CAiSE'01 Tutorials

Making Enterprise Architectures Practical

Graham McLeod

University of Cape Town, South Africa
Managing Partner, Inspired Consulting, Training and Research

14.00 - 17.30 Thursday 7 June

Casino Kursaal
Interlaken
Since John Zachman launched the idea in the 80's, the concept of Enterprise Architectures has held wide appeal as a logical way to integrate business and IT planning, and to manage information, applications and technology and their complex interrelationships. Unfortunately, the Zachman framework was not fully populated and many organisations have grappled with practical application of the concepts in pressured business contexts. At Inspired the author and colleagues have been working with architectures and corporate clients for about 8 years. Over this period, unique graphical, hyperlinked, comprehensive but concise frameworks were evolved to describe the essential architecture facets, including:
  • The Business Architecture within an industry and stakeholder context.
  • The Information (Business Object) Architecture including types (e.g. structured, multimedia, multidimensional, spatial, etc.), domain/subject areas required and the relationship to actual data collections/databases.
  • The Applications Architecture (including application types e.g. real-time embedded, transaction processing operational, productivity support, and functional categories required/in place; interfaces and dependencies).
  • The Technical Architecture (including networks, platforms, tools, storage, system software, security, API models, application layering etc.).
  • The Methods Architecture which deals with System Delivery, Strategic Planning, Architecture Management, Process Improvement, Project and Program Management methods, techniques and artifacts.
  • The relationship of these elements to each other, and to the business goals and drivers.
Architectural principles, definitions and concepts were clarified and criteria were developed to assist practitioners in making good architectural choices. Practical techniques were evolved to assist organisations in the adoption of architecture based thinking and management. Later, these approaches were supported with tools and integrated with Program Management, Project Management and System Delivery. In all cases, state of the art modeling techniques have been employed, including the use of objects and patterns.

This tutorial discusses requirements, techniques and tools to make use of Enterprise Architectures practical within organisations. Topics addressed include:

  • Comprehensive frameworks developed over several years by Graham McLeod/Inspired.
  • Architectural Principles which can help architectures succeed and add value
  • Decision criteria for choosing arhcitecture elements
  • Processes for adopting and managing architectures
  • The Archi web based tool and meta models to manage architecture knowledge in a repository shared by architects and practitioners.

Graham McLeod has been active in the IT industry for 25 years and in academia for 10. He has been instrumental in the development of several popular and advanced methods in the areas of strategy, system delivery and project management. He is active in IFIP 8.1 and chairs a group focussed on UML and Associated Processes, which organized an HICSS minitrack on this theme in January 2001. He has worked in integrating business and IT strategy for over 15 years and consults to many of South Africa's largest and most successful corporates in finance, retail, government and telecommunications. He is senior co-author of Managing Information Technology Projects, Thompson, 1996 and has presented at several previous CAiSE conferences and EMMSAD workshops. He is the architect of the Archi web based knowledge management tool exposed in this tutorial.
Registration
This is a CAiSE'01 conference tutorial included in the main conference registration. See the general Registration page for details.