Many organizations are pushing the envelope looking for ways to shorten their development cycle and improve their operational efficiency. An enterprise architecture program is the means to do that.
Enterprise architecture is a blueprint or “road map” that shows the relationships among the processes, data and IT infrastructure found in multi-vendor, multi-platform environments such as those found in defense, civilian and commercial environments. The use of enterprise architecture throughout the government is expanding as organizations recognize its value as more than a tool for technical analysis.
Organizations — departments, agencies and commands — are increasingly recognizing the value of architecture as a way to gather and distribute valuable information to internal groups so they can take action. They seek an enterprise view of their IT and business processes and have adopted enterprise architecture as the mechanism to give them that view.
To fully participate in the changing landscape, organizations must be flexible and responsive, and enterprise architecture is the means to do this. It documents the current and future technology environment, the gap between the two and the impact of change on internal strategies and operations. It also moves organizations beyond a silo perspective, by integrating requirements management and application delivery. An architecture