Enterprise architecture framework

[3] To manage the scale and complexity of this system, an architectural framework provides tools and approaches that help architects abstract from the level of detail at which builders work, to bring enterprise design tasks into focus and produce valuable architecture description documentation.

The components of an architecture framework provide structured guidance that is divided into three main areas:[4] The earliest rudiments of the step-wise planning methodology currently advocated by The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and other EA frameworks can be traced back to the article of Marshall K. Evans and Lou R. Hague titled "Master Plan for Information Systems"[7] published in 1962 in Harvard Business Review.

[8] By 1980, IBM's Business Systems Planning (BSP) was promoted as a method for analyzing and designing an organization's information architecture, with the following goals: In 1982, when working for IBM and with BSP, John Zachman outlined his framework for enterprise-level "Information Systems Architecture".

"Although many popular information systems planning methodologies, design approaches, and various tools and techniques do not preclude or are not inconsistent with enterprise-level analysis, few of them explicitly address or attempt to define enterprise architectures.

In 1987, John Zachman, who was a marketing specialist at IBM, published the paper, A Framework for Information Systems Architecture.

[10] The paper provided a classification scheme for artifacts that describe (at several levels of abstraction) the what, how, where, who, when and why of information systems.

[12] This was a five-layer reference model that illustrates the interrelationship of business, information system, and technology domains.

Right up to version 7, TOGAF was still focused on defining and using a Technical Reference Model (or foundation architecture) to define the platform services required from the technologies that an entire enterprise uses to support business applications.

In addition, it made the agency CIO responsible for, “...developing, maintaining and facilitating the implementation of a sound and integrated IT architecture for the executive agency.” By 1997, Zachman had renamed and refocused his ISA framework as an EA framework; it remained a classification scheme for descriptive artifacts, not a process for planning systems or changes to systems.

FEAF was a process much like TOGAF's ADM, in which “The architecture team generates a sequencing plan for the transition of systems, applications, and associated business practices predicated upon a detailed gap analysis [between baseline and target architectures].” In 2001, the US Chief CIO council published A practical guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture, which starts, “An enterprise architecture (EA) establishes the Agency-wide roadmap to achieve an Agency's mission through optimal performance of its core business processes within an efficient information technology (IT) environment."

At that point, the processes in TOGAF, FEAF, EAP and BSP were clearly related.

In 2006, the popular book Enterprise Architecture As Strategy[14] reported the results of work by MIT's Center for Information System Research.

and to engage business managers with the benefits that strategic cross-organisational process integration and/or standardisation could provide.

[8] In 2011, the TOGAF 9.1. specification says: "Business planning at the strategy level provides the initial direction to enterprise architecture.

[8] In other words, Enterprise Architecture is not a business strategy, planning or management methodology.

"[16] In 2013, TOGAF[17] is the most popular Architecture framework (judged by published certification numbers) that some assume it defines EA.

This way of looking at the architecture domains was evident in TOGAF v1 (1996), which encapsulated the technology component layer behind the platform services defined in the "Technical Reference Model" - very much according to the philosophy of TAFIM and POSIX.

Since the early 1990s, there have been a number of efforts to define standard approaches for describing and analyzing system architectures.

NIST Enterprise Architecture Model initiated in 1989, one of the earliest frameworks for enterprise architecture . [ 1 ]
Overview of Enterprise Architecture Frameworks evolution (1987–2003). [ 4 ] [ 5 ] On the left: The Zachman Framework 1987, NIST Enterprise Architecture 1989, EAP 1992, TISAF 1997, FEAF 1999 and TEAF 2000. On the right: TAFIM influenced by POSIX , JTA, JTAA, TOGAF 1995, DoD TRM [ 6 ] and C4ISR 1996, and DoDAF 2003.
Layers of the enterprise architecture. [ 18 ]
Example of the federal enterprise architecture , which has defined five architectural layers. [ 19 ]
Enterprise architecture reference architecture with sub domains
Illustration of the 4+1 view model of architecture .
Just a few of the Enterprise Architecture frameworks utilized today, 2011 [ 20 ]