ICT 301 Enterprise Architecture

ICT301 ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES | Assignment 12020 MURDOCH UNIVERSITY Sandeep [ICT301 ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES] The difference between Enterprise Architecture (EA) and EA3 cube framework of documentation.Table of Contents Introduction 2 Architecture in the case 2 Comparison 4 Conclusion 5 References 5Introduction
The purpose of this report is to showcase the difference in mythology of organising documentation by Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework and EA3 cube framework with the assistance of a selected sample of use case. Both the framework is aimed at improving the efficiency of the organisation but there may be some difference in them and here in this report we will analyse our use case to determine the difference, if there is any. An Enterprise Architecture can be explained as logical and consistent set of rules and concepts which will have a basic principle of working. When these concepts and rules along with the basic principles comes together, then industry standards are formed which will steer the holistic development of the company and improve the productivity and quality of the deliverables of the organisations. It has been predicted by industry Gurus that in the upcoming future, around 40% of the strategic decisions will be influenced by these set of rules only. Initially it was thought that Enterprise Architectures concepts could be related to only businesses and their relationship with their IT platform but now after extensive research on the topic we have come up with the understanding that these concepts are essential fir the whole organisation and different division of a company can employ different EA strategy.(Paauwe, 2019)(Minoli, 2008)Architecture in the case
For this report we have chosen the Chubb’s Enterprise Architecture Practice to study the efforts made by the company to improve the organisational efficiency and output by adopting a new Enterprise Architecture and ditching the old and outdated architecture. To respond to the growing competition, Chubb had to make organisational changes to keep up with the changing digital day and age. Chubb wanted to create a handshake between the 7 lines of business of the organisation and the existing IT infrastructure.In the earlier architecture in the organisation was soiled with complex interrelations between different Lines of and the IT infrastructure that was implemented to support the es. The IT infrastructure was developed by following the latest on-going trend at that time rather than keeping in mind the future unified organisational goals. This has led to miss coordination between different business lines. After understanding the lack of efficiency of the current system, Chubb had decided to change the Enterprise Architecture and came up with the concepts of target architecture which will lay down the foundation of a strong and efficient Organisation Structure and will be able to evolve with the emerging technology of the upcoming future. Few key features of the target architecture are business oriented design, consistency in the business standards, holistic approach, reduce complexity etc.While building the EA for the Chubb, the resource management was of key focus. The skilled personals were carefully selected both from internal teams and external pools to provide optimum level of governance of EA. The enterprise architecture has been divided in five domains and the responsibility of governance of the domains has been given to five teams with different prospective of scope of work. Below are the teams and brief about their responsibilities:· The application architecture teams are mainly the existing in house personal who have good information about the on-going applications and they have the responsibility to maintaining existing standard of deliverables but the main deference is that now the focus will be on building a centralized system rather than working on single applications. The Coordination between these applications is of the main concern.· The information architecture teams deals with the existing information need and also design the platform in such a way that the future needs will also be accounted for. One of the major contributions of this team is educating the business and IT teams about the implementations of new Enterprise Architecture framework and the goal and vision of the whole system.· The platform architects are consist of persons with specific specialisations in developing reusable platforms which can be used by different application and this will help in setting up the standards to be used by the organisation in upcoming future.· Technical Architects defines the technology stack which will be required to sustain the existing platforms and application and will be required for future new implementations. This team will also investigate emerging new technologies and will decide on the possible usability of any new technology.· The security architecture teams will have the responsibility of ensuring the protection of organisational digital assets like client information, employee data, any research data etc. They will design the security architecture and associate rules for safe utilisation of company assets. All the teams will be educated regarding the security system rules and must be complaint with the enforced rules.· IT Strategy and Governance teams indulge in developing the target architecture and guide the organisation toward the organisational vision. They will ensure the integration of different applications and proper standards are being followed.· The business architects will set up the business rules for the organisation which will enhance the capabilities of the organisation. These capabilities will assist the organisation to achieve its goals and vision and become a profitable entity.· There will be content managements teams are the group of architects who will deal with the accruing the technology and the implementation of the investment done in this particular field of interest.As we have already discussed different teams going to be involved in the organisation operation, from here every new project must be issued a Building Permit from Governance team and one of the other five teams will be assigned to the project to access the working and development of the project. This assigned architect will guide the project through all the project development related steps and will ensure that all the standards has been followed while developing the project. Every artifacts and designs documents must be approved and if there exist any deviation then remediation plan must be put in place.(Smith and Watson, 2015)(Kotusev, 2018)Comparison
EA cube is a relatively new enterprise architecture framework which is basically based on the planning and organizing of IT resources and documentation of EA. While comparing different enterprise architectures, we need to ask few specific questions like, what are the business operations and organisational target/vision that need to be taken in account for this new reorganisation. The second question would be how the organisational standards, artifacts, assets etc. are interrelated and how the complexity of coordination between them is reduced. The third question would be how the business and the IT operations are aligned and work together toward a common goal. The fourth question will be the data models which will include the conceptual, logical and physical ones and their dependencies also. The final point will be on the governance on different levels of service.In the methodology part EA cube follows four phase effort, i.e. allocate resource to EA Program, framework and tool is established, document artifacts are being created and finally using and maintenance of the implemented EA framework. The Chubb case that was analysed in this report goes through all these phases so we can conclude that there is no difference in the methodology part.In the framework part, in EA cube the whole architecture is divided into three-dimensional architecture in which the horizontal axis represents the artifacts created for each level, the vertical axis represents the functional aspect of the organisation and the cross axis represents different line of business. In the Chubb enterprise architecture the target architecture is not so different from EA cube but the minute difference is that there is no distinct documentation or artifacts for each level of service and line of business. The artifacts are common for all line of business but there may be different artifacts for different domains.The part of artifacts is interesting; in EA cube there are 46 recommended for strategic, business and technology level. The strategy artifact covers the vision, ideas and goals of the organisation. The business artifact indentifies business plans, stakeholders and infrastructure. The technology artifact covers the information and technology requirement of the organisation. In the Chubb EA, the main artifacts that are to be submitted are strategy map, business model, generic architectural model, diagram for each concepts and detailed target architecture. One responsibility diagram is also maintained which will keep on evolving as the responsibilities of the organisation are fulfilled and new ones are added.In the EA cube framework the information repository is maintained with very convenient and efficient manner in which data will never be duplicated and all the artifacts are maintained properly. In the Chubb architecture, the artifacts are maintained efficiently and the best practices and lesion learned is also update continuously.It’s an iterative governance method in EA cube and the architects and IT teams works closely to initiate, approve, govern and shepherd projects and take it to conclusion. In Chubb EA system also, the governance was closely monitored and at each level of the project, a review team was responsible to ensure that all the standards are being followed and the process were maintained. Both the system in this case is similar to each other.(Winter and Fischer, 2014)(Rajasekharaiah, 2012)Conclusion
The Enterprise Architecture that was used at Chubb was an excellent use of TOGAF and the implementation was done so brilliantly that the organisation as a whole have changed and they have setup an example for the times to come. Chubb have managed to bridge the gap between various applications and was able to increase the efficiency of all the lines of business.I would argue that even though EA cube is focused on more modern and diverse organisations and TOGAF is focused on IT firms like structure but the EA that was used in Chubb was very similar to EA Cube framework. The Chubb EA had included all the modern and important feature of EA Cube and kept the flexibility to evolve beyond the business and IT domain interaction and could be implemented on other line of business like product development and others. As discussed in the comparison section, Chubb EA have similarity with EA cube in methodology, architecture and governance and that’s why we can conclude that Chubb EA closely resembles the EA cube framework.(Sessions, 2007)References
Mark Paauwe, 2019, How to Realize Efficiency in your Organization?, Dragon1 Inc.Heather A. Smith and Richard T. Watson, 2015, The Jewel in the Crown – Enterprise Architecture at Chubb, Indiana, USA.Robert Winter and Ronny Fischer, 2014, Essential Layers Artifacts and Dependencies of Enterprise Architecture,Chandra Mohan Rajasekharaiah, 2012, EA3 Cube and TOGAF, eapad.dkDaniel Minoli, 2008, Enterprise Architecture A to Z, NW, FL 33487-2742.Svyatoslav Kotusev, 2018, TOGAF-based Enterprise Architecture Practice: An Exploratory Case Study, RMIT University.Roger Sessions, 2007, A Comparison of the Top Four Enterprise-Architecture Methodologies, ObjectWatch, Inc.1 | MURDOCH UNIVERSITY