Introduction to how the Enterprise architecture is implemented (in good depth)

It is not only a means of doing business, it is rapidly evolving into a business, it performance will directly affect the profitability of the enterprise, but many enterprises do not have the timely or adequate involvement of the IT organization in the planning and decision-making process of the business, do not give the planning and IT decision-making process to consider the security, scalability, It issues such as integration issues are sufficiently valued.

Complexity driven change

The traditional application integration method has many drawbacks, it is difficult to solve the whole integration problem of enterprise by simply relying on the mode of transmitting data in two databases or calling interface between them. Whether in theory or in practice, such integration is destined to mean the failure of the project.

Only from the technical perspective of the integration system can only be said to be a means of technology, but to truly realize the value of IT, technical personnel must be from the perspective of technical architecture to the business architecture perspective, from the enterprise architecture planning to consider the integration of it and architecture, not only to solve integration problems, but also to fundamentally improve the value of it.

Enterprise architecture is to undertake enterprise business strategy planning and information construction between the bridge, is the core of enterprise informatization. 97% of the Enterprise architecture is business, 3% is it technology, so what are the components of enterprise architecture? What are the enterprise architecture approaches now? Which enterprise architecture approach should we choose? After the choice, how to do it?

Let me briefly explain several steps to the implementation of the enterprise architecture.

Introduction to Enterprise architecture concepts and knowledge tools

IT systems can be wasteful if they fail to meet business needs, and business processes do not have the appropriate IT support to improve efficiency. The goal of the enterprise architecture is to gain maximum business value through it investment, which is a high-level enterprise vision, focusing on the organization's IT architecture and business architecture. First of all, we give customers 3-4 days of enterprise architecture training, quickly and accurately import enterprise architecture concepts and knowledge tools, so that the architecture team all people have a unified understanding of the enterprise architecture, to ensure that the structure of the work before the preparation work effectively.

Who does the architecture team need to include? Different Enterprise Architecture team members may not have the same composition:

The different scope of the implementation of the schema can also result in different team members, such as the EA Design for shop floor management only, the members involved and the EA design of the entire enterprise are not the same.

Architecture Status Analysis

Many enterprises do not have a unified enterprise structure, even if there is a variety of architectures independent, can not achieve unified planning, coupled with the sub-business departments of their own information work caused the application of the shaft, resulting in poor integration and can not have efficient information, And the poor ability to change and it can't keep up with the pace of business and so many it and business can not be aligned issues.

If you often deal with software systems, you may find that there are several important gaps in the software development process.

1. Inconsistencies in the business architecture to the technical architecture

A. The business architecture is a set of people to do, the technical architect another set of people do, the result of the business structure of the lack of technical architecture considerations, and the technical framework is lack of service-oriented awareness, and ultimately no business services. Getting the final business architecture and technical architecture is not a good combination, resulting in a lot of adaptation or repetitive work.

B. There is also the case that the business architecture is then thrown into the technical architecture to achieve it, but the business architecture does not provide a comprehensive, technical architecture input, resulting in a very inefficient communication.

2. Inconsistency between business architecture and business requirements

A. Some companies, although the position is clear, but the method is not clear. Business architecture is a set of methods, demand analysis is a set of methods, and even without methods, but by personal ability to do, the result is that the architecture and demand deliverables are independent, the business structure of things can not be smoothly transferred to the demand phase

B. There are times when a person is responsible for the business of the product, the architecture and the requirements to do together, when there is no method of guidance, in fact it is easy to get lost in the business details. Premature entry into the business details is a hazard to the product, since the product architecture is not yet clear when entering details will only waste time leading to a deviation of the center of gravity.

3. Inconsistencies in business architecture and implementation

When developing a product, development asks, "What is the value of doing this to the system?" "The result is that demand simply cannot be traced back to the value point of the system, and sometimes even the demand staff do not know why this function was done." If the product life cycle is longer, in the middle of a number of people to do this product, then not only the requirements of the document can not be traced, that is, by verbal speaking also unclear.

A. The business architecture is based on the business language, and the technical language used in the technology implementation is not the same language, it is difficult to smooth the transition, there is a need to translate, and sometimes even in the implementation phase does not look at the business structure of Things

B. Few developers know the business structure of a product, so how can they make good products?

In fact, the business structure and business requirements are not in conflict, they are only in a thing at different levels of things. Architecture focuses on more comprehensive, general, and organizational aspects, while demand is focused on the business details that the user cares about, and business requirements are further analyzed in the business architecture. But many enterprises in the enterprise architecture planning, but do not know how to differentiate these, resulting in business personnel suffer badly.

These gaps are not the most important, there is a bigger and more important gap, is the gap between strategy and it, this can be seen before I wrote a "Enterprise information complex?" The relationship between strategy and architecture? 》

It can be seen from the above that the main problem, the real product development of the hidden problems in fact there are more and very serious, I have experienced. To solve these problems, the following points must be achieved:

1. Find a way and framework to guide the top-level architecture
2. Structured architecture deliverables can transfer architectural knowledge to the architecture migration implementation phase
3. Have a business development platform to integrate business architecture, technical architecture, and development framework

And this is the meaning of enterprise architecture. In order to solve it and business consistency issues, the introduction and landing of enterprise architecture requires three support: the methodology that guides enterprise architecture, the architecture language for Enterprise Architecture description, and the smooth transition from enterprise architecture to application development.

Enterprise Architecture Framework and methodology

There are many different types of enterprise Architecture framework approach, because TOGAF general, in recent years, the development is also good, the application is gradually extensive, and its completeness and practicality are relatively high, so we use TOGAF in the consultation for the customer architecture planning.

TOGAF has an ADM architecture development approach, which is a reliable, proven approach and the key to TOGAF.

TOGAF also provides a detailed architectural artifact model that includes deliverables, deliverables, and architectural building blocks that can give us more guidance.

Although TOGAF9 has provided a content framework, the framework itself does not tell you how to do the details of the architecture, and most of the time we have to draw on some of the existing models or methods, such as PCF, SCOR, CBM, etc.

Enterprise Architecture Language

Enterprise architecture is the top level design, so we can not follow the development phase of UML and other languages to describe, and can not simply use viso casually drag and drop some legends, in the consultation, we give enterprises to import Enterprise Architecture language ArchiMate, of course, each enterprise can also expand their own model on this basis.

Let's take an example of an insurance company and look at a hierarchical view made using ArchiMate:

Here is the application component view:

Business Development Platform

This in the consultation process only to make recommendations, more need to combine the development capabilities of the enterprise to decide how to implement.

Process deliverables examples and brief instructions

Enterprise architecture for large enterprises, but also to try to small and medium-sized enterprises, the key point is not the size of the organization, but the complexity of the system, whether the enterprise needs agile, whether it needs to use it to help you build the future capabilities of the enterprise.

Depending on the size of the enterprise, business complexity is naturally different, so the consultation process is not the same, but some of the methods and procedures are the same, let's take a look at some of these process deliverables and brief instructions, in order to have not contacted the enterprise architecture of the drivers have a preliminary understanding.

In the Enterprise Architecture preparation phase, one of the core is to determine the scope of the enterprise:

and identify the architectural principles

The vision phase needs to identify the core competencies of the enterprise

and to conduct hot spot analysis on core competence.

and improved analysis

There is also a need to determine performance metrics

It is important to develop a unified process hierarchy and process classification during the process design of the business architecture phase

In the business architecture phase, the core is to do high-order process analysis

After business process analysis, analyze and form business components again

Analyze the gap between the to-be architecture and the As-is architecture and form a business component gap analysis

The architecture of information system mainly makes the entity model and application component design

Technical architecture In addition to deployment design

There are also technical architecture selection,

There is also an important need for core technology grooming

Once the architecture is complete, get started with portfolio management

In this step, an architecture that fully supports the business is a prototype.

Don't exaggerate the role of it

     it informatization is to help the enterprise operate, and the operation is the strategy, from this order of view, that is it is in the strategic planning, and this is the two sets of skills required by the team to complete. We can not put it too overrated, they are not omnipotent, I am not saying that software enterprises do not have this ability, but the operation of the industry has specialized, enterprises can not be a management problem directly into an IT problem to solve, otherwise the solution will be an IT solution, not to solve the management program. I think the management of the problem or through the management of the way to solve the better, the Enterprise strategy consulting also have to do consulting, the self-thinking business also have their own planning, it relative to these, more to is a strategic implementation of the tool, can not put the cart before the horse, it work output is not a strategy, otherwise easily out of blunder. Strategic management must be experienced enterprise strategic expert team to complete, and IT system completion must also need a professional team to complete, software developers can not help you do these things, you need to be able to enterprise it informatization to do the overall planning of the people.