EA Definition

Product Description

Establish an organisation specific definition of Enterprise Architecture and the domain architectures. These definitions would facilitate discussions with regards to EA and guide the EA initiatives in terms of scope and application.

Product Approach

The definitions will be developed in a workshop. The Real IRM consultant will provide definitions of EA and domain architectures for debate during the workshop.

EA Stakeholder Analysis

Product Description

Defining the stakeholders or customers (usually internal to the organisation) of EA, understanding their viewpoints or perspectives that would guide their use and application of EA and identifying the views or products that would satisfy these viewpoints.

Product Approach

The Real IRM consultants will facilitate a workshop with architects and potential stakeholders to identitfy the stakeholders, their viewpoints and views based on the existing EA practice within the organisation, as well as the future evolving EA practice.

EA Conceptual Framework

Product Description

Defining models that should be developed to generate the defined views that are related to the various identified stakeholders.

This framework will identify per domain architecture - business, information, data, application and technology:

• Types of models required per level - contextual, conceptual, logical, physical
• The interrelationships between the various model types
• Preferred modelling notation, e.g. UML, ERD, Functional Decomposition, etc.
• Audience / users of models
• Required outputs

Product Approach

The Real IRM consultants will prepare recommendations and alternatives per domain architecture based on views identified in the EA stakeholder Analysis as well as reference frameworks such as the Zachman, TOGAF, GERAM and BIDAT frameworks. In the workshop the various alternatives will be discussed and debated.

EA Assessment

Product Description

A high level assessment of the Enterprise Architecture maturity of the business and IT organisation. The assessment will focus on the following aspects:

• EA staffing and required competencies
• EA capability processes, including governance
• EA deliverables
• EA enabling infrastructure
  

The objectives of the EA Assessment are to:

• record the current state of EA to use as a benchmark to measure project benefit realisation,
• determine the level of understanding on EA as input to the other project deliverables,
• determine existing practices that might impact on the project deliverables, and
• determine initial tool implementation requirements.

Product Approach

The EA Assessment will be conducted online and the results will be discussed and validated in a workshop.

EA Guiding Principles

Product Description

Guiding principles are:

• those core values that should be incorporated into every major IT initiative that Client undertakes.
• complementary to the business strategies and are used to set and guide decision making, not to run the day-to-day IT business.
• general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which Client sets about fulfilling its mission.

Guiding principles will be developed for Enterprise Architecture as a discipline, as well as for the five domain architectures - business, information, data, application and technology.

Product Approach

Three workshops will be conducted to formulate the guiding principles:

• EA Guiding Principles workshop
• Business (Business and Information domains) Guiding Principles workshop
• Solution (Data, Application and Technology domains) Guiding Principles workshop

The Real IRM consultants will prepare a collection of guiding principles from TOGAF and their own knowledgebase. For each principle there will be an opposing principle. The workshop participants will then vote on the principles and based on the results of the vote a decision will be made on the adoption of principles. Implications would then be identified for the selected principles.

This approach has been adopted successfully in the past at other clients and tend to accelerate the decision process substantially.

EA Roadmap

Product Description

Establish an organisation specific roadmap for Enterprise Architecture that will indicate the focus areas of EA and formulate a strategy to achieve the vision over time.

Product Approach

The roadmap will be developed based on the results of the EA Maturity Assessment and best practice for EA.