Over the past few years, we have begun to see more and more enterprises investing in Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) and, to a lesser extent, Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA). At first, like most Enterprise Architecture (EA) efforts, these were IT centric, both in terms of participation and perspective. However, as we have been suggesting for years, prepared IT Enterprise Architects took advantage of the interest of senior executive leadership by showing them their EBA and EIA work. Usually in combination with a focus on major strategic initiatives, the models created for EBA and EIA shed some light on the complexity and interrelationships of the major strategic initiatives. Senior leaders not only took notice, but embraced the usage of the planning concepts and artifacts long espoused by IT Chief Architects in the strategic planning context…bringing about a possibility of True Enterprise Architecture (True-EA).
True Enterprise Architecture (True-EA) is quite simply architecting the enterprise. “Isn’t this what Enterprise Architecture always has been?” you may be asking yourself. In actuality, the overwhelming majority of EA efforts that we have come in contact with over the last two decades have, in fact, been IT Enterprise Architecture (IT-EA) efforts. They have been led and operated by IT professionals working within the CIO/CTO’s organization, with a focus on IT outcomes within the domains of technology infrastructure, automated information systems, and data.
True-EA is beginning to manifest itself as the full context of the enterprise, planned in a holistic and comprehensive fashion, with separate ownership of the business (operations and information) domains and the IT (information technology infrastructure, application, and data) domains. A relationship, usually formalized with a jointly represented central committee exists between the two separate but compatible efforts….finally bringing about the realization of True-EA.
READ MORE about True-EA on the EAdirections Blog
HEAR more on our thoughts positioning EA, IT Architecture and Business Architecture by listening to the True-EA Podcast in The EA Soapbox series