1. Review Concept of Operations for an Enterprise Architecture Intelligence Center
Haiping Luo
Note: This presentation is my own thinking, with valuable input from my colleagues in VA. I am not representing Dept of VA now. That’s why I did not put VA into this slide.
a|EA web site:
DC Chapter
Slides will be on the DC page after this meeting.
June, 2005

2. Settings
You were members of an EA Steering Committee of a fictional company, reviewing a Concept of Operations for an EA repository
You would critique the ConOps as roles such as:
Enterprise managers
Business function operators
Enterprise architects
Technical staff members
External stakeholders (investor, customer, partner, auditor, EA evaluator, …)
Please hold your comments until the critique session. During critiquing, please indicate your role and the slide number you are referring.
I appreciate if you could give me your handout with your comments on it after the meeting. This file will be at DC page on a|EA web site.
June, 2005

3. Overview EA Intelligence Center: an Introduction EAIC Architecture
EAIC Construction
EAIC Operations
EAIC Performance Evaluation
Summary
Critique
June, 2005

4. EA’s Role in the Enterprise
EA provides an IT Enabled Holistic Approach to Enterprise Management.
Degree of Complexity
Increased complexity
Changes IT brought into the Enterprise
2000’s: + Enabling holistic approaches in managing enterprise.
1990’s: + Conducting business online, IT utilization in all areas.
1980’s: + Office productivity and computer networks.
1970’s: + Data management and personal computer.
1960’s: Electronic computing.
No one else in the enterprise has the capacity to provide such a holistic approach.
If missing any part in the EA role definition, EA is meaningless. If:
No Information: can’t manage enterprise.
No Information technology: can’t handle the forever increasing complexity the enterprise is facing.
Not a holistic approach: no difference from other management methods historically used.
Not supporting enterprise management decision making: miss the mission.
The EA Intelligence Center is critical and central to realize EA’s Role.

5. EA Intelligence Center: an Introduction
The EA Intelligence Center:
Documents an enterprise’ structure, i.e., its elements, their relationships, and their interoperations;
Assembles and presents the abstract documentation and blueprints of an enterprise’ architecture;
Facilitates the processes of designing, aligning, improving, and managing the architecture of an enterprise.
The Center is an EA repository with the emphasis on decision support.
June, 2005

6. EA Intelligence Center: an Introduction (cont.)
The EAI Center is a core component in the EA Management Process, supporting all phases and all activities in the process.
EA Management Core
& Infrastructure
EA Driver
EA Principles
EA Strategy
EA Governance
EA Documentation
EA Intelligence
Existing EA Structure
Business Architecture
Resource Arch.
Information Arch.
Technology Arch.
Application Arch.
Infrastructure Arch.
Security Arch.
Planning Future EA
EA Planning
EA Design
EA Policy
EA Standards
EA Process
Adding/Changing EA
Build new components
Align existing components
Monitor changes
Evaluate output
Improve performance
Analyzing Existing EA
EA Presentation
EA Reports
EA Analysis
Capture, decompose, and relate enterprise elements
Visualize, reorganize, infer enterprise artifacts
Provide information, govern, document, communicate planning process
Guide implementation, record progress, capture issues, document output
June, 2005

7. EA Intelligence Center: an Introduction (cont.)
The key characteristics of the EA Intelligence Center is that its information assembling activities focus on an ultimate goal:
Providing EA Intelligence to support enterprise management decision making
The whole point of doing EA is to improve the enterprise through the EA process.
June, 2005

8. Concept: EA Intelligence
Enterprise Architecture Intelligence is the process of enhancing enterprise metadata into information and then into actionable knowledge to support enterprise management decision making.
EA Intelligence and business intelligence are both part of the management intelligence group.

9. Concept Comparison: EA Intelligence vs. Business Intelligence
Similarities:
assemble scattered information;
turn data into actionable knowledge;
facilitate self-service reporting;
support decision making.

10. Concept Comparison: EA Intelligence vs. Business Intelligence
Differences:
focuses on metadata rather than data;
processes mainly descriptive text rather than numerical / categorical values;
utilizes mainly qualitative / structural / reasoning methods rather than quantitative methods;
targets at improving structure more than amount;
outputs mainly modeling diagrams & context tables rather than statistical values & charts.

11. Possible Types of EA Intelligence Analyses
Change impact analysis (related, what if, quantitative, …)
Redundancy / reusability analysis
Process analysis (bottleneck, work flow, point of failure, …)
Vulnerability analysis (roles & responsibility, process, point of failure,…)
Performance analysis (roles, responsibility, and accountability; performance metrics,…)
Interoperation analysis (exchange of information, standardization, …)
Structural analysis (degree of centralization, standardization, capacity analysis, …)
Culture analysis (communication, philosophy, leadership assumptions, methodology,…)
Semantic reasoning and inference
I’m thinking loud here. This is a field worth exploring. Please brainstorm on this as wild as you can!

12. EA Intelligence Center: an Introduction (cont.)
Who may benefit from the EA Intelligence Center?
Enterprise managers
Business function operators
Enterprise architects
Technical staff members
External stakeholders
You, each of you, and the whole enterprise. EA should be from the enterprise, by the enterprise, and for the enterprise. To make that happen, we invite you to participate from the very beginning.
The EA Intelligence Center provides EA Intelligence to support enterprise decision making.
- Enterprise managers. Enterprise managers at the different fields and levels need to see holistic and dynamic pictures of the enterprise, to know what elements carry out what functions at which place in the enterprise, to know how elements relate to and interact with other elements, to access cost and performance information, and to know external mandates, issues, root causes, and action status.
Business function operators. Business function operators are employees and contractors who conduct day-to-day business in different fields. Business function operators need to know not only their own functional area, roles and responsibilities, business processes, operation requirements, timelines, performance metrics, policies, etc. but also how their work is related to other elements within and beyond the enterprise.
- Enterprise architects. Enterprise architects manage the architectural artifacts of an enterprise and help the enterprise improve its architecture. Enterprise architects need to document the existing architectures, to identify improvement opportunities in the existing architectures, to conduct impact analysis for a EA element change, to design target architectures to advance the enterprise, to carry out transition projects to implement architectural changes.
- Technical staff members. Technical staff members design and operate specific enterprise elements. Technical staff needs to know what requirements they need to meet, and what procedure they need to follow when they conduct their technical tasks. For example, a healthcare information system developer needs to know which regulations the system needs to comply to, which business processes handle what functions and need what data, where the input data come from, and where the output data go.
- External stakeholders. External stakeholders include people such as investor, customer, partner, auditor, EA evaluator, etc. These stakeholders have different interest in our enterprise architecture. Customer may want to know our company policy; business partners may want to know our business procedures. Auditors may want to exam the documentation of business systems.
June, 2005

13. EA Intelligence Center: an Introduction (cont.)
In short, the EA Intelligence Center’s mission is to assemble EA information to support a wide range of enterprise decision making.
With this mission in mind, the EA intelligence capacity needs to be:
built into EAIC’ design;
implemented in its construction;
carried out in its operations;
embedded in its processes;
evaluated in its performance evaluations.
Providing decision support capacity should not be a by product or an after-thought for an EA repository.
To achieve the goal of providing EA intelligence, the ConOps of the EA Intelligence Center focuses on:
-         building decision support capacity into EAIC’ design;
-         implementing decision support requirements in EAIC’ construction;
-         growing decision support ability through EAIC’ operations;
-         embedding decision support activities in EAIC’ processes;
-         evaluating decision support performance in EAIC’ performance evaluations.
June, 2005

14. Input information sources
EAIC Architecture
The Logical Structure
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
Construction
Change
Control
Maintenance
Lifecycle*
*Note: The circle beside each tier represents the management lifecycle for that specific tier.
6 tiers:
1)      Registry Tier: Collects, cleanses, transforms, decomposes and relates EA information; and transfers the organized information into the repository.
2)      Repository Tier: Stores ontology definition, organized EA information, analysis rule information, and system control-configuration-help information; manage data elements; processes actions; and maintains the integrity of the information structure.
3)      Ontology Management Tier: Manages the creation and modification of meta models of EA information.
4)      Analysis Tier: Reserves intelligence rules; produces query reports and statistics results.
5)      Presentation Tier: Provides interfaces to all other tiers and serves as a portal and a work area.; provides governance mechanism and workflow.
6)      System Management Tier: Installs, operates, and maintains the application system; manages security; controls system configuration; and provides user support.
June, 2005

15. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
The Physical Structure
Repository
Server
Application Server
Web Server
Repository Tier
Registry Tier
Analysis Tier
Ontology
Management Tier
System
Presentation Tier
Client
Executives
Managers
EA Architects
Planners
Analysts
Engineers
IT Admins
Security Officers
EAIC Admins …
EAIC System Developers
Feeding & Consuming Server
The logical tiers forms one application system, although the components may physically sit in a distributed network and multiple tools.
June, 2005

16. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At system design stage:
Identify decision support use cases.
Identify what tool or tool combination to use to build the decision support capacity
A decision support example:
- Need to provide IT security certification and accreditation (C&A) status report to the CIO quarterly.
How to build EA intelligence capacity. Need to take actions throughout the Center’s development and operation stage.
June, 2005

17. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At Ontology Management Tier:
What information to collect
How to shape and organize the information.
C&A example:
Identify metadata for IT systems, processes being supported, criteria for importance, responsible org…
C&A status will be set as required fields for each system. The history of C&A needs to be kept.
     Ontology Management Tier: Manages the creation and modification of meta models of EA information.
To identify risks like that New England black out, what element and relationship we need to include in our ontology? Metadata about power supply and relationship of power supply to other enterprise elements.
June, 2005

18. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At Registry Tier:
How to collect information
Who is responsible to maintain the information
How frequent the update should be
C&A example:
Require owners to register and maintain metadata about IT systems, processes, criteria, organizations…
Stewardship assigned to maintain C & A status information.
C&A status update should be no less than quarterly.
Registry Tier: Collects, cleanses, transforms, decomposes and relates EA information; and transfers the organized information into the repository.
June, 2005

19. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At Repository Tier:
What is the cutoff point of centralized vs. federated information storage
What kind of query performance the database should support
C&A example:
C&A status should be centrally stored in the Center while detail IT system configuration information may be pulled from the system documentation at runtime.
Metadata need to be indexed properly to speed up text query such as the C&A report.
Repository Tier: Stores ontology definition, organized EA information, analysis rule information, and system control-configuration-help information; manage data elements; processes actions; and maintains the integrity of the information structure.
June, 2005

20. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At Analysis Tier:
What report to produce
What is the process of identifying and building more useful decision support reports
C&A example:
C&A status reports should include statistics by category, organization, and location.
An automated workflow for the C&A process should be added into the EAI Center.
Analysis Tier: Reserves intelligence rules; produces query reports and statistics results.
June, 2005

21. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At Presentation Tier:
How to present information captured in the Center
How to provide self-service reporting capacity
C&A example:
Due to the frequency of the reporting need, the C&A status report will be a predefined dynamic report for user to open.
User can drill down from the C&A report to get related information.
User can output the report to office document files or other databases.
Presentation Tier: Provides interfaces to all other tiers and serves as a portal and a work area.; provides governance mechanism and workflow.
June, 2005

22. EAIC Architecture (cont.)
Analysis Tier
Presentation Tier
Repository Tier
Input information sources
Registry Tier
Ontology
Management
Tier
System
Audience
At System Management Tier:
How to support a wide range of enterprise users
How to establish security control on information and reports
How to maintain system availability
C&A example:
Staff at the Office of CIO needs to be trained to generate the C&A report.
Only system owners and CIO staff members can view and print the portion of C&A reports they authorized to view.
EAIC needs to be up 24/7 allowing system owners to update their information any time.
System Management Tier: Installs, operates, and maintains the application system; manages security; controls system configuration; and provides user support.
This C&A exercise shows that the decision support capacity will be integrated into the whole process of designing the EA Int. Center. In actual design, merely carrying a few use cases through tiers to reach specific end results is not enough, we will analyze different types of decision support needs to ensure a wide range of support capacity.
June, 2005

23. EAIC Construction User participation Development Phases: Plan
Design and Prototype
Initial Inventory of EA contents
Full Construction
In depth baseline inventory (collect, decompose, connect)
Architectural analysis and construction
Intelligence insertion
Continuous Improvement in Supporting EA Management
Maintain and update information
Design target EA
Improve EA Intelligence Center
User participation
Your participation and contribution is the key to success.
A possible Timetable if we get top management support:
Within 6-8 months to complete design and prototype
Within 8-15 months to complete basic capacity
Within months to build full capacity
June, 2005

24. EAIC Construction (cont.)
Content and Capacity Building Scope
Simple Abstract Stage
Expansion Stage
Enrichment Stage
Simple Abstract Stage: The Center collects limited number of critical, high level enterprise elements along with simple descriptive metadata about the elements, builds major interrelationships among elements, sets up auto-feeding of limited information sources, and provides limited decision support functions. The majority of the detail EA information are linked or stored in the repository as un-decomposed and un-interrelated documents.
Expansion Stage: The Center extends the enterprise elements it documents in the central repository, collects richer metadata about the elements, builds interrelationships between more elements, establishes auto-feeding from important information sources, and adds wider decision support functions and topics. The information about the core elements of the enterprise is either stored in the EAI Center or linked to the Center through dynamic connections.
Enrichment Stage: The Center documents all interrelated or reusable enterprise elements in its central repository, standardizes and stabilizes a suitable set of metadata ontology with sufficient details, completes relationship webs, automates bulk information feeding, and enriches its decision support capacity. The contents and the decision support capacity of the Center maintain a stably evolving condition.
June, 2005

25. EAIC Operations Content Management System Management
Development Management
June, 2005

26. EAIC Operations (cont.)
Content Management Principles
Ensure wide participation and clear stewardship;
Establish policy, ownership, content manager, and content management process;
Manage the entire content lifecycle, ad infinitum;
Use the correct criteria for quality control;
Be realistic in update requirement; and
Enable automatically gathering contents as much as feasible.
Follow knowledge management principles.
Distribute content maintenance effort to avoid maintenance nightmare.
June, 2005

27. EAIC Operations (cont.)
System Management Requirements
Following system administration principles and industry best practice
Establishing Proper Security Policy
Documenting System Configuration
June, 2005

28. EAIC Operations (cont.)
Development Management Ongoing Tasks
Automating content collection and update;
Providing web services to feed consuming systems;
Enhancing EA intelligence capacity through integrating more tools and creating own utilities; and
Upgrading EAIC system hardware and software.
June, 2005

29. EAIC Performance Evaluation
Sample questions and metrics
How well EAIC reaches EA documentation goals? -% of planned elements documented.;
How well EAIC is received by the enterprise? -Ave. daily users and accesses.
How well EAIC is supporting enterprise decision making? - # of predefined reports - score of user satisfaction on DS capacity
How well EAIC is administrated? - % up time - ave. resolution time for help calls - security C&A score
June, 2005

30. Summary
EAIC is a powerful tool to help managing the enterprise with a holistic approach
Building EA intelligence capacity is a critical requirement for an EA repository
Stakeholders participation is the key to EAIC success
June, 2005

31. Critique Usefulness Feasibility Enhancement
Again, please indicate your assumed role(s) and, if you are referring a specific slide, the slide number.
- More use cases? Show Slide 11: analysis topics.
- Name: EA Intelligence Center is a generic name to reflect this repository’s emphasis. Actual name can be discussed.
June, 2005

32. This presentation will be at
Contact Information
Haiping Luo
This presentation will be at
Next step:
Show EAIC use cases, decision support scenarios to EAIC users.
June, 2005