Week 4: EA Frameworks

There are many different EA frameworks in use today. How popular are they? Are companies interested in using frameworks?

How do you impress management about the ROI of an EA initiative?

Write about any other EA activities you engaged in the week.

Among many different EA frameworks of nowadays, there are four of them which have the most popularity: Zachman Framework, TOGAF, FEA, and Gartner.

The Zachman Framework, which consists of two dimensional classification matrix based on six basic questions (Why, How, What, Who, Where and When), provides a formal and highly structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise. It is much more like a methodology that leads architect designer to think about enterprise architecture.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a framework, which provides a comprehensive approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information architecture. Nowadays, The Open Group has grown to be a global consortium that enables the achievement of business goals by designing IT standards.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture could provide a common methodology for information technology acquisition, use and disposal in the Federal government. It provides several models for reference, such as PRM, BRM, SRM, DRM and TRM. Since the U.S Government may be the most complex organization in the world, the FEA could also be applied into many other cases for its advantages in many areas.

Gartner

Gartner is one of the most famous IT research and consulting organizations in the world. It believes that if the architect designer brings together three constituents together, which are business owners, information specialists, and the technology implementers and unify them behind a common vision that drives business value, the EA would success.  

Considering the demand of companies and advantages of EA frameworks, we could find that those frameworks have been widely applied in designing enterprise architecture and grow with the development of complexity in enterprises’ business. Take MedAMore as an example, with MAM’s business expansion, it purchased three regional chains and came across IT problems. These IT problems could be classified into two categories:

1.       The requirement of changing some modules in the system due to the development of business.

2.       The delay of file transfer because of the regional difference.

The company realized the difficulties in dealing with those problems and sought for solution by applying EA framework. Supposed that these problems are solved by using EA framework, the return of investment would reflect in following areas:

1.       With more regional chains, IT would keep supporting business development.

2.       The reduction of payments in operating the company.

3.       The increase efficiency in running IT system and business process.