A Practical Approach to EA Planning and Development: the EA Management Grid

Abstract Enterprise Architecture is gaining interest as amanagerial tool for managing corporate ICT assets andtheir interplay. Our prior studies indicate that an ICTprovider’s viewpoint on EA consulting, planning anddevelopment seems to be lacking in the proposedmethodologies. Considering both literature and practicalEA cases, we suggest an approach that supportsrestricted assignments in EA management. We present anEA Grid for the management of EA descriptions,requirements, constraints, as well as project tasks anddeliverables, task preliminaries and dependencies in EAconsulting and development. 1. Introduction The starting point for the present study were theproblems perceived within TietoEnator (TE), a fullservice ICT company that provides both management andICT architecture consulting and design andimplementation of information systems. Within TE, thefourth largest European ICT provider, there was a need,but no consistent method, for information exchangebetween the sections responsible for the different areas ofactivity. We set out to investigate methods available fordifferent project types, and the possibilities to cover allactivities with a consistent methodology. Althoughmodeling methods used in software design are alsosuggested for consulting activities (Hay 2003), a gap wasfound between management consulting and softwaredevelopment methods (Buchanan and Soley 2002,Zachman 2003). Requirements for a method to bridge thisgap have been elicited by Hirvonen et al. (2003). The nextstep was to examine the methodological approachesavailable for the enterprise architecture (EA) consulting,planning and development, which are perceived as an areainterfacing with management consulting on one hand, andsoftware development on the other. In this study, wepresent the results of these explorations with a suggestionfor an enterprise architecture consulting and developmentmethodology approach.First, we take a look at the enterprise architecture at aconceptual level. We take the meta-model of enterprisedeveloped by Rood (1994), and break it down to a set ofviewpoints that enable the comprehensive management ofthe ICT assets in an organization. The set is kept simplefor obvious reasons: not only is it easier for the ICTexperts to handle, but the communication between variousmanagerial levels in the end-user organization is alsobetter facilitated with a limited set of viewpoints. To theseviewpoints, we add three levels of abstraction, related tolevels of decision making: top management, operativemanagement and IT management.This results in an EA Grid which is the core of thesuggested methodology, a practice related framework forEA management. In discrete EA consulting ordevelopment assignments, the dimensions, and the levelsof abstraction related to decision making levels, help tomanage requirements and constraints and support theproject and quality management. The tasks, theirdependencies, preliminaries and deliverables can becaptured within the Grid. In this result, we haveincorporated the EA methodology requirements fromHirvonen et al (2003): The methodology should cover the gap between purebusiness consulting and information systemsdevelopment without leaving further gaps. Thismeans that it takes into account aspects of bothbusiness consulting and software development tomake the transitions between levels of abstractionsmooth. The targeted user group of the method are ITconsultants and IT architects working with EAprojects, and their clients. The clients of EA projects have different levels oforganizational maturity, and their experience withformal methods varies. The method has to be simpleenough to be easily learnt and introduced. The method should be flexible, and take into accountthe wide range of different project types varying insize, scope and focus: they must be able to cover anyset of viewpoints and / or levels within the EA area.