Article - Zachman 2013 Flashcards
What is EA according to Zachman?
A set of concepts and practices based on holistic system thinking, principles of shared language, and the long-standing disciplines of engineering and architecture.
Many organizational activities are EA-type activities, done in isolation by different groups. EA is about bridging the chasms among these activities, from strategy to operations, and better aligning, integrating, optimizing and synergizing the whole organization.
What are the consequences of the trends ‘doing more with less’ and ‘doing IT everywhere’ ?
- Drive the evolution of IT products. Transform devices, societies and organizations.
- Enable some companies to create value and advantage using IT. Others.. not so much.
What is the trend / paradigm shift regarding EA?
That information technologies can serve organizations.
This is grounded in:
- Holistic system thinking
- Principles of shared language
- The long-standing disciplines of engineering and architecture.
What is architecture and why is is important?
> A set of descriptive representations that are required in order to create and/or manage an object.
- Baseline for changing an object once created.
- Serve as shared vision for stakeholders -> gets the thinking of a group on the same page.
- It is a representation. The real outcome is the implementation of it.
> Important to create Business-IT alignment.
When is architecture crucial/imperative?
- The object is complex. You can not fathom all details of the implementation at once.
- To accommodate on-going change to the object
- To communicate those details to others.
What are 4 managerial options to deal with complexity if there is no architecture?
- Try to reverse-engineer the architectural artifacts from the existing object (time and money intensive)
- Take trial-and-error approach (risk and cost)
- Make assumptions (can be incorrect -> time and cost)
- Tear it down and start over.
What is the Zachman Framework?
Universal set of descriptive representations for describing any or all industrial products, applied in a framework.
What does the IT profession often emphasize on wrongly?
Building and running of systems instead of architecting and engineering them.
–> Makes maintenance, enhancement and integration of such systems costly and time intensive.
In the most basic Zachman ontology (4 quadrants), where is IT and where is Management?
Management is in the top two cells: Resource Ideas and Behaviour(processes) Ideas
IT is in the bottom left: Resource Reality.
The bottom right is Behaviour reality.
When is Business - IT alignment achieved?
When IT in resource Reality aligns with Management in the Resource Ideas quadrant.
What are some basic characteristics of the ZEF?
- Schema is normalized
- Tool for thinking and communicating about organizations.
- Ontology: schema of all information about the enterprise
- Does not specify which models to use. It does provide a meta model for each cell though.
What is the descriptive representation of the What column?
Bills of material
What is the descriptive representation of the how column?
Functional specs
What is the descriptive representation of the where column?
Drawings
What is the descriptive representation of the who column?
Operating instructions
What is the descriptive representation of the when column?
Timing diagrams
What is the descriptive representation of the why column?
Design objectives
What is the perspective of the executive / planner row?
Scope (boundaries)
What is the perspective of the business management / owner row?
Requirements (concepts)
What is the perspective of the Architect / Designers row?
Design (logic) - Data elements and functions (Information flow)
What is the perspective of the Engineer (Builders) row?
Plan (Physics) (More focused on the technologies, and details of programming)
What is the perspective of the Technicians (Implementers) row?
Part (Configuration) (More focused on individual modules)
Why is it not always good that EA is allocated to IT people?
It is about more than IT: strategies, business models, policies, job descriptions etc.
What is the problem of many business activities already being EA activities?
They are often executed by individual teams: cause for dis-integration, dis-connected and mis-alignment.
What is Zachman’s ontology at a minimum?
A thinking tool to help decision makers at all levels to verify the completeness of their thinking and their decision models.
What is the problem of not having an enterprise architected from the beginning?
Many systems have been implemented and discontinued over time. The overall result is that it is difficult to change, costly to operate and never aligned (business-IT wise) as they desired.
How will EA bridge the chasm between strategy and operations?
By capturing all the relevant knowledge about an enterprise and making it available for every management need with a shared ‘language’.
