31 December 2016

Strategic Management: Enterprise Architecture (Just the Quotes)

"[Enterprise Architecture is] the set of descriptive representations (i. e., models) that are relevant for describing an Enterprise such that it can be produced to management's requirements (quality) and maintained over the period of its useful life. (John Zachman, 1987)

"To keep the business from disintegrating, the concept of information systems architecture is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity." (John Zachman, "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture", 1987)

"Architecture is defined as a clear representation of a conceptual framework of components and their relationships at a point in time […] a discussion of architecture must take into account different levels of architecture. These levels can be illustrated by a pyramid, with the business unit at the top and the delivery system at the base. An enterprise is composed of one or more Business Units that are responsible for a specific business area. The five levels of architecture are Business Unit, Information, Information System, Data and Delivery System. The levels are separate yet interrelated. [...] The idea if an enterprise architecture reflects an awareness that the levels are logically connected and that a depiction at one level assumes or dictates that architectures at the higher level." (W Bradford Rigdon, "Architectures and Standards", 1989)

"A key ingredient to an enterprise architecture is the ability to link multiple and disparate systems into a coherent whole." (Karyl Scott, "Enterprise computing: Internetwork routing enhancements planned for NetWare", InfoWorld‎ Vol 14 (28), 1992)

"Although the concept of an enterprise architecture (EA) has not been well defined and agreed upon, EAs are being developed to support information system development and enterprise reengineering. Most EAs differ in content and nature, and most are incomplete because they represent only data and process aspects of the enterprise. […] An EA is a conceptual framework that describes how an enterprise is constructed by defining its primary components and the relationships among these components." (M A Roos, "Enterprise architecture: definition, content, and utility", Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, 1994)

"An enterprise architecture can be thought of as a 'blueprint' or 'picture' which assists in the design of an enterprise. The enterprise architecture must define three things. First, what are the activities that an enterprise performs? Second, how should these activities be performed? And finally, how should the enterprise be constructed? Consequently, the architecture being developed will identify the essential processes performed by a virtual company, how the virtual company and the agile enterprises involved in the virtual company will perform these processes, and include a methodology for the rapid reconfiguration of the virtual enterprise." (William Barnett et al, "An architecture for the virtual enterprise", Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1994)

"An enterprise architecture is an abstract summary of some organizational component's design. The organizational strategy is the basis for deciding where the organization wants to be in three to five years. When matched to the organizational strategy, the architectures provide the foundation for deciding priorities for implementing the strategy." (Sue A Conger, "The new software engineering", 1994)

"It is within the purview of each context to define its own rules and techniques for deciding how the object-oriented mechanisms and principles are to be managed. And while the manager of a large information system might wish to impose some rules based on philosophical grounds, from the perspective of enterprise architecture, there is no reason to make decisions at this level. Each context should define its own objectivity." (Rob Mattison & Michael J Sipolt, "The object-oriented enterprise: making corporate information systems work", 1994)

"An enterprise architecture is a snapshot of how an enterprise operates while performing its business processes. The recognition of the need for integration at all levels of an organisation points to a multi-dimensional framework that links both the business processes and the data requirements." (John Murphy & Brian Stone [Eds.], 1995)

"The presence of an enterprise reference architecture aids an enterprise in its ability to understand its structure and processes. Similar to a computer architecture, the enterprise architecture is comprised of several views. The enterprise architecture should provide activity, organizational, business rule (information), resource, and process views of an organization." (Joseph Sarkis et al, "The management of technology within an enterprise engineering framework", Computers & Industrial Engineering, 1995)

"There is no such thing as a standard enterprise architecture. Enterprise design is as unique as a human fingerprint, because enterprise differ in how they function. Adopting an enterprise architecture is therefore one of the most urgent tasks for top executive management. Fundamentally, and information framework is a political doctrine for specifying as to who will have what information to make timely decisions." (Paul A Strassmann, "The politics of information management: policy guidelines", 1995)

"Architecture is that set of design artifacts, or descriptive representations, that are relevant for describing an object, such that it can be produced to requirements (quality) as well as maintained over the period of its useful life (change)." (John A Zachman, "Enterprise architecture: The issue of the century", Database Programming and Design Vol. 10 (3), 1997)

"Issues of quality, timeliness and change are the conditions that are forcing us to face up to the issues of enterprise architecture. The precedent of all the older disciplines known today establishes the concept of architecture as central to the ability to produce quality and timely results and to manage change in complex products. Architecture is the cornerstone for containing enterprise frustration and leveraging technology innovations to fulfill the expectations of a viable and dynamic Information Age enterprise." (John Zachman, "Enterprise Architecture: The Issue of The Century", 1997)

"The documentation of the Enterprise Architecture should include a discussion of principles and goals. For example, the agency's overall management environment, including the balance between centralization and decentralization and the pace of change within the agency, should be clearly understood when developing the Enterprise Architecture. Within that environment, principles and goals set direction on such issues as the promotion of interoperability, open systems, public access, end-user satisfaction, and security." (Franklin D Raines, 1997)

"The Enterprise Architecture is the explicit description of the current and desired relationships among business and management process and information technology. It describes the 'target' situation which the agency wishes to create and maintain by managing its IT portfolio." (Franklin D Raines, 1997)

"An information system architecture typically encompasses an overview of the entire information system - including the software, hardware, and information architectures (the structure of the data that systems will use). In this sense, the information system architecture is a meta-architecture. An enterprise architecture is also a meta-architecture in that it comprises many information systems and their relationships (technical infrastructure). However, because it can also contain other views of an enterprise - including work, function, and information - it is at the highest level in the architecture pyramid. It is important to begin any architecture development effort with a clear definition of what you mean by 'architecture'." (Frank J Armour et al, "A big-picture look at enterprise architectures", IT professional Vol 1 (1), 1999)

"Enterprise architecture is a family of related architecture components. This include information architecture, organization and business process architecture, and information technology architecture. Each consists of architectural representations, definitions of architecture entities, their relationships, and specification of function and purpose. Enterprise architecture guides the construction and development of business organizations and business processes, and the construction and development of supporting information systems." (Gordon B Davis, "The Blackwell encyclopedic dictionary of management information systems"‎, 1999)

"Enterprise architecture is a holistic representation of all the components of the enterprise and the use of graphics and schemes are used to emphasize all parts of the enterprise, and how they are interrelated. [...] Enterprise architectures are used to deal with intra-organizational processes, interorganizational cooperation and coordination, and their shared use of information and information technologies. Business developments, such as outsourcing, partnership, alliances and Electronic Data Interchange, extend the need for architecture across company boundaries." (Gordon B Davis," The Blackwell encyclopedic dictionary of management information systems"‎, 1999)

"An Enterprise Architecture is a dynamic and powerful tool that helps organisations understand their own structure and the way they work. It provides a ‘map’ of the enterprise and a ‘route planner’ for business and technology change. A well-constructed Enterprise Architecture provides a foundation for the ‘Agile’ business." (Bob Jarvis, "Enterprise Architecture: Understanding the Bigger Picture - A Best Practice Guide for Decision Makers in IT", 2003)

"Enterprise Architecture is the discipline whose purpose is to align more effectively the strategies of enterprises together with their processes and their resources (business and IT). Enterprise architecture is complex because it involves different types of practitioners with different goals and practices. Enterprise Architecture can be seen as an art; it is largely based on experience but does not have strong theoretical foundations. As a consequence, it is difficult to teach, to apply, and to support with computer-aided tools." (Alain Wegmann, "On the systemic enterprise architecture methodology", 2003)

"Normally an EA takes the form of a comprehensive set of cohesive models that describe the structure and functions of an enterprise. An important use is in systematic IT planning and architecting, and in enhanced decision-making. The EA can be regarded as the ‘master architecture’ that contains all the subarchitectures for an enterprise. The individual models in an EA are arranged in a logical manner that provides an ever-increasing level of detail about the enterprise: its objectives and goals; its processes and organisation; its systems and data; the technology used and any other relevant spheres of interest." (Bob Jarvis, "Enterprise Architecture: Understanding the Bigger Picture - A Best Practice Guide for Decision Makers in IT", 2003)

"The software architecture of a system or a family of systems has one of the most significant impacts on the quality of an organization's enterprise architecture. While the design of software systems concentrates on satisfying the functional requirements for a system, the design of the software architecture for systems concentrates on the nonfunctional or quality requirements for systems. These quality requirements are concerns at the enterprise level. The better an organization specifies and characterizes the software architecture for its systems, the better it can characterize and manage its enterprise architecture. By explicitly defining the systems software architectures, an organization will be better able to reflect the priorities and trade-offs that are important to the organization in the software that it builds." (James McGovern, "A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture", 2004)

"An enterprise architecture is a blueprint for organizational change defined in models [using words, graphics, and other depictions] that describe (in both business and technology terms) how the entity operates today and how it intends to operate in the future; it also includes a plan for transitioning to this future state." (US Government Accountability Office, "Enterprise Architecture: Leadership Remains Key to Establishing and Leveraging Architectures for Organizational Transformation", GAO-06-831, 2006)

"Businesses are themselves a form of design. The design of a business encompasses its strategy, organizational structure, management processes, culture, and a host of other factors. Business designs evolve over time through a process of differentiation, selection, and amplification, with the market as the ultimate arbiter of fitness [...] the three-way coevolution of physical technologies, social technologies, and business designs [...] accounts for the patterns of change and growth we see in the economy." (Eric D Beinhocker, "The Origin of Wealth. Evolution, complexity, and the radical remaking of economics", 2006)

"Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of a company's operation model. […] The key to effective enterprise architecture is to identify the processes, data, technology, and customer interfaces that take the operating model from vision to reality." (Jeanne W Ross et al, "Enterprise architecture as strategy: creating a foundation for business", 2006)

"Enterprise-architecture is the integration of everything the enterprise is and does. Even the term ‘architecture’ is perhaps a little misleading. It’s on a much larger scale, the scale of the whole rather than of single subsystems: more akin to city-planning than to the architecture of a single building. In something this large, there are no simple states of ‘as-is’ versus ‘to-be’, because its world is dynamic, not static. And it has to find some way to manage the messy confusion of what is, rather than the ideal that we might like it to be." (Tom Graves, "Real Enterprise-Architecture : Beyond IT to the whole enterprise", 2007)

"Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the company's operating model. The operating model is the desired state of business process integration and business process standardization for delivering goods and services to customers." (Peter Weill, "Innovating with Information Systems Presentation", 2007)

"Enterprise Architecture is conceptually defined as the normative restriction of design freedom. Practically, it is a coherent and consistent set of principles that guide the design, engineering, and implementation of an enterprise. Any strategic initiative of an enterprise can only be made operational through transforming it into principles that guide the design, engineering, and implementation of the new enterprise. Only by applying this notion of Enterprise Architecture can consistency be achieved between the high-level policies (mission, strategies) and the operational business rules of an enterprise." (Jan Dietz & Jan Hoogervorst, "Advances in enterprise engineering", 2008)

"Enterprise architecture is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution. The scope of the enterprise architecture includes the people, processes, information and technology of the enterprise, and their relationships to one another and to the external environment. Enterprise architects compose holistic solutions that address the business challenges of the enterprise and support the governance needed to implement them." (Anne Lapkin et al, "Gartner Clarifies the Definition of the Term 'Enterprise Architecture", 2008)

"The goal of enterprise architecture is to create a unified IT environment (standardized hardware and software systems) across the firm or all of the firm's business units, with tight symbiotic links to the business side of the organization (which typically is 90% of the firm […] at least by way of budget). More specifically, the goals are to promote alignment, standardization, reuse of existing IT assets, and the sharing of common methods for project management and software development across the organization." (Daniel Minoli, "Enterprise architecture A to Z: frameworks, business process modeling", 2008)

"Enterprise architecture [is] a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realisation of an enterprise's organisational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure. […] The most important characteristic of an enterprise architecture is that it provides a holistic view of the enterprise. […] To achieve this quality in enterprise architecture, bringing together information from formerly unrelated domains necessitates an approach that is understood by all those involved from those different domains." (Marc Lankhorst, "Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modelling, Communication and Analysis", 2009)

"Enterprise engineering is rooted in both the organizational sciences and the information system sciences. In our current understanding, three concepts are paramount to the theoretical and practical pursuit of enterprise engineering: enterprise ontology, enterprise architecture, and enterprise governance." (Erik Proper, "Advances in Enterprise Engineering II", 2009)

"Enterprise architecture (EA) is the definition and representation of a high-level view of an enterprise‘s business processes and IT systems, their interrelationships, and the extent to which these processes and systems are shared by different parts of the enterprise. EA aims to define a suitable operating platform to support an organisation‘s future goals and the roadmap for moving towards this vision." (Toomas Tamm et al, "How Does Enterprise Architecture Add Value to Organisations?", Communications of the Association for Information Systems Vol. 28 (10), 2011)

"Enterprise Architecture presently appears to be a grossly misunderstood concept among management. It is NOT an Information Technology issue. It is an ENTERPRISE issue. It is likely perceived to be an Information Technology issue as opposed to a Management issue for two reasons: (1) Awareness of it tends to surface in the Enterprise through the Information Systems community. (2) Information Technology people seem to have the skills to do Enterprise Architecture if any Enterprise Architecture is being or is to be done." (John A Zachman, 2011)

"The enterprise architecture delineates the data according to the inherent structure within the organization rather than by organizational function or use. In this manner it makes the data dependent on business objects but independent of business processes." (Charles D Tupper, "Data Architecture: From Zen to Reality", 2011)

"Enterprise architecture (EA) 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. 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. EA is used to steer decision making toward the evolution of the future state architecture." (Gartner)

"Enterprise Architecture is not a method, principle or doctrine – It is a way of thinking enabled by patterns, frameworks, standards etc. essentially seeking to align both the technology ecosystem and landscape with the business trajectory driven by both the internal and external forces." (Daljit R Banger)

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