What is Enterprise Anatomy and why is it necessary for Enterprise Architecture?

The problem at hand?

In the world of Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Anatomy is a new kid on the block. CEO’s kick off Strategic initiatives and CIO’s respond by kicking off Technology initiatives. Enterprise Architecture in this context is looked upon as a standards creation, planning and road mapping exercise with a bit of Technology Governance thrown in. Many of these are successful. So, is there anything going amiss?

Think about it this way. All these initiatives comprise multiple Programs of work executed year after year with information about the Enterprise scattered across all the deliverable artifacts in a disconnected manner and mostly out of date. For example, a Digital Transformation Program might create several Deliverable Artifacts and a Cloud Strategy implementation will recreate similar Artifacts from scratch. Added to this, both these Programs may be happening side by side. Thus a collective intelligence that will speed up the Solutioning process is not happening. Merely archiving Deliverable Artifacts in network storage or a Content Management System is not the answer.

Why do we need a common anatomical model?

What is lacking is the creation of a common anatomical model of the Enterprise. Why is this model necessary? It is necessary because it is the only way to ensure CEO and Executive level Strategies are implemented fully in Technology implementations. This anatomical model that we call Enterprise Anatomy is a connected model of Business Strategy Models, Business Process Models, Data Architecture models, Application Architecture models, Infrastructure Architecture models, Business Motivation Models etc.,

Understanding impact of change

When such a model is created and maintained, the Enterprise is able to understand the impact of the change in Executive Strategies on Technology and vice versa very quickly. It is also able to ensure that Executive level Strategies are implemented correctly by Technology implementations. It also becomes an excellent resource to answer queries about cross-relationships between various parts of the Enterprise.

Improve time to deliver the solution by the factor of 10.

Another important benefit of the Enterprise Anatomy is to improve the efficiency of Enterprise Problem solving by a factor of 10. This is possible because the Enterprise Anatomy is a connected model of all sub-models of the Enterprise, shared across Projects as a common resource and Solution Models can be created from it “on the fly”.

Creating Enterprise Anatomy? Must be complex and time-consuming?

The information to create such a model already exists within an Enterprise. Only thing is, it is being thrown away and re-created as Project deliverable artifacts. Having a collection of these Artifacts in a large repository will not achieve the same result. Creating the Enterprise Anatomy is also need not be a daunting, big budget exercise. It can be done one project at a time.

Enterprise Anatomy as a basis for an Enterprise

We at ICMG have perfected the techniques of creating “Enterprise Anatomy” and are happy to assist your Enterprise in creating its “Enterprise Anatomy” and solve your Business Problems “on the fly”. We believe that as Architecture Consultants this is our contribution to the Architecture profession in the advancement of Enterprise Architecture.