The remarkable truth is that all of these activities are facilitated, and in some instances even made possible, by an enterprise architecture. This is not a new concept. Since then, Zachman has extended the concept to include more than software engineering and countless organizations have successfully established and used the enterprise architecture that Zachman envisioned. What is new is the realization by many organizations that an enterprise architecture, properly engineered, could possibly the single most effective tool they can use to ensure that the right information gets to the right people, in the right format, and at the right time. An enterprise architecture also contains guidelines, standards, policies and business rules that define the enterprise's software engineering environment.
Every enterprise has an architecture.
However, it is usually undocumented and the elements are inconsistent. Most likely some of the architecture elements are embodied in strategic and performance plans, published and unpublished polices and procedures, and system documentation. It also requires tools that fully support the approach. The remainder of this paper describes an effective, productive, common sense approach to engineering an enterprise architecture. This approach can also be extended to include all the activities necessary for effective enterprise strategic information management.