In addition, the success of integrating technology is not simply building a technical masterpiece, as there are many other factors of success. First, technology needs to offer the organization the needed functionality to deliver a product or service to the marketplace with minimal effort. This means that technology needs alignment with the direction of the corporate strategy and fit within the current infrastructure of the organization. Technology is not just building a better technical solution, but understanding the processes, people, and goals of the organization — all within the limits of striving for profitability. This is the core goal of successful enterprise architecture and the force behind the development of LEA.
Enterprise architecture as defined through LEA focuses on aligning all the systems in the organization to meet the needs of business from a holistic business perspective. It is the goal of enterprise architecture to deploy all the components of systems together as a whole, versus optimizing a particular aspect of technology. That is, it is more important to deliver a better total solution even through the sacrifice of one or more parts of the system. Specific architectures (e.g., application architecture, security architecture, etc.) are concerned with optimal design and evolution of their particular domain. These specific architectures in LEA play a support role and are critical to the successful execution of enterprise architecture but do not drive the enterprise architecture.
LEA bridges the gap of business vision and the technical community through a simple framework of architectural responsibilities. These responsibilities require a minimal set of deliverables other resources use (or consume) that progressively transforms the visions of the enterprise into structured, executable artifacts for technology. The simplicity of LEA is that in progressive stages of enterprise architecture, the artifacts support and build into the next set of artifacts. By keeping to a minimal set and building the artifacts onto each other, LEA is a simple framework to understand. This ultimately increases the chance of success as this design is more usable by diverse resources, simplifies communications, and reduces drifts of interpretation from vision to implementation
To better help the architect with these various levels of responsibility, LEA frames these into three separate and interrelated perspectives. LEA consists of three realms (or perspectives) of architecture that include Strategic Architecture, Conceptual Architecture, and Execution Architecture.
The Strategic Architecture focuses on building strategic principles and developing guidelines by working closely with the leadership of an organization. Taking input from the business vision and goals, the Strategic Architecture frames the measures and practices for the enterprise's technology. Essentially, the Strategic Architecture sets the direction for LEA to ensure effort on technology is consistent with the needs and visions of the enterprise.
Often in organizations, some of these activities are in the IT strategic plan. However, IT strategic plans often are vehicles promoting the budget requirements of a department versus an enterprise view. In LEA, the Strategic Architecture is a continuous, ongoing process to translate business strategy and provide the framework guiding technology stewardship as best interpreted from leadership.
Strategic Architecture
The Strategic Architecture goal is to capture the vision of leadership that translates readily for adoption in system design. Many strategy plans are well designed but are written by and mainly for the adoption of the business owners. Very few strategies offer the perspective of how to change systems, but rather focus on the intended outcome — either functional or budgetary needs. Some strategies provide some indication of how systems should change, but these are again mainly to reflect the business needs with minimal account for the technological impacts.
However, this does not mean the reformulation of the strategic plan to benefit technology, but rather the need for the translation of the strategic plan into tangible guides for technology to be successful
Business Strategy and LEA
In the Strategic Architecture, the architect needs good interaction with leadership and the business owners to best understand their stake in the future of the enterprise. This often entails participation in strategy meetings and identifying impacts on technology and the potential effect on various strategic scenarios. However, the key to a successful Strategic Architecture is the development of a core Strategic Architecture that remains consistent over time.
A good Strategic Architecture contains the following three fundamental components:
Enterprise Principles
Enterprise Patterns
Enterprise Guidelines
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