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In the second phase, the current baseline business architecture is described and target business architecture developed. This phase is used to analyze the gaps between the baseline and the target business architectures. The objective of the third phase is to develop target architectures covering the Data and Application system domains (The Open group, 2002). Depending on the scope of the project, data and application architectures can be created as sub-phases. Spewak (2000) recommends a data-driven approach for the enterprise architecture building process. Regarding the data, the target is to define the major types and sources of data necessary to support the business, but this does not mean database design or the design of any logical or physical storage systems.
Concerning the applications, the objective is to define what major applications are required to process the data and support the business. However, this excludes applications system design itself and concentrates on the kinds of applications that are relevant to the enterprise (The Open Group, 2002).
The fourth phase in ADM is technology architecture development. This phase consists of eight sub-phases: create baseline, consider different views, create architectural model, select services portfolio, confirm business objectives are met by architectural model, determine criteria for specifications, define architecture completely and conduct gap-analysis (Morganwalp, 2003). The fifth phase, opportunities and solutions, identifies the strategic change and the top-level projects to be undertaken in moving from the current environment to the target architecture (The Open Group, 2002). The Migration planning phase is for developing the various project plans for projects, which have to be implemented. This phase is also for prioritizing these plans. The objective of the seventh phase, implementation governance, is to formulate recommendations and plans for each implementation project and then implement and deploy the systems (Morganwalp, 2003).
The last phase of ADM, Architecture Change Management, includes creating a maintenance procedure for the new baseline that has been implemented in the previous phase.
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strategic information asset base that defines the business, information necessary to operate the business, technologies necessary to support the business operations and transitional processes for implementing new technologies in response to the changing needs of the business. The target of FEAF is to promote shared development for common federal processes, interoperability and sharing of information among federal agencies and other governmental entities. The focus of the federal enterprise architecture is limited to common federal architecture issues, which benefit federal organizations and the public, if resolved at the federal level (CIO Council, 1999).
FEAF combines structure with the process overview in a transition process from the baseline enterprise architecture to the target enterprise architecture. FEAF is organized in eight components. However, it does not provide detailed steps on how to accomplish those components. Therefore, it differs from TOGAF, which gives detailed guidance for the enterprise architecture development process. FEAF has four levels and each of them is progressively more detailed than the previous level. In FEAF, the eight components of an enterprise architecture are (CIO Council, 1999):
- Architecture Drivers – Represent two types of external stimuli or change agents for the enterprise architecture: business and design. The business drivers could be new legislation, new administration initiatives, budget enhancements for accelerated focus areas and market forces. Design drivers include new and enhanced software and hardware and their combinations with a variety of deployment approaches.
- Strategic Direction – Guides the development of the target architecture and consists of a vision, principles, goals and objectives.
- Current Architecture – Defines the ―as is‖ enterprise architecture and consists of two parts: current business and design architectures (i.e. data, applications and technology). This represents the current capabilities and technologies and is expanded as additional segments are defined.
- Target Architecture – Defines the ―to-be-built‖ enterprise architecture and consists of two parts: target business and design architectures (ie. Data, applications and technology). This represents the future capabilities and technologies resulting from design enhancement to support changing business needs.
- Transitional Processes – Support the migration from the current to the target architecture. Critical transition processes for the federal enterprise include capital IT
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investments planning, migration planning, configuration management and engineering change control.
- Architectural Segments – Consists of focused architecture efforts on major cross-cutting business areas, such as common administrative systems; program areas, such as trade and grants; or small purchases via electronic commerce. They represent a portion (segment) of the overall enterprise architecture. A segment is considered to be an enterprise within the total federal enterprise.
- Architectural Models – Define the business and design models that comprise the segments of the enterprise description.
- Standards – Refer to all standards (some of which may be mandatory), guidelines and best practices.
In Figure 2.18, relationships between these components are shown (CIO Council, 1999).
Figure 2.18 describes level three of FEAF. As shown in Figure 2.18 the FEAF building process is divided in two parts; business drivers and design drivers.
Figure 2.18 Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (Level 3) (CIO Council, 1999)
As illustrated in figure 2.18, the FEAF partitions a given architecture into business, data, applications and technology architecture. Enterprise architecture work starts from a
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current architecture and as a result of enterprise architecture development work is a target enterprise architecture. The FEAF does not distinguish the terms data and information.
At level four, the FEAF is quite similar to the Zachman framework. FEAF level four describes the stakeholder views (in rows) and interrogatives what, how and why as columns. The FEAF includes the first three columns of the Zachman framework. FEAF level four is illustrated in Figure 2.19.
Figure 2.19 FEAF Architecture Matrix (CIO Council, 1999).
Cells which are in the focus of this study are highlighted. The cells that this study primarily covers are highlighted in Figure 2.19.