| Papers |
Abstract |
Overview drawing |
Presentation |
Article |
| Introduction |
The Light Enterprise Architecture (LEA) approach is developed to improve the EA practicality
by overcoming the challenge of "buy-in
from the stakeholder", avoid EA 'paralysis by
analysis" and identify the EA discipline. The PEA approach is describe in
the following sections |
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| What is EA ? |
EA, under the growing pain, also subject to
identity crisis. EA is a emerging paradigm with
distinctive discipline rather than a redundant of strategic
planning, enterprise engineering or the second generation of
BPR. Enterprise architecture was initiated to design IT
solution with enterprise wide consideration rather than by
stove pipe. LEA suggest to establish EA identify based on the
stakeholders need rather than the architect's ideology. |
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| Part 1 : Framework and models |
Framework and models describe the enterprise
architecture, It is considered as the meta EA.
Reference models are used to organize standard profile, it
does not describe the architecture. The
framework and model are used facilitate the communication protocol between architects.
PEA approach is developed via a set of framework, model and
reference models. |
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| Part 2: Governance and compliance |
EA management is the continuous loop of
governance and compliance process to maintain and utilize and
give live to EA. In a people oriented EA community, the governance
and compliance processes are the political processes where the
rules and standards are established with stakeholder
participation and consensus to empower the legitimacy of
enforcement. |
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| Part 3 : e-CIO before e-gov |
e-CIO before e-Gov. It is not very convincing
for the CIO to say "Do what I say but do not do what I
Do". Most of automation systems in CIO office such as
project management, budget systems, life cycle management
systems and document library are not integrated . It is
essential to establish an integrate EA infrastructure to
enable enterprise wide integration. |
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| Part 4 : Wisdom comes from seeing the whole to
define the enterprise |
Wisdom comes from seeing the whole to make
better decision. Enterprise architecture is more so. It
is not simply an effort of inventory the current
environment. Enterprise is large and every one
only touch one part, similar to the blind man and
elephant (see the picture by by John Godfrey Saxewe ) We must
put parts together to find out what the enterprise really
like. LEA provide the big picture for decision makers,
risk managers, security engineers, configuration managers
and subject matter experts to make better decision from
the aspect of enterprise. |
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| Part 5: Establish services and utilities |
LEA is a Enterprise
Service Architecture (ESA) which provide the common services to enable
agility for stakeholders to take advantage of automation in
time of need. In LEA concept, data and information
is considered as the resources to supply and service the
stakeholders need similar application services.
Application services and information services are the two side
application systems similar to the hot dog in bun. They are parallel
structure rather than the traditional water fall where
information is derived from application systems. |
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| Part 6: The thin top down approach |
In stead of a full top down approach by
conducting pattern recognition from a central planned
architecture blueprint , LEA suggest the thin top down
approach to learn from similar lines
of business in the industry. There is nothing new under the
sun, it is a redundant effort to conduct pattern recognition
and an approach to solve the challenge of stove pipe with
larger stove pipe. |
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| Part 7 : Subject area EA
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Enterprise Architects provide the big picture
for the subject area experts to design subject area enterprise
architecture such as network, collaboration and platform
architecture. The subject area experts identify their
current environment from the big picture , design their
enterprise consolidated target architecture, conduct gap
analysis and prepare the transition plan.
Gap analysis and transition plan must be conducted in an incremental
approach by each subject area rather than a quantum leap
by the entire enterprise. |
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| Part 8 : Collaborative design
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"Charrette " is an urban
planning method to incorporate public input into the creation
of a community plan. LEA suggest to adopt the
collaborative design approach. It is critical when
the stakeholder is not one person but consist of a number of
interested parties . This is an effective way to educate all
the participants; architects, engineers and the stakeholders.
The participants are educated about the issue and
"buy-in" to the solutions. similar to the story
of stone soup (see the picture by Kevin Anderson) |
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| Part 9 : EA awareness and utilizaion |
Lack of EA awareness is the major obstacle for
buy-in . It is very difficult to comply with EA without
knowing what it is. EA is not only a matter of
architecture design but also about awareness to become
common knowledge in the enterprise. LEA suggest
to adopt the traditional architecture drawing set for EA
awareness instead of volumes of
documentations. |
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