Discussion
This report aims to discuss about EA or Enterprise Architecture. A detailed report about the importance of EA is provided. The similarities about EA to city planning is stated. The benefits of EA is provided. The key challenges involved in EA is discussed. The methods by which the city of Melbourne could utilise EA is discussed with concrete examples.
Enterprise Architecture is a thorough exercise for conducting enterprise design, analysis, development, implementation, using an inclusive tactic at all stretches, to make a successful growth and accomplishment of strategy [1]. This architecture applies architecture ideas, and practices for guiding organisations over business, process, information, and technology progresses that are necessary to affect their strategies. EA is the organising judgment for IT process and business infrastructure imitating the integration and standard requirements of the operating model of the company [2].
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a theoretical blueprint that outlines the construction and operation of an organisation. EA determines how any organisation can efficiently achieve its present and future goals. Enterprise architecture contains four perspective such as the information perspective, the business perspective, the technology perspective and the application perspective [3]. The developments and standards by which a business organisation conducts its business on a daily basis is included in the business perspective. Application perspective determines the interactions among the progressions and standards that are used by an organisation. The classification of raw data that are required for effective business are included in the application perspective. The technology perception determines the programming, hardware, solutions of networking, and the operating systems that are utilised by the organisation.
The importance of EA are:
- The alignment and business agility: if projects are conducted without any alignment to the business strategy or priority at that time then business value will not be added, the interest of stakeholders will be diminished, and it will result in waste of capital, resources, and time on unwanted projects. With the introduction of enterprise architecture in a business, there is a clear understanding of the motives of a business and the drivers; an understanding of the drivers and the strategies of the business is understood. The business will progress towards growth, it will lead to new projects in the business, and new skills, capabilities will exist in the enterprise [4].
- Effective IT management: as enterprise architecture delivers modified and efficient blueprint for and existing system, technology domains and data, it makes easier for the employees to understand how the integration of systems are carried out and the interdependencies of these systems become clear. Efficient management of IT resources will lead to better maintenance, management, support and upgrading of these systems.
- Better communication and planning: when there is an implementation of new enterprise architecture, there are some new capabilities and systems, which are introduced and it will lead to a better structure for prioritising the implementation process. The methods for migrating and transferring from the old systems to the new systems becomes easier. The interoperability of the systems will be ensured, the budgets can be secured and a better feasibility of the procurement cycle is achieved. An establishment of innovative capabilities and better administration of the innovations will lead to faster time to marketing. The stakeholders can provide their views and innovative ideas with the help of this complete blueprint that the enterprise architecture determines and these ideas can be used by the organisation to achieve its future goals [5].
- Road mapping and planning of future state: handling the origin of artefacts, reference roadmaps and architecture, development of future-state brochures are achieved with the help of working with domain experts.
- Alignment and solution designing: alignment of solutions of roadmaps and the future state are gained with working in teams. Alignment of Solutions for meeting the architectural and goals of business are achieved by working with teams. The impact of this solution on the various architectural artefacts such as roadmaps, principles, future state documents are captured [6].
- Business case expansion and concepts: development of the concepts and ideas of change leaders and turning these ideas into cases of business action whenever required. The impact and values of business are made clear to these change leaders so that planning for future is done in a systematic process.
- Impact analysis and assessment: analysis of the impact of architectural debt and the assessment of the impact of these decisions on both technical architecture and the business.
- Delivery and initiative support: the change leaders align the architectural goals with initiatives.
- Faster, cheaper and better business processes are re-designed.
- Adoption of open industry standards leads to cutting of costs and future proofing the infrastructure.
- Redundancy and data duplication is reduced.
- Optimisation of the stability of out-sourced and in-house service actions.
- Effective planning of technology replacement or technology updates [7].
- Undertaking of impact analysis and options appraisals.
- Avoiding costs by undertaking improved decisions.
- Cheap and quick Delivery of changes in organisation [8].
- The environmental challenges involved in implementation of enterprise architecture are political control, EA initiatives that have failed in the past, late into the projects, professionalism and structure [9].
- The technical challenges can be the understanding of the EA frameworks and old and outdated infrastructure.
- The managerial challenges can be classified as lack of obligation and ownership, the extent of enterprise architecture, the problems in decision-making and the challenges in selling.
- The acceptance challenges are lack of mutual understanding of enterprise architecture communication.
- The organisational challenges, which might be faced are the lack of viewing of the matrix, the conflict in interest, the lack of interaction between portfolio management and EAM, and the availability of insufficient resources.
As the state of Michigan implemented the Enterprise Architecture [10], the city of Melbourne can also implement EA in the renewal of Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. The steps by which there can be a better utilisation of EA are:
- Public Service Architecture (PSA): a clear idea of the goals, critical success factors and the constraints need to understood. Using terminology and architectural bias the City of Melbourne can progress to modified Enterprise Architecture. The distinctive nuances of public service and a different approach is required for clearly articulating the priorities of the technology staff.
- Information Architecture (IA): with the help of IA, City of Melbourne can coordinate the usage, reuse and sharing 0f the data of state. It helps in modelling, classifying, and leveraging the required information to support important systems and enabling cross-boundary initiatives with the local and federal governments.
- Solution Architecture (SA): SA determines the framework and approach for governing how systems and applications are designed within the City of Melbourne. It ensures the alignment of the goals that are summarised in the Public Service Architecture and the data structures and standards from the Information Architecture.
- Technical Architecture (TA): TA serves as a toolkit for the foundation of all IT goals and ideas. It determines the optimised usage of all state software and hardware products.
Conclusion
Therefore it can be concluded that the City of Melbourne can implement Enterprise Architecture for the effective renewal of Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. The importance of EA are that it provides alignment and business agility, Effective IT management can be achieved from Enterprise Architecture, and Better communication and planning can be formed by the use of EA. There are some similarities of EA to city planning. The benefits that are gained by the introduction of EA in the city architecture are like re-designing of faster, cheaper and better business processes, Reduction of Redundancy and data duplication, Optimisation of the stability of out-sourced and in-house service actions. The challenges involving EA are classified into environmental, technical, semantical and organisational.
References
[1] Simon, Daniel, K Fischbach, and D Schoder. “An exploration of enterprise architecture research.” CAIS 32 (2013): 1.
[2] L, Marc. “Introduction to enterprise architecture.” In Enterprise Architecture at Work, pp. 1-10. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.
[3] Zarvi?, Novica, and R Wieringa. “An integrated enterprise architecture framework for business-IT alignment.” Designing Enterprise Architecture Frameworks: Integrating Business Processes with IT Infrastructure 63 (2014): 9.
[4] Iacob, Maria-Eugenia, L O. Meertens, H Jonkers, D AC Quartel, L JM Nieuwenhuis, and M J. van Sinderen. “From enterprise architecture to business models and back.” Software & Systems Modeling 13, no. 3 (2014): 1059-1083.
[5] Plataniotis, Georgios, S De Kinderen, and H A. Proper. “EA anamnesis: An approach for decision making analysis in enterprise architecture.” International Journal of Information System Modeling and Design (IJISMD) 5, no. 3 (2014): 75-95.
[6] G, Ronald E. Design of enterprise systems: Theory, architecture, and methods. CRC Press, 2016.
[7] Franke, Ulrik, P Johnson, and J König. “An architecture framework for enterprise IT service availability analysis.” Software & Systems Modeling 13, no. 4 (2014): 1417-1445.
[8] Roth, Sascha, M Hauder, M Farwick, R Breu, and F Matthes. “Enterprise Architecture Documentation: Current Practices and Future Directions.” Wirtschaftsinformatik 58 (2013).
[9] Hauder, Matheus, C Schulz, S Roth, and F Matthes. “Organizational factors influencing enterprise architecture management challenges.” In 21st European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Utrecht, Netherland. 2013.
[10] Bui, Q Neo, M. Markus, and S Newell. “Alternative Designs in Widespread Innovation Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Enterprise Architecture Implementation in US State Governments.” (2015).
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