Really, What Do We Mean By (Enterprise) ‘Architecture’?

It is easy to google for an enterprise architecture definition and you can find numerous definitions from what you would call the reliable sources. Here is a quick sample of these definitions.

• ANSI/IEEE Std 1471-2000: “The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution.”
• Cap Gemini: “Enterprise Architecture is the description and visualization of the structure of a given area of contemplation, its elements and their collaborations and interrelations links vision, strategy and feasibility, focusing on usability durability and effectiveness. Architecture enables construction, defining principles, rules, standards and guidelines, expressing, and communicating a vision”
• Forrester: “Enterprise architecture consists of the vision, principles and standards that guide the purchase and deployment of technology within an enterprise”
• Gartner Group: “Enterprise architecture (EA) is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating, and improving the key principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.”
• Gartner Group: “Enterprise architecture is the process that interweaves business and IT together”
• Institute for Enterprise Architecture Development: “Enterprise Architecture is about understanding all of the different elements that go to make up the enterprise and how those elements interrelate”
• MIT Center for Information Systems Research: “Enterprise Architecture is the organizing logic for key business processes and IT capabilities reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model.”
• The ArchiMate Foundation: “A coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an Enterprise’s organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure”
• The Open Group: “By being inclusive with all other management frameworks, EA is a discipline that helps the Enterprise define, develop and exploit the boundary less information flow (BIF) capabilities in order to achieve the Enterprise’s Strategic Intent.”
• US Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF): “Enterprise architecture is a management practice to maximize the contribution of an agency’s resources, IT investments, and system development activities to achieve its performance goals. Architecture describes clear relationships from strategic goals and objectives through investments to measurable performance improvements for the entire enterprise or a portion (or segment) of the enterprise”

Not sure, if you would be any clearer about what enterprise architecture really means after reading all these definitions.

However, if you get down to the basics and look up the definition for the word “Architecture” in any common English dictionary, you will find the following two distinct meanings –

1. The complex or carefully designed structure of something.
2. The art or practice of designing and constructing (buildings).

?This should give us the clue. When the word architecture was adopted in the information technology lexicon it inherited the meaning from these basic two forms of the definition. And even today the meaning is very much valid,

1. Architecture is a designed structure (a model)
2. Architecture is a practice (or more specifically, realization of architecture capabilities).

Let us discuss these two forms of definitions in more details to understand the real meaning of architecture in the enterprise.

Architecture As a Model

In general, to isolate ‘signal’ from ‘noise’, we represent a real thing to reduce its complex physical or conceptual structure by creating a ‘strawman’ version. We highlight only the essential elements of interest under the given context so that we can focus on the relevant and important aspects of it. This reduced representation is easier to work with and helps us communicate and plan changes to the real thing effectively. All parties involved in the planning and implementation of the change can share this simpler representation during discussions in all formal and informal settings and keep the discussion focused on the relevant areas of interest. This strawman version is a type of model.

There are various forms of information representations such as taxonomies and ontologies that are foundational elements and are used to describe organized structures; they are also a type of models that provide an easy to use and better organized representation of complex information.

It is said that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and throughout the human history people have used various simple but very effective forms of symbols and basic ‘box-and-wire’ diagrams to represent all sorts of relevant relationships among conceptual objects that were of interest to them. This carries on today in every engineering disciplines. Such ‘box-and-wire’ diagrams are also a type of model.

The various forms of representations, diagrams, ontologies, taxonomies, maps, that simplify complex entities and organization of structures, along with their inter-relationships with other structures, are all types of architecture models. The collection of artifacts (or some may refer to them as blueprints) containing these models that holistically represent a state of a real entity is referred to as “the architecture” of the entity.

You will find the terms model and model-view being used interchangeably, however these two terms have very distinct meaning. A model of a complex entity is a complete and holistic description of the entity that is composed of many objects. The model contains complete description of its constituent objects in terms of their properties, and interactions and interrelationships with other objects.

The model-view on the other hand, is a partial or filtered view of the model showcasing only a subset of objects and their interactions that are of interest to a specific stakeholder. So, a model in and of itself is not intended to be in easily consumable form; however, a model-view is a special rendition of the model based on the stakeholder’s specific viewpoint.

For those with data engineering background, may find parallels between the concept of a whole schema of a relational database as a model and a specific view created for a use case for that database as the model-view. The architecture of an entity consists of a set of artifacts containing both the model and its relevant model-views that are of interest to the key stakeholders.

Architecture As a Practice

The second meaning of the word “architecture” refers to architecture as a practice. The word practice means a professional activity that involves a lot of skills, a continuous exercise of a profession, or simply actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method. We commonly identify professions such as legal, teaching, and medical as practices.?The profession of architecture development is the architecture practice.

In business the Architecture practice is realized by implementing the target operating model for the architecture practice which consists of architecture capabilities where groups of real people play various architecture roles and follow well-defined processes to develop architecture models at conceptual, logical, and physical levels.

As discussed in article - Essential Capabilities for Strategic Planning , there are a few core capabilities a business must possess to run successful strategic planning cycles. The Architecture capability is one of those essential capabilities that provides the business the ability to create technology strategies and develop, maintain, and govern architecture models and views at conceptual, logical, and physical levels.?With this capability business can make crucial architecture and technology decisions and recommend suitable solution alternatives.

There are number of ways to design an operating model for an architecture practice and implement it to set up the 'right' sized practice suitable for the business.?

At one end of the spectrum, a small business may not even have any formal architecture practice; senior IT team members or managers may perform the architecture related roles on an ad hoc basis. For a medium to large size businesses may have a formally established architecture practice of a single dedicated centralized department consisting of group of people who collectively provide architecture services playing one or many of the architecture roles (i.e., enterprise, solution, and technical) as the need arises. On some occasions the department may only be providing services for technical architecture area; in some other times it may have dedicated people providing services under solutions architecture area, and rarely, there might even be people providing services under enterprise architecture area.

A mature well-established business might have a dedicated centralized architecture practice led by a Chief Enterprise Architect supporting all three areas of architecture. Such an architecture practice may be governed under a centralized IT department under Chief Information Officer (CIO) or a Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In other cases, the architecture practice still centralized could be a virtual community of practice (CoP) consisting of members playing various architect roles focused on lines of businesses led by a Chief Architect who may report to CIO or CTO.

The architecture practice for a large business could consists of a decentralized team with members reporting into the heads of various lines of business (LoB) as well as respective IT departments in a 'matrix' organization. For a very large multi-nationals or governments there could be federated and decentralized multiple architecture teams for each line of businesses or agencies providing architecture services under the three architecture areas, namely Enterprise, Solutions, and Technical, reporting into strategic planning and decentralized IT departments. And of course, there can be all sorts of other permutations and combinations suited for the given business.???

The Architecture practice must be implemented by ‘right sizing’ the structure and processes for the three architecture areas as needed by the business. This implementation can and do vary from business to business based on their maturity level, level of technology adoption, nature of business itself, the type of product and services they develop, the amount of change the business is undergoing at that time, and of course, its culture.

See the article - Organizational Structure Design and Patterns .

Regardless of how the Architecture practice is realized as a formal or informal practice its main objective always remains to ensure business and IT alignment, that is, to ensure all strategic, operational, and tactical IT investments are going towards the delivery of the right solutions addressing the stated business goals.

Also, just to complete the picture, people may carry whatever titles but if they produce architecture models then they are indeed performing one of many architect roles and they belong (directly or indirectly) under the architecture practice.

Also see the article - The Problem with Architect Job Titles, Roles, and Responsibilities .

Author: Sunil Rananavare, IT Strategy Planning and Architecture (CIO Advisory)

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The views in the article are author’s own and not necessarily of his employer.