Running head: THE ROLE OF THE ENTEPRISE ARCHITECT
M3 EA Research Paper – The Role of the Enterprise Architect
Quincy Nolly
George Washington University
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THE ROLE OF THE ENTEPRISE ARCHITECT
Abstract
Enterprise Architecture emerged in the 1980s as a methodology to integrate business strategy
with emerging technology systems across large, complex global business enterprises. The
original framework, proposed and promoted by John Zachman has been expanded into at least
five unique Enterprise Architecture frameworks. As a result several businesses, non-profit
entities, and large parts of the United States federal government apply some component of the
methodology used to improve business process. What is the role of the Enterprise Architect and
where did the history begin? This brief paper will discuss the foundation of the Enterprise
Architect theory and present general information about the problems an Enterprise Architecture
implementation can solve.
Keywords: Enterprise Architecture Framework, Technology, Organization
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M3 EA Research Paper – The Role of the Enterprise Architect
The role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) to businesses and organizations is to provide
logical capabilities that combine business strategy and practices with technology. When
organizations (the term will be used to associate businesses, educational institutions, government
agencies, and the non-profit sector) decide to apply EA to its operating model, a decision has
been made to at least attempt the alignment of business outcomes with efficiencies gained by
effective and agile technological information systems. Establishing an EA practice can solve
many of the most common problems facing organizations. These common challenges can be
grouped into the following categories adapted by an evaluation of the work by Saha (2009)
Chapter 1 and by the work by Gil-Garcia & Pardo (2005):
(1) Challenges from Information and Data: How can organizations solve their issues of
data quality, data inaccuracy, data inconsistency, and data incompleteness?
(2) Challenges from Information Technology: What will organizations do with legacy
information management systems that might become obsolete soon? Also, how will
can organizations solve their issues of multiple systems that might be incompatible,
are extremely complex, and require outdated resources to maintain usefulness?
(3) Challenges from Executive Management and other Organizational Issues: Perhaps
the most challenging issue to solve is the alignment of organizational goals to
Information Technology (IT) projects. Many organizations are global in scale and
numerous issues are subject to understanding logistics, internal conflicts, and regional
differences.
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(4) Challenges from Restrictive Laws and Regulatory Compliance: While all
organizations are subject to local, state, and federal compliance to laws, perhaps those
organizations focused on government operations and the military are presented with
additional and unique challenges from numerous checks and balances that range from
budgetary approvals, to operations, and to human resources.
(5) Challenges that are Institutional and Environmental: What will organizations do to
maintain security and privacy of sensitive information through the improvements
gained by modernizing IT systems? How will the organization maintain oversight or
coordinate IT challenges adequately?
An early conclusion can be drawn that EA is critical for many organizations, especially
large, complex, and global. An EA can solve a range of problems as identified above for
organizations such as the United States Government, large and complex multi-national
corporations such as Apple or Amazon.com, Inc. EA even applies to what many believe might be
local institution, but when investigated closely, are actually highly complex organizations such as
Harvard University. What are the most probable options available for organizations to assist in
solving for the challenges that an EA program is presented with? Gil-Garcia & Pardo (2005)
identifies a set of key success strategies for organizations and an EA that corresponds to each of
the above challenges:
(1) Key Success Strategies for Information and Data:
a. Prepare an overall strategy plan; obtain continual feedback from vendors and
partners; and implement a quality and compliance assurance program.
(2) Key Success Strategies for Information Technology:
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a. Ensure technology deployment projects have acceptance from users, and are
deployed with evidence of scenario testing.
(3) Key Success Strategies for Executive Management and other Organizational Issues:
a. Ensure IT staff has proper skill and experience with a senior leader who is a
respected IT leader that has both technical and social skills.
b. Prepare realistic and clear goals and objectives for each IT project.
(4) Key Success Strategies for Restrictive Laws and Regulatory Compliance:
a. Prepare a set of IT policies and standards that comply with regional regulatory
mandates
(5) Key Success Strategies for Institutional and Environmental Issues:
a. Establish and maintain organization executive level leadership / sponsorship.
Consider strategic outsourcing when necessary and developing partnerships using
strategic relationships.
The full potential of an EA within an organization will be achieved with the complete
integration of business goals and objectives with technology systems. An EA can establish
several initiatives, beginning with the evaluation of the organization today (known as the current
state) and describing the ideal organization of “tomorrow’ (known as the future state). A gap will
natural emerge that will form the foundation of activities to complete so that the organization can
transition to its ideal enterprise. The role of EA that participates in this natural gap analysis or
roadmap will be able to focus an executive committee on how IT can reshape the enterprise and
begin to use IT for strategic innovation, not simply for administrative record-keeping and helpdesk activities.
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Enterprise Architecture Beginnings and Framework
The foundation for the theory of Enterprise Architecture has its beginnings in
understanding the value of observing the interrelationships between organizations, data,
processes, and technology (Reese, 2010). Observation of these relationships date back to the
early 1980s when computer code and language was used to improve enterprise data modelling,
which led to the development of applications that described components of a business system to
the ecosystem of an organization. The entity that owns the trademark for UNIX, which is an
operating system for IT servers and workstations used across many organization, is known The
Open Group and has within the last few years focused on EA and related topics such as Service
Oriented Architecture, Business Architecture, Cloud Computing, Security/Identify Management,
and other topics. The Open Group created a framework for EA called The Open Group
Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and is a broad methodology that applies to EA. TOGAF
works from an understanding that there are four types of architecture, which are subsets of EA
(Saha, 2009):

Business Architecture: defines business strategies, governance organization and
business processes.

Data/Information Architecture: describes an organizations’ data assets and data
management resources.

Applications (systems) Architecture: describes the blueprint for deployment of
individual application systems and the relationship to core business processes of an
organization.

Information technology (IT) Architecture: describes the software which supports
applications in their effort to improve an organization core business processes.
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The TOGAF is an adaptation of the Zachman Framework. In 1992 John Zachman
introduced a framework for what was called information system architecture, which provided a
taxonomy that brought the concepts describing the real world to the concepts that described an
information system and implementation (Sowa & Zachman, 1992). The framework originated by
Zachman had five characteristics:
1. Scope: Contained the executive summary which described the scope of the system, what
it might cost, and how it will perform.
2. Enterprise Business: Contains the design of an organization and shows the various
entities and process, along with how they interact.
3. System Model: Determines the data elements and functions that represent an organization
entities and processes.
4. Technology Model: Determines the plans which will correspond to the information
system and the details of programming languages, operating systems, and other tools
needed for implementation.
5. Components: Contains the ‘blueprints’ for software developers to configure applications
without being concerned about the overall context or structure of the system.
Through time, the Zachman five characteristic framework has been expanded, first by
adding the English question words what, how, and where then later by adding the additional
question words of who, when, and why (Sowa & Zachman, 1992). These six word questions for
each of the five characteristics creates a 5 x 6 matrix which translates into over thirty (30)
different perspectives on an information system to look something similar to Figure 1.
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Figure 1: Zachman Framework in a 5x6 Matrix
Reference: Sowa, J. F., & Zachman, J. A. (1992). Extending and formalizing the framework for information systems architecture. IBM Systems
Journal, 31(3), 590. Retrieved from http://proxygw.wrlc.org
When the framework described in Sowa & Zachman (1992) began to receive
considerable attention, Zachman followed up with additional thought contribution by expanding
information systems architecture into a descriptive framework based on disciplines very different
from and independent of information systems. This was necessary to provide clarity of
professional communication (Zachman, 1999). Zachman continued creating more explicit
definitions of each of the architectural representations to his framework. More recently, there are
multiple frameworks describing Enterprise Architecture and as of 2010, at least five could be
understood and compared. These five are composed of (1) Zachman Framework; (2) The Open
Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF); (3) the Federal Enterprise Architecture; (4) the
Gartner Enterprise Architecture Framework; (5) a proposed business-IT alignment framework
(BIAF).
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Enterprise Architecture Conclusion
Enterprise Architecture is established as the business tool for the systematic, holistic
planning and decision making for the evolution and operations of an organization’s business and
IT systems. Within IT circles, EA has gained tremendous attention and the value proposition for
executive leadership is emerging. Business and IT alignment is an important challenge but
applying the concepts of Enterprise Architecture to organizations can result into cost
consolidations and entity-wide improvements.
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References
de Vries, M. (2010). A framework for understanding and comparing enterprise architecture
models. Management Dynamics, 19(2), 17-29. Retrieved from
http://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=https://search-proquestcom.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/863259570?accountid=11243
Gil-García, J. R., & Pardo, T. A. (2005). E-government success factors: Mapping practical tools
to theoretical foundations. Government Information Quarterly, 22(2), 187-216.
doi:10.1016/j.giq.2005.02.001
Reese, R. J. (2010). Troux enterprise architecture solutions : driving business value through
strategic it alignment. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Saha, P. (Ed.). (2009). Advances in government enterprise architecture. Retrieved from
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Shah, H., & El Kourdi, M. (2007). Frameworks for enterprise architecture. IT Professional
Magazine, 9(5), 36-41. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxygw.wrlc.org/10.1109/MITP.2007.86
Sowa, J. F., & Zachman, J. A. (1992). Extending and formalizing the framework for information
systems architecture. IBM Systems Journal, 31(3), 590. Retrieved from
http://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=https://search-proquestcom.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/222415143?accountid=11243
Zachman, J. A. (1999). A framework for information systems architecture. IBM Systems Journal,
38(2), 454-470. Retrieved from http://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=https://searchproquest-com.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/222422073?accountid=11243