Preface

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a discipline that promises to bridge the gaps between business and IT by defining the components of an enterprise and also the relationships among these components. With the increased dependency of businesses of all domains on technology, many organizations want to adopt EA, and most professionals want to be part of this adoption process. However, following a discipline at the entire enterprise level can be full of obstacles because it requires dealing with many people with different interests. This is where most EA practitioners struggle, and they are perceived as theoretical people who are disconnected from reality; as a result, many organizations lose interest in EA.

In our opinion, the lack of delivering tangible and useful EA artifacts is the main reason for EA implementation struggles. This book introduces sample artifacts on each element in an enterprise so that you are able to address the different needs of different stakeholders. A collection of EA artifacts forms an EA repository, so this book will teach you how to build a repository and maintain its content. It will also teach you how to build a reference library that you and your EA team can use to maintain consistency within the EA repository.

We chose ArchiMate® 3.1 to build these artifacts, but you can use any other modeling notation that works within your workplace. We also chose Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect software as the tool to build and develop these EA artifacts, but you're also free to use any other tool that you are familiar with. The goal is to deliver value, regardless of the tool that you prefer to use.