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The Enterprise Architecture Kickstart Program seeks to inject and EA program into an organization that has limited EA disciplines in place and is seeking to kick-start their Enterprise Architecture program. It combines some of the EA theory with a practical 8 week implementation cycle wherein the participants will develop an actual EA skeleton framework for their company which thay can then build upon going forward through the various iterations of a full EA implementation.
It will have also equipped the team effectively with some of the theory to give the EA initiative the
momentum required to be effective in the organization.
It must be highlighted that this is a semi-training, semi-actual deliverable approach. The outcome
is by no means a completed EA or a complete set of artefacts. However, the team and students
will have an actual EA and initial skeleton framework to have developed a solid understanding of
the domain in order to take it further into the next iteration.
The program agenda is detailed below:
Week 1
All participants will go through the Advanced EA Course to provide the theoretical baseline for the
exercise.
The following will be dealt with during this initial week:
- EA Strategy (EA Assessment, EA Planning & EA Principles)
- Business Architecture
- Enterprise Surveys
- AS-IS Modelling
- Information Architecture
- Business Systems Architecture
- Technology Architecture
- Rollout Plan and Migration
- Conclusion and Buy-In
- Transition and Implementation
- Portfolio Management and Governance
Week 2
The team will perform the following tasks on their company specific data:
1. EA Governance Framework and Processes
Its critical to have some form of governance in place to manage the deliverables and
outcomes of an EA exercise. The governance framework will put a foundation in place to
manage the artifacts delivered out of the jumpstart project to ensure sustainability of the
exercise going into the next iteration of EA.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Business Governance Processes
- IT Governance Processes
- Current change control and configuration
management processes
- Skelton EA Governance Processes
2. EA Maturity Assessment
The EA assessment exercise is a questionnaire that score the exercise based upon criteria
defined in the extended enterprise architecture framework. This will give us a good metric as
a baseline for the EA and should be done at the end of each iteration until the target maturity
is achieved.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Current IT and Architecture landscape
- Current environment EA Maturity measure
3. EA Planning Exercise
Planning and project logistics around the effort of the jumpstart program and the follow on
iterations.
Helpful Inputs Outputs:
- List of current projects
- List of team members
- Organizational Structure
- Committed resources for the full 25 days
- Current Toolsets
- Team structure
- Landscape Picture
- Macro Plan
4. EA Principles
Principles are critical for quick decision making. Some preliminary principles will be defined
here as a baseline exercise. These must be rolled out to the organization as soon as possible
to begin to enable the governance processes of the EA exercise.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Policies
- Guiding Principles
- Post project assessment forms (if any)
- Initial skeleton principles
Week 3 & 4
1. Business Architecture
The team will develop a preliminary skeleton business model based upon the functional
organization structure. The model will only be built internally in this iteration and will not be
distributed to the wider organization or SME level until iteration two.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Current organization structure
- Current business model
- Current process model
- Current Projects
- CSF’s
- Project Charters
- Current System Documentation
- Preliminary Functional Business Model
decomposed to a reasonable level
2. AS-IS Assessment
The AS-IS assessment takes the current IT landscape and maps it to the defined business
model above. Through this exercise the team ill be able to determine where gaps and/or
overlaps exist in the current environment. The AS-IS assessment will also give business a
good indication of how well the IT resources are meeting business requirements.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Current system documentation
- Current application documentation
- Current infrastructure documentation
- Current interface and integration documentation
- Current project landscape
- Preliminary Functional Business Model
- Preliminary resource catalog
- Resource catalog mapped to the business
architecture
- Preliminary gap analysis
Week 5 & 6
1. Information Architecture
The information architecture will address certain information consumption and creation rules
to develop an initial business information architecture. The information architecture shows
what data is manipulated by which areas of the business.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Asset registers
- Current data dictionary
- Class and entity diagrams
- Current process models
- Preliminary Functional Business Model
- Information Model
- Skeleton mapping of the data to
business model
- Initial understanding of relationships
between the data and the business
model
2. Business Systems Architecture
The Business Systems architecture is in essence the To-Be blue print for a future application
architecture. The team will merge the business and information models using various
techniques to help identify required to-be business solutions.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Preliminary Functional Business Model
- Information Architecture
- To-Be Business Systems Architecture
(Application Architecture)
- Preliminary interface solution
Week 7 & 8
1. Technology Architecture
The team will use various technical reference models to help define the execution
architecture for the to-be blueprint identified in the business systems architecture phase. The
operations and development technical architectures will be addressed in later iterations. The
team will also define and finalize a standard TRM for the business and put this under the
governance processes for management.
Helpful Inputs Outputs
- Business systems architecture
- Technology Policies and principles
- Procurement Policies
- Non-Functional requirements
- Skeleton Technical Execution Architecture
- Initial technical reference model (TRM) for the business
2. Rollout Plan
The rollout plan formulates and prepares a plan for the implementation of the architectures. It
looks at the current environment and the defined blueprint architectures and determines the
most suitable rollout structure and timescale.
Inputs Outputs
- AS-IS Assessment
- Information architecture
- Business Systems Architecture
- Technology Architecture
- Current Projects
- Gap analysis (AS-IS and TO-BE)
- Initial high level rollout plan
- High level CSF’s
- Next Steps Plan
3. Conclusion and Buy-in
In this step the team will summarise their findings in a brief presentation for the stakeholders
and seek to achieve buy-in for iteration two. Traditional EA cycles take 6 months to complete
for 1 iteration. The team would have finished this 8 week exercise with a solid understanding
of the process as well as an initial skeleton EA for initial rollout and development into the
organization. Momentum must not be lost here and it is imperative that the team obtains buyin
for the follow-on iteration.
The next iteration will require an much greater involvement from business via interviews and
surveys as well as the development for further blueprints and architectures to produce a more
robust EA. Various decisions need to be made around some of the recommendations and a
good deal of change management needs to occur in order to rollout an EA framework.
Our consultants traditionally get involved in the second iteration to support our clients and the
new EA function to help maintain continuity.
Please contact us if you are interested in having your company perform a facilitated SOA engagement.
For further details please read through our Kickstart EA Training Course outline. |
