TOGAF 10: What Is EA and the Four Roles of EA Capability
TOGAF 10 defines Enterprise Architecture as a description of an enterprise's future state to guide change, and EA capability as the ability to develop, use, and maintain architecture to manage change across four roles: supporting strategy, portfolio, projects, and solution delivery.
What Is Enterprise Architecture (EA)?
According to the TOGAF 10 series guide Leader's Guide to Establishing and Evolving an EA Capability , EA is used to describe the future state of an enterprise to guide the change required to reach that future state. The description of the future state enables key people to understand what must be in their enterprise to meet the enterprise's goals, objectives, mission, and vision in the context within which the enterprise operates. The gap between the enterprise's current state and future state guides what must change within the enterprise.
What Is EA Capability?
EA capability is the ability to develop, use, and maintain the architecture of a specific enterprise, and to use that architecture to manage change.
Four Roles of EA Capability
The guide identifies four primary aspects where EA capability delivers value:
EA Supporting Strategy: Delivers EA to provide a target architecture and formulate a change roadmap spanning three to ten years. This typically crosses many change programs or portfolios. Architecture is used to identify change plans, support portfolios and programs, set scope, identify synergies, and govern execution of strategy through portfolio and project management.
EA Supporting Portfolio: Delivers EA to support cross-functional, multi-phase, multi-project change programs. Usually spans a single portfolio. Architecture identifies projects, sets their scope, adjusts their approach, identifies synergies, and manages project execution.
EA Supporting Projects: Provides EA support for the enterprise's project delivery method. Typically spans a single project. Architecture clarifies project purpose and value, determines needs for resolving synergies and future dependencies, ensures compliance with architecture governance, and supports integration and alignment between projects.
EA Supporting Solution Delivery: Delivers EA to support solution deployment. Typically a single project or a significant part of one. Architecture defines how to design and deliver the change, identifies design constraints, controls, and architecture requirements, and serves as the governance framework for the change.
Reference: TOGAF Series Guide, G184 — Establishing and Evolving an EA Capability
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