, Hyun Kyung Song, Yeong-Tae
Song, Nary Subramanian, “Understanding the
gaining significant attention from both academia
Role EA towards better Institutionalization”,
and industry due to the inefficiencies of current WEACR09, IEEE, 2009
IT architecture to cope with rapid changes in (12) Department of the Treasury Chief Information
business environment. Officer Council, “Treasury Enterprise
In this paper, we proposed Enterprise Architecture Framework”, July 2000
Architecture Process for institutionalization in (13) “FEA Consolidated Reference Model Document
organizations based on the discussion of Version 2.3”, www.egov.gov, October, 2007

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(14) the Office of Management and Budget(OMB), (15) GAO, “Information Technology: A Framework
“Federal Enterprise Architecture Program EA for Assessing and Improving Enterprise
Assessment Framework 2.0”, December 2005 Architecture Management”, April 2003

Figure 4: Achieving Optimized EA Using EACMM

Table2: The Relationship between Four Architecture Views and Nine Assessment Characteristics

Business Data Application Technology
Architecture Architecture Architecture Architecture
1. IT architecture
Process
2. IT architecture
development
3. Business linkage
4. Senior
management
involvement
5. Operating unit
participation
6. Architecture
communication
7. IT security
8. Architecture
governance
9. IT investment
and acquisition
strategy

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