The EA framework will help you develop an enterprise architecture plan (EAP) to get a full view of your business technology, analyze where processes can be integrated or eliminated in the organization and help you improve the efficiency and reliability of business information.
The highest paid enterprise architects live in Seattle, where the average annual salary is 17 percent higher than the national median. New York is the second highest paid city for EAs, where the average salary is 11 percent higher than the median, followed by Atlanta, where EAs earn 7 percent more than the median.
Enterprise architecture tools are designed to help businesses collaborate, build reports, run tests and create simulations too manage current enterprise architecture and any future technology that IT might bring into the business. EA software can help create visualizations, organize data, catalogue IT assets and help with inter-departmental communication.
SAFe defines three architect roles, Enterprise, Solution, and System Architect, that address the Portfolio, Large Solution, and Essential levels. These architects regularly collaborate to ensure alignment and address issues and concerns as they arise. Figure 1 illustrates a high-level overview of their responsibilities.
In addition, the relationship between business and technology strategy requires active collaboration between architects and other SAFe roles to ensure that the architecture meets the current and evolving needs of the business and its customers.
EAs help organizations respond to new business challenges with larger-scale architectural initiatives that require some intentionality and planning. This intentionality provides Agile Teams with a solid foundation to work independently, allowing the proper balance of intentional architecture and emergent design. This work typically involves:
Decentralized decision-making and execution are hallmarks of SAFe. To enable the decentralization of architecture while maintaining solution integrity, EAs support the establishment and evolution of architectural standards. These standards help provide alignment on how to build solutions the right way. EAs, in close partnership with System and Solution Architects, establish, foster, and evolve architectural standards and apply them in the following ways:
Now more than ever, Business Agility is needed to compete and thrive in the age of digital and software. This new reality requires an adaptive technology strategy, which in turn requires a Lean-Agile approach to enterprise architecture.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a visual modeling and design tool based on the OMG UML. The platform supports: the design and construction of software systems; modeling business processes; and modeling industry based domains. It is used by businesses and organizations to not only model the architecture of their systems, but to process the implementation of these models across the full application development life-cycle.
Systems modeling using UML provides a basis for modeling all aspects of organizational architecture, along with the ability to provide a foundation for designing and implementing new systems or changing existing systems. The aspects that can be covered by this type of modeling range from laying out organizational or systems architectures, business process reengineering, business analysis, and service-oriented architectures and web modeling,[2][3] through to application and database design and re-engineering, and development of embedded systems.[4]Along with system modeling, Enterprise Architect covers the core aspects of the application development life-cycle, from requirements management through to design, construction, testing and maintenance phases, with support for traceability, project management and change control of these processes, as well as, facilities for model driven development of application code using an internal integrated-development platform.
The user base ranges from programmers and business analysts through to enterprise architects, in organizations ranging from small developer companies, multi-national corporations and government organizations through to international industry standards bodies.[5][6][7]Sparx Systems initially released Enterprise Architect in 2000. Originally designed as a UML modeling tool for modeling UML 1.1, the product has evolved to include other OMG UML specifications 1.3, 2.0, 2.1, 2.3, 2.4.1 and 2.5.
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviours of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. The international definition according to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations is "a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."[1]
The United States Federal Government is an example of an organization that practices EA, in this case with its Capital Planning and Investment Control processes.[2] Companies such as Independence Blue Cross, Intel, Volkswagen AG,[3] and InterContinental Hotels Group also use EA to improve their business architectures as well as to improve business performance and productivity. Additionally, the Federal Enterprise Architecture's reference guide aids federal agencies in the development of their architectures.[4]
As a discipline, EA "proactively and holistically lead[s] enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change" towards organizational goals. EA gives business and IT leaders recommendations for policy adjustments and provides best strategies to support and enable business development and change within the information systems the business depends on. EA provides a guide for decision making towards these objectives.[5] The National Computing Centre's EA best practice guidance states that an EA typically "takes the form of a comprehensive set of cohesive models that describe the structure and functions of an enterprise. The individual models in an EA are arranged in a logical manner that provides an ever-increasing level of detail about the enterprise."[6]
Important players within EA include enterprise architects and solutions architects. Enterprise architects are at the top level of the architect hierarchy, meaning they have more responsibilities than solutions architects. While solutions architects focus on their own relevant solutions, enterprise architects focus on solutions for and the impact on the whole organization. Enterprise architects oversee many solution architects and business functions. As practitioners of EA, enterprise architects support an organization's strategic vision by acting to align people, process, and technology decisions with actionable goals and objectives that result in quantifiable improvements toward achieving that vision. The practice of EA "analyzes areas of common activity within or between organizations, where information and other resources are exchanged to guide future states from an integrated viewpoint of strategy, business, and technology."[7]
The term enterprise can be defined as an organizational unit, organization, or collection of organizations that share a set of common goals and collaborate to provide specific products or services to customers.[8] In that sense, the term enterprise covers various types of organizations, regardless of their size, ownership model, operational model, or geographical distribution. It includes those organizations' complete sociotechnical system,[9] including people, information, processes, and technologies. Enterprise as a sociotechnical system defines the scope of EA.
The term architecture refers to fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment; and embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution.[10] A methodology for developing and using architecture to guide the transformation of a business from a baseline state to a target state, sometimes through several transition states, is usually known as an enterprise architecture framework. A framework provides a structured collection of processes, techniques, artifact descriptions, reference models, and guidance for the production and use of an enterprise-specific architecture description.[citation needed]
Paramount to changing the EA is the identification of a sponsor. Their mission, vision, strategy, and the governance framework define all roles, responsibilities, and relationships involved in the anticipated transformation. Changes considered by enterprise architects typically include innovations in the structure or processes of an organization; innovations in the use of information systems or technologies; the integration and/or standardization of business processes; and improvement of the quality and timeliness of business information.[citation needed]
According to the standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010,[10] the product used to describe the architecture of a system is called an architectural description. In practice, an architectural description contains a variety of lists, tables, and diagrams. These are models known as views. In the case of EA, these models describe the logical business functions or capabilities, business processes, human roles and actors, the physical organization structure, data flows and data stores, business applications and platform applications, hardware, and communications infrastructure.[11]
The first use of the term "enterprise architecture" is often incorrectly attributed to John Zachman's 1987 A framework for information systems architecture.[12] The first publication to use it was instead a National Institute of Standards (NIST) Special Publication[13] on the challenges of information system integration.[citation needed] The NIST article describes EA as consisting of several levels. Business unit architecture is the top level and might be a total corporate entity or a sub-unit. It establishes for the whole organization necessary frameworks for "satisfying both internal information needs" as well as the needs of external entities, which include cooperating organizations, customers, and federal agencies. The lower levels of the EA that provide information to higher levels are more attentive to detail on behalf of their superiors. In addition to this structure, business unit architecture establishes standards, policies, and procedures that either enhance or stymie the organization's mission.[13]
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