Courses - Enterprise Architecture
Benefits
Enterprise Architecture Overview
Enterprise architecture is the high-level structure of enterprise systems. It can be viewed as a layered model:
Enterprise architecture is the high-level structure of enterprise systems. It can be viewed as a layered model:
- Business architecture: the business processes and supporting organizational structure
- Application solution architecture: the architecture of applications that support the business processes
- Technology architecture: addressing the infrastructure that supports the applications
- Information/data architecture: addressing the information that supports the applications
What distinguishes enterprise architecture from architecture at the business unit and product/service level, is its enterprise scope. This allows enterprise architects to create an architectural platform that is the springboard for resounding competitive advantage. By focusing on strategic differentiators and working across the enterprise, there is a unique opportunity to create leverage and synergies, and avoid duplication and inconsistency across the enterprise.
The objective of this workshop is to learn:
- key concepts and distinctions in enterprise architecture
- how to create, update, and manage the evolution of enterprise architecture,
- how to document enterprise architecture, and
- how to gain buy-in among the various communities within the organization
If you are just starting out on your Enterprise Architecture project, we will also create a first cut at your architecture. If you are already working on your architecture, we will work on filling in gaps and improving the architecture.
Key
Benefits
What distinguishes Enterprise Architecture is its enterprise scope. It crosses
internal organizational boundaries, and this presents opportunities and
challenges. Our workshop alerts enterprise architects to the pitfalls inherent
in such large-scoped, high-level efforts, and provides tools for being
successful. It orients the project and the organization to achieving their
strategic objectives through a minimalist architecture that is the foundation
for significant competitive advantage. By focusing on the most strategic
contribution, and creating "just-enough" architecture, the business's top
technical assets, its architects, are not squandered on low-priority,
low-return, attention-sapping activities.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for enterprise architecture teams. Often it is helpful
to you and your organization to have others participate at certain times during
the workshop. We will work with you to decide if anyone else should be
encouraged to participate, and at what points in the workshop their
participation would be beneficial. This workshop is highly valuable as a key
part of the kick-off to an architecting project. It is also useful to
architecture teams who want validation of what they are doing right, and
direction in areas they may be ignoring or over-doing.
Format
We use lecture time to cover key concepts and techniques, but we primarily
"learn by doing." Much of the time is spent working in small groups. We also
introduce you to the powerful tool of group graphical facilitation,
demonstrating how to collect, organize and present the work of the entire group
using graphic templates. This is really as much a consulting engagement as a
training class. You will get help in creating your current architecture, while
at the same time learning an architecting process and associated techniques that
you can apply on other architecture projects.
Content
The
workshop is a working session designed to create a good draft of your
architecture and a plan for refining, validating and communicating the
architecture. Lecture segments focus on:
- key concepts. We present organizing models that offer useful ways of thinking about enterprise architecture, and the architecting process.
- techniques to use in the architecting process. We work through our process for creating and maintaining architectures at the enterprise level, and use our Architecture Action Guides for the various steps.
The workshop covers key concepts and techniques for
- business architecture
- application architecture
- technology architecture
- information architecture
As well as:
architecture modeling using the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
where appropriate, and introducing other critical models.
architectural views
best suited to the various architectures at the enterprise scope.
architecture
specification: how (and when) to create architecture "blueprints".
key
architectural design principles including abstraction, separation of concerns,
postponing decisions, and simplicity, and related techniques such as interface
hiding and encapsulation, as well as system decomposition principles and good
interface design.
The Architecting Process
During the working sessions, we work through our
Visual Architecting Process, covering:
Init/Commit: how to create an architecture vision; how to gain the support of all levels of management affected by the architecture; how to build a cohesive and creative architecture team; how to create a evolutionary architecture specification and communication plan.
Architectural requirements: how to integrate business strategy and objectives, business context including market and technology trends, competitor moves, and other environmental factors into architectural strategy; how to elicit and document functional (i.e., behavioral) requirements and non-functional requirements (i.e., system qualities including run-time qualities such as performance and reliability, and development-time qualities such as evolvability/ extensibility and reusability.
Architecture specification: how to use architectural patterns; how to create architecture principles; how to model the architecture and document the system using different views; what views are appropriate to what kinds of architectures; what level of detail/specificity should the architecture go into, given its scope; how to manage architecture risk; how to make architecture tradeoffs.
Evaluation: how to assess the system in terms of the system requirements.
Deployment: how to ensure that a good (technically sound) and right (meets key stakeholder objectives) architecture is also a successful architecture; how to assist the management and developer communities in their use of the architecture to ensure its successful adoption and appropriate use.
Lifecycle considerations: how to evolve architectures; when and how to replace architectures; how to relate architecture to other key business processes such as strategic planning.
For an introduction to our approach to enterprise architecture, we recommend you read "Enterprise Architecture as Strategic Differentiator," by Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer. It is published by Cutter Consortium as the June 2005 Enterprise Architecture Executive Report. You can download a complimentary copy from http://www.cutter.com/offers/strategic.html
The Role and Responsibilities of the Architect
This section relates the
responsibilities and associated skills and attitudes of the architect to the
architecting process. To get a sense of what we cover, we recommend you read
"What it Takes to be a Great Enterprise Architect," by Dana Bredemeyer and Ruth
Malan. It is published by Cutter Consortium as the August 2004 Enterprise
Architecture Executive Report. You can download a complimentary copy of this
issue at
http://www.cutter.com/offers/greatarchitect.html
Prerequisites
Our prerequisites have to do with meeting success criteria for the architecture
effort. When we are setting up the workshop, we will informally assess whether
your organization meets a set of critical success factors given the mission of
the architecture team. These include assessing:
- whether the organization has a clear business vision and strategic objectives
- whether there is an understanding of the organization's core competencies
- what the architectural maturity of the organization is, and how this relates to the architecture charter
Instructors
The workshop leader,
Dana
Bredemeyer, has over 20 years experience architecting, designing and
developing software systems, including 16 years with Hewlett-Packard. He has
provided architecture consulting and training to architects, architecture teams
and their management at the project, organization and business unit levels, and
has helped teams develop software, firmware, system and enterprise architectures
for manufacturing and service companies. Dana is currently co-authoring a book
on architecture with Ruth Malan.
ABOUT BREDEMEYER CONSULTING
Bredemeyer Consulting specializes in training and mentoring software
architects. We typically work with architecture teams, providing training and
mentoring to accelerate their creation or migration of an architecture.
Number of participants
Minimum: 12
Maximum: 16
Maximum: 16
Dates
& location
Dates for this 4-day workshop will be scheduled when at least 12 participants have subscribed.
Workshop hours are from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM (subject to change)
Workshop hours are from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM (subject to change)
Location: Embedded Systems Institute, TU/e Campus, Laplace-building 0.10 Den
Dolech 2, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Costs
(excl. VAT)
€ 2.150,- per person
Note that costs are for the timeframe from January 2010 to July 2010.
Registration form
