Defining Enterprise

Highly interconnected, rapidly changing people, process, information, technology and needs requires a totally holistic and integrated view of an enterprise, well beyond the span and depth of traditional EA practices.

Next generation practices include systems engineering and technology-based program management practices to understand, produce, communicate and apply this view productively and in an efficient and effective manner.

Through the lens of a systems perspective of an enterprise in a start-up environment, the basic and fundamental needs, capabilities and elements of an enterprise are differentiated and defined, including the roles and responsibilities for architecting and managing each capability.

Next generation Enterprise Architecture (EA) is holistically practiced over the whole enterprise and throughout the full transformation lifecycle. Activities extend past architectural design into the cross-functional reality of architectural change during detailed design and implementation, through the architectural adjustments needed to get through integration, verification and deployment, out to the architectural transformations needed to sustain operations and beyond.

An architecture along with management analysis and planning with costs, schedules, risks and opportunities is only the beginning of a business transformation journey. Adjustments in the architecture and management analysis and planning are required all along the journey. An architectural design which is difficult to realize, maintain, adjust, change, improve, upgrade, replace or sustain is not a good design. An enterprise has to be engineered and managed for realization where the reality of the ability to realize and sustain the enterprise must be foreseen and addressed proactively.

Just as "throw it over the wall" engineering was ended through integrated team work, "Defining Enterprise" provides the foundational definition to bring "throw it over the wall" enterprise architecture to an end. The next generation EA team is an organized and integrated team with the ability to understand and communicate how everyone and everything fits into the "big picture".

Addressing the need for a philosophical view of an enterprise in the market environment requires an adjustment in architectural and managerial perspective. Conceptualizing an enterprise from its inception through its performance as an operational entity presents a view of the enterprise as a dynamic system of functionality, serving a common need.

Looking at an enterprise as a system reveals a totally holistic and fully integrated view of an enterprise, its people, processes, information and technologies.

As a system, the enterprise can be seen as it operates in the market environment to successfully deliver on its mission and satisfy its customers and stakeholders.

With the mission and goals of the enterprise system driving the focus of interest within, the basic and fundamental needs of the enterprise drive the basic and fundamental capabilities to differentiate into broad and distinct, high-level categories, based on what the capabilities are intended to do (their functionality) and the purpose they serve (their goal).

This enables and assures identifying the activities ('the workings') and work products ('the results') associated with the basic and fundamental capabilities the enterprise needs and the ultimate results the enterprise expects.

This process-oriented mission-centric view of an enterprise supports governance of the enterprise, enabling and enhancing operations, management and control.

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E-kirja: 7. helmikuuta 2017