Enterprise Architecture Research Summary (9)-guidelines for implementing the enterprise architecture of the CIO Committee of Federated Enterprise Architecture (II)

Development baseline Enterprise Architecture

In the process of developing the baseline enterprise architecture, each enterprise or organization needs to develop various products based on the defined Architecture Objectives, scope, and architecture framework, this includes both the development of core architecture products and the development of supporting architecture products, it also includes the development of architecture products (briefing charts, meeting minutes, etc.) separately defined for specific needs. In this CIO Committee's Federal Enterprise Architecture guide, the core team of the enterprise architecture applies to the architecture development process (for baseline enterprise architecture and target enterprise architecture development) various activities are summarized as follows:

Architecture product development process

• Data collection: Identifies and collects information that describes the current status of an enterprise or organization.
• Preliminary architecture product formulation: Various preliminary architecture products will be created in this step. It should be noted that the architecture development process is a cyclical process, so in an iteration, it may not be able to create all the architecture products, or the architecture product details cannot meet the final requirements, this needs to be improved in subsequent iterations.
• Review and revision: This process is used to review the accuracy and completion of architecture products and revise and improve the architecture products based on the audit results. This audit process should be conducted at multiple time points in the architecture development process, instead of a one-time process. Each audit process should be divided into two phases: first, a quick review of architecture products is conducted by senior members of the Architecture core team, and then submitted to the experts of various subjects (during this review, the participating members may include the primary architect, the Core Architecture Team, the Quality Assurance personnel, risk management personnel, the subject experts, and the persons in charge of various business fields. After the review, appropriate modifications and improvements to architecture products are required and then submitted to the Enterprise Architecture Executive Committee (EAESC) and Technical Review Committee (TRC) used to verify and final the architecture products.
• Release and delivery: If the architecture product is approved after it is submitted to the Enterprise Architecture Executive Committee (EAESC) and the Technical Review Committee (TRC, the enterprise architecture that contains various architecture products will be released, relevant documents will be delivered together, and relevant databases and architecture tools will also be updated.

Development Target Enterprise Architecture

In fact, the "development target enterprise architecture" and the above "development baseline enterprise architecture" are only different in terms of content. The former is used to develop the architecture for the enterprise or organization's future target status, the latter is used to describe the current state of an enterprise or an organization. Therefore, the architecture product development process shown in the previous 12 is also applicable to the development target enterprise architecture product. In fact, the development of baseline (current) Enterprise Architecture products and the development of target enterprise architecture products should be synchronized during the development of this architecture product, therefore, these two processes can be collectively referred to as the "Enterprise Architecture product development process ".

Development sequence plan

In order to achieve the transition from the current architecture to the target architecture, enterprises or institutions need to gradually implement it in an incremental manner through a series of interrelated activities, in order to manage and maintain such a complex evolution process, enterprises or institutions need to develop and maintain a system transition road map or sequence plan. Because the target enterprise architecture often describes the future situation of the enterprise after a period of time (maybe three to five years), in order to enhance the feasibility and adaptability of this transition process, an enterprise or architecture must use the same descriptive method between the current architecture and the target architecture to establish a series of architectures used to describe the intermediate transition state. As the environment is constantly changing, the actual current architecture and target architecture also need to change under the impetus of the environment, therefore, the architecture that describes the intermediate transition state also needs to be maintained to ensure its accuracy and feasibility. In order to refine the transition process that contains several intermediate states to obtain a sequence plan that can be used to guide implementation, enterprises or organizations can perform the following steps:

• Perform Gap Analysis: Enterprises or organizations need to use the current architecture and target architecture as the basis, use the gap analysis method and compare it to find opportunities for evolution in the relevant architecture products of the two, the components that need to be changed to achieve the target State are obtained.
• Identify legacy, transition, and new systems: These three systems form the technical components required to evolve to the target architecture. The legacy system refers to various systems and applications that are currently running but will be eliminated after the target architecture is deployed. The transitional system refers to the current running, various systems and applications that need to be used even after the transition process or after the target architecture is deployed. New systems, as the name suggests, do not exist yet, but the systems and applications that need to be implemented in the target architecture. After these systems are identified, the relationships between them and the evolution in the transition process need to be clarified (for example, through the system migration diagram ).
• Migration Planning: Enterprises or organizations need to further refine the gaps between the current and target architectures into executable projects and configure appropriate resources for these projects, at the same time, you also need to develop implementation plans for these projects in the order of priority. This requires enterprises or organizations to understand their ability to adapt to changes, as well as their resource requirements, risks, and priorities.
  • Implementation of changed business processes can be expressed as program initiatives that contain several executable projects ). Through gap analysis, enterprises or organizations can find all aspects that need to be enhanced, modified, or replaced, and determine various combinations of activities for evolution through dependency analysis (for example, and the work that each project needs to complete, and define each project.
  • Conduct dependency analysis on projects, measure the importance of each project, and evaluate the priority of each project so as to develop a draft sequence plan for the project portfolio.
  • Finally, the sequence planning should be reviewed and repaired based on the short-term requirements of enterprises or organizations, potential turbulent factors of business units under financial constraints, and other aspects.

Enterprise Architecture

Integrating the enterprise architecture into the daily work of the enterprise has a very positive effect. In the previous enterprise lifecycle, the Enterprise Architecture process can be combined with management processes and methods in other enterprises to promote the sound development of enterprises or organizations, therefore, the process of using the enterprise architecture is to coordinate the Enterprise Architecture with other management processes. The Enterprise Architecture describes the current status and expected future status of an enterprise or an organization, as well as the implementation scheme for transition to a future State, therefore, in general, the enterprise architecture provides an all-encompassing but organized information library for enterprises or organizations. The information library can be used as the basis for various activities of an enterprise or an organization to make various decisions when the information is sufficient and reliable, in addition, the roles originally isolated from each other in an enterprise can communicate in the same way, thus enhancing cooperation between the enterprise and the organization. For example, in the process of capital planning and investment control (CPIC), the enterprise architecture can provide it with the target State, so that the investment of the enterprise or organization can be carried out in line with future expectations, in addition, the current status of various enterprises provided by the enterprise architecture also provides accurate and reliable information for investment decisions of enterprises or organizations. In addition, the enterprise architecture can also be used for the following purposes:

• Even if an enterprise or organization does not intend to perform a major IT upgrade, the enterprise architecture can also exist as resources for inventory management, daily maintenance, and consulting. The analysis of the current enterprise architecture can help enterprises or organizations find opportunities for improvement.
• Enterprises or organizations can use various products in the enterprise architecture to assist in their business and technical training.
• You can use the enterprise architecture to investigate and verify the enterprise or organization. Because the enterprise architecture models and describes all aspects of the enterprise or organization from business to technology, therefore, enterprises or organizations can conduct research and proof of concept (proofs-of-concepts) in a simulated manner based on the information ).
• Enterprises or organizations can develop small and low-risk projects outside the CPIC process, but project management must be consistent with the enterprise architecture. Consistent with the Enterprise Architecture facilitates integration of projects with enterprises or organizations.
• Each O & M project must use the current architecture as its background, and their priority and decision-making will be affected by the enterprise architecture transition plan and target architecture.

Maintain Enterprise Architecture

Whether an enterprise or an organization itself or its environment is constantly changing, and the core of the enterprise architecture is to objectively reflect the current and expected status of the enterprise or organization, according to the current situation, develop a plan to achieve the desired state, so the enterprise architecture also needs to follow these changes and continue to evolve. In each enterprise or organization, the CIO, the main architect, and the Enterprise Architecture Project Management Office (EAPMO) are responsible for maintaining the Enterprise Architecture Evolution, and through the supervision process system and independent review mechanism, the core team of the enterprise architecture can periodically assess and calibrate the compliance of the enterprise architecture with the ever-changing business practices, capital allocation, and technology introduction. The enterprise architecture includes all the architecture products involved in the current enterprise architecture, target enterprise architecture, and sequence plan, therefore, the maintenance of the enterprise architecture is to ensure that these products are consistent with the actual situation of the enterprise or organization.

Control and Supervision

The control and supervision process is not one of the steps in the cycle of the Enterprise Architecture process. This process acts on all the steps in the entire enterprise architecture process, it is used to ensure that the Enterprise Architecture complies with the procedures set forth in this Federal Enterprise Architecture Implementation Guide developed by the CIO Committee during development, use and maintenance. First, enterprises or organizations must determine the effectiveness of enterprise architecture project management control. During the establishment of the organizational structure of enterprise architecture management, enterprise architecture projects are handed over to CIOs, primary architects, and enterprise architecture project management offices. To gain visibility into the project, to supervise and manage the implementation of enterprise architecture projects, these responsible entities need to be defined in the following aspects:

• Information about the enterprise architecture project.
• When and how to obtain the information.
• The specific content and representation of the information.

When the responsible entities of these Enterprise Architecture processes obtain information about the enterprise architecture project according to the above definition, they can identify areas in the enterprise architecture project that do not meet the requirements of the Implementation Guide, and take corresponding rectification measures to address these problems.