Benefits Enterprise Architecture

Explore The Enterprise Architecture Toolkit

An enterprise architecture links an enterprise’s strategic plan and performance plans ("business architecture") with its enterprise data architecture, enterprise application architecture and enterprise technical architecture. 

A well-documented architecture is a logical organization of information pertaining to the following multi-level, multi-dimensional, enterprise-wide elements:

§         Strategic goals, objectives, and strategies

§         Business rules and measures

§         Information requirements

§         Application systems

§         Relationships between applications and data elements

§         Technology infrastructure

An enterprise architecture also contains guidelines, standards, policies and business rules that define the enterprise’s software engineering environment. 

Every enterprise has an architecture.  However, it is usually undocumented and the elements are inconsistent.   Most likely some of the architecture elements are embodied in strategic and performance plans, published and unpublished polices and procedures, and system documentation.  Unfortunately, there are also a lot of enterprise architecture elements that are embedded in software application code, and even more that only exist as employee "tribal knowledge." 

An enterprise that has fully documented it’s architecture can use it to accomplish the following:

§         Enable strategic information to be consistently and accurately derived from operational data

§         Promote data sharing, thus reducing data redundancy and reducing maintenance costs

§         Improve productivity through component development, management and reuse

§         Reduce software development cycle time

§         Evaluate commercial products and services

§         Share information with customers and business partners