Definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA).md

What is EA Actually?

MITRE

Item	Detail
Definition	"An Enterprise Architecture translates business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the essential requirements, principles, drivers, and models, that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution."
Applicability	The EA "establishes the organization-wide roadmap to achieve the mission through optimal performance of its core business functions within an efficient information technology (IT) environment."
Review	IT-centric view or bottom-up view from IT to business functionality. It relates to the "Enterprise IT Architecture or EITA".

GARTNER

Item	Detail
Definition	"Enterprise architecture is a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes."
Applicability	"EA delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions."
Review	So, EA is a discipline, not an architecture. Apparently, since EA creates nothing but recommendations, it is not "leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces" enterprise-wide because it is the Corporate Business that leads responses to market and regulation changes. Thus, recommendations can be overcome and igored. The only area where EA can really lead is IT and only in the cases where business involves EA in Programmed and Project planning.

MIT CISR

Item	Detail
Definition	MIT does not define EA. Instead, it describes what EA is doing in the enterprise. However, it remains unclear whether these activities are the exclusive prerogative of the EA, as well as whether EA does something else.
Applicability	"Enterpriese Architecture is the organizing logic for crucial business processes and its capabilities reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm's operating model."
Review	MIT thinks that EA is not even a discipline but only an organizing logic for "crucial business processes". The latter, as well known, are just the implementation of business vision, strategy and capabilities. That is, EA, in this case, supports implementation, not a busienss architecture. It may be bad luck, but the "integration and standardization" of an enterprise operating model are unknown.

ArchiMate Foundation

Item	Detail
Definition	The EA is "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.
Review	So far, there are only two enterprise organizational structures known - mechanical (usually hierarchical command-and control) and organic (usually flat and service-oriented). Based on this definition, should we assume that all mechanical enterprises have very similar EAs? Well, the realization of business goals and objectives via business means (business processes) and technology (systems and infrastructure) are quite differenct from company to company. The similarity is noticeable only at the very top levels. Therefore, we may talk about an EA impact on the design, and unlikely on implementation. Also, just "principles, methods and models" have to be applied to something. What are the "buidling blocks" of Enterprise Architecture as Architecture? ArchiMate and TOG do not answer this question because the predominant idea of EA is still a consultancy practice to management boxed in IT and not directly relating to the enterprise's business.

Capgemini

Item	Detail
Definition	The EA "is a set of principles, rules, standards, and guidelines, expressing and visualizing a vision and implementing concepts, containing a mixture of style, engineering, and construction principles."
Review	In our opinion, this definition is the closest to the meaning of words "enterprise" and "architecture. Nonetheless, just a "set of principles, rules, standards, and guidelines, expressing and visualizing a vision and implementing concepts" is a mandatory but still is not sufficient for EA definition. As with any architecture, EA has to identify its construction blocks at the architectural / abstract level. If you do not have such blocks identified, the only what you can express and visualize (besides the vision) is implementation, which does not necessarily reflect the deep meaning and options embedded in the architectural construct.

ACOE - from an Information & Technology perspective

Item	Detail
Definition	"Enterprise Architecture is explicitly describing an organization through a set of independent, non-redundant artifacts, explaining how these deliverables interrelate with each other and developing a set of prioritized, aligned initiatives and roadmaps to understand the organization, communicate this understanding to stakeholders, and move the team forward to its desired state."
Review	As it frequently takes place in the TOG documentation, a definition is substituted by an explanation of what the "thing" does. We do not know if this is a unique and complete description of "doing". Moreover, why artefacts (whatever it is) must be independent and why are they deliverables; deliverables of what? If is unclear why the business of an organization is incapable to explain what its organization is (because this information is articulated in the Enterprise Business Model represented to the market) and EA is engaged as an interpreter. We do curious how it may be that the stakeholders of EA might be unaware of what their organization is. A definition of something via what this something is doing is always incomplete and, in general, faulty.

EACOE - from a Business perspective

Item	Detail
Definition	The EA "illuminates how an organization and all of its members can achieve its objectives, through the creation of a series of engineered models and project initiatives, which can be easily understood by all of the people associated with the organization.
Review	This perspective outlines insignificance of an EA for the organization because many other mechanisms/entities can "illuminate(s) how an organization and all of its members can achieve its objectives through the ... engineered models and project initiatives". For example, these entities may be represented by specialized vendors, already experiences Management Consultancies, Pbulic Forums, Regulations, etc. A well-known fact is each group of employees in the organization requires a bit different representation at the enterprise level to be understood because the views and objectives of the groups are different: what EA explains to the business executives is different from the information reuqired by a business operational group.

ORBUS Software

Item	Detail
Definition	"Enterprise Architecture is a rigorous approach for describing the structure of an enterprise ... Enterprise Architecture is three things. Firstly it is a discipline. ... Secondly, it is a process. There are processes for architecting an enterprise. ... Finally, enterprise architecture is a set of work products -- a set of models and representations that describe the structure of an enterprise.
Review	We think this is relatively complex definition. In the dominant majority of cases, the structure of an enterprise is created an explained by business management, i.e. EA is not needed for this. So if EA is discipline, it is not an architecture but a practice. If EA is a process, it can be a part of the practice. However, if there "are processes for architecting an enterprise" such processes belong to the Architects of Business organization. Such Architects are the people, usually with MBA, who define business functionality, information flows, organization structure and customer base during the creation of the organization, when a change in the organization's Business Model is needed and during the planning and defining business capabilities needed for the realization of new Strategy and/or TOM. All of these were done and can be done without any EA, especially the one that situates in IT and reported to CIO, i.e. accpeted by the corporate business as just IT Technology.

LeanIX

Item	Detail
Definition	Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a discipline that manages conflicting approaches to success within large-scale organizations. A specialty devoted equally to the worlds of IT and Business, it introduces practical standards across deparemental units and teams in order to streamline efforts with an intelligent sharing of resources.

Reference Source: shared by Michael Poulin, 2011-11-01