Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge

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The Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge (EABOK) is a guide to Enterprise Architecture produced by MITRE's Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics, and is substantially funded by US government agencies. It provides a critical review of enterprise architecture issues in the context of the needs of an organization. Because it provides a "big picture" view of needs and methods, some enterprise architecture practitioners recommend it as starting point for a business establishing an enterprise architecture unit.

Contents

Overview

The Guide to the Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge (EABOK) organizes and characterizes the knowledge content of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline. This organization and characterization promotes a consistent view of EA, establishes the scope and bounds of the EA discipline, and places the discipline in the context of related disciplines. The EABOK subdivides EA into knowledge areas and topics within each area, presents an overview of the topic, and provides the reader references for further information. The EABOK is a guide to EA, not the body of knowledge itself.

EABOK [1]

The current printable version is marked DRAFT, dated 06-Feb-2004, and edited by Dr Paula J Hagan. It has been approved for public release; distribution unlimited. No updates have been made to any publicly released version of this document since 2004, and the project appears to have been abandoned.

Since the most recent publication, the extensions of DODAF, including MODAF, as well as the work at the Object Management Group, have created a model that satisfies both frameworks.

Perspective

EABOK (and the discipline it describes) is evolving (and partially incomplete). [1] [2] It places enterprise architecture in context. Because there are so many different frameworks and viewpoints about enterprise architecture, it provides a critique of alternatives (such as between the original Zachman Framework, TOGAF and DODAF). The bibliographies are particularly useful.

It treats Enterprise Architecture as not including merely diagrams and technical descriptions, but gives a holistic view that includes US legislative requirements and guidance, as well as giving technologists a better understanding of business needs with a quick explanation of the value chain for a business as outlined by Michael Porter.

It is worth reading between the lines of many sections, the comments make many experienced information systems and business professionals appreciate the EABOK: while it reviews a range of approaches, it is not frightened to put a personal point of view:[ citation needed ]

Today Zachman sees his framework as a thinking tool...The Zachman EA Framework has contributed to the organization of several later frameworks and much architectural thinking.

EABOK [1]

Another example of possible implied criticism of some EA practitioners:

Many novice EA practitioners comment that they find the DODAF too complex for a starting point to build an enterprise architecture. Other practitioners find the DODAF a good source of product description information to get them started.

EABOK [1]

While many of the references to legislation and guidance are US-centric, the issues and the references are useful to government agencies and businesses across the world.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zachman Framework</span> Structure for enterprise architecture

The Zachman Framework is an enterprise ontology and is a fundamental structure for enterprise architecture which provides a formal and structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise. The ontology is a two dimensional classification schema that reflects the intersection between two historical classifications. The first are primitive interrogatives: What, How, When, Who, Where, and Why. The second is derived from the philosophical concept of reification, the transformation of an abstract idea into an instantiation. The Zachman Framework reification transformations are: identification, definition, representation, specification, configuration and instantiation.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviors of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. By international consensus, Enterprise Architecture has been defined as "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."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Defense Architecture Framework</span> Enterprise architecture framework

The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is an architecture framework for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that provides visualization infrastructure for specific stakeholders concerns through viewpoints organized by various views. These views are artifacts for visualizing, understanding, and assimilating the broad scope and complexities of an architecture description through tabular, structural, behavioral, ontological, pictorial, temporal, graphical, probabilistic, or alternative conceptual means. The current release is DoDAF 2.02.

A federal enterprise architecture framework (FEAF) is the U.S. reference enterprise architecture of a federal government. It provides a common approach for the integration of strategic, business and technology management as part of organization design and performance improvement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise architecture framework</span> Frame in which the architecture of a company is defined

An enterprise architecture framework defines how to create and use an enterprise architecture. An architecture framework provides principles and practices for creating and using the architecture description of a system. It structures architects' thinking by dividing the architecture description into domains, layers, or views, and offers models - typically matrices and diagrams - for documenting each view. This allows for making systemic design decisions on all the components of the system and making long-term decisions around new design requirements, sustainability, and support.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise modelling</span>

Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization.

Enterprise systems engineering (ESE) is the discipline that applies systems engineering to the design of an enterprise. As a discipline, it includes a body of knowledge, principles, and processes tailored to the design of enterprise systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Zachman</span> American computer scientist

John A. Zachman is an American business and IT consultant, early pioneer of enterprise architecture, chief executive officer of Zachman International, and originator of the Zachman Framework.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Business architecture</span>

In the business sector, business architecture is a discipline that "represents holistic, multidimensional business views of: capabilities, end‐to‐end value delivery, information, and organizational structure; and the relationships among these business views and strategies, products, policies, initiatives, and stakeholders."

In information systems, applications architecture or application architecture is one of several architecture domains that form the pillars of an enterprise architecture (EA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise life cycle</span> Process of changing an enterprise over time

Enterprise life cycle (ELC) in enterprise architecture is the dynamic, iterative process of changing the enterprise over time by incorporating new business processes, new technology, and new capabilities, as well as maintenance, disposition and disposal of existing elements of the enterprise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">View model</span>

A view model or viewpoints framework in systems engineering, software engineering, and enterprise engineering is a framework which defines a coherent set of views to be used in the construction of a system architecture, software architecture, or enterprise architecture. A view is a representation of a whole system from the perspective of a related set of concerns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treasury Enterprise Architecture Framework</span>

Treasury Enterprise Architecture Framework (TEAF) was an enterprise architecture framework for treasury, based on the Zachman Framework. It was developed by the US Department of the Treasury and published in July 2000. May 2012 this framework has been subsumed by evolving Federal Enterprise Architecture Policy as documented in "The Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FDIC Enterprise Architecture Framework</span>

FDIC Enterprise Architecture Framework was the enterprise architecture framework of the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). A lot of the current article is about the enterprise architecture framework developed around 2005, and currently anno 2011 out-of-date.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise architecture planning</span>

Enterprise architecture planning (EAP) in enterprise architecture is the planning process of defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business and the plan for implementing those architectures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NIST Enterprise Architecture Model</span> Reference model of enterprise architecture

NIST Enterprise Architecture Model is a late-1980s reference model for enterprise architecture. It defines an enterprise architecture by the interrelationship between an enterprise's business, information, and technology environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treasury Information System Architecture Framework</span>

The Treasury Information System Architecture Framework (TISAF) is an early 1990s Enterprise Architecture framework to assist US Treasury Bureaus to develop their Enterprise Information System Architectures (EISAs).

Capability management is the approach to the management of an organization, typically a business organization or firm, based on the "theory of the firm" as a collection of capabilities that may be exercised to earn revenues in the marketplace and compete with other firms in the industry. Capability management seeks to manage the stock of capabilities within the firm to ensure its position in the industry and its ongoing profitability and survival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dragon1</span>

Dragon1 EA Method (Dragon1) is an open method for Visual Enterprise Architecture and also an Enterprise Architecture Framework. Dragon1 covers the development of a variety of architectures, such as enterprise, governance, business, information and technical architecture. It also covers solution architecture, reference architectures and security architecture or Human Capital Architecture (HCA).

The history of business architecture has its origins in the 1980s. In the next decades business architecture has developed into a discipline of "cross-organizational design of the business as a whole" closely related to enterprise architecture. The concept of business architecture has been proposed as a blueprint of the enterprise, as a business strategy, and also as the representation of a business design.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Guide to the (Evolving) Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge". 2007-01-01.Note: The document is dated 2004-02-06 and marked as draft. That is the last version of the document put out by MITRE.
  2. "EABOK Home". MITRE.