what is the essential project? - enterprise architecture · enterprise architecture. relationships...
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Copyright ©2016 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
The goal of the Essential Project is to promote the value that enterprise architecture can bring to organisations of all sizes and experience by lowering barriers to entry with a free, simple, productive and, most importantly, effective set of supporting tools.
The Essential Project is the collective name for a set of open source,
Enterprise Architecture support tools that have been developed for use in
conjunction with a variety of Enterprise Architecture approaches and
frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, DoDAF, Zachman).
These tools are focused solely on providing only those capabilities that are
"essential" to maximising the value of enterprise architecture; helping
organisations manage and analyse the knowledge needed to make
decisions that impact or are impacted by their enterprise architecture.
Designed for simplicity and ease of use, with no up-front or on-going fees, it
is hoped that the Essential Project will encourage people to adopt
Enterprise Architecture.
The Essential Project is not only about the tools. It provides a useful, active
forum for sharing ideas and experiences of applying Enterprise Architecture
practices to real world business problems; what works and what doesn't,
best practices, hints and tips etc. Our aim is to move Enterprise Architecture
away from its often-perceived ivory tower - of benefit only to large,
complex organisations - to a necessary and valuable capability in any
organisation.
What is the Essential Project?
The Essential Meta-Model is a framework-independent language (i.e. set of semantic definitions) for capturing knowledge related to the building blocks and relationships of an enterprise
The Essential Project contains:
Essential Architecture Manager is a knowledge repository and reporting tool for capturing and then querying information based on the Essential Meta-Model
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The free, open-source EA solution
2 Copyright ©2016 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
Developed from over ten years of applying enterprise architecture practices
The Essential Meta-Model is, in effect, an ontology for the domain
of Enterprise Architecture that has been developed from over ten
years of applying enterprise architecture practices with a variety
of EA frameworks and tools.
Importantly, it does not represent an attempt to supersede or
conflict with well-established EA frameworks and their associated
meta-models. Rather, the intention is to provide a comprehensive
and extensible set of concepts and relationships, with clear
semantics that can be easily mapped to the concepts, activities
and tools of the industry standard frameworks.
The Core Meta-Model concepts and relationships are based on
what is fast-becoming a standard twelve-box grid; with layers
representing the areas of architecture to be understood and rows
representing the levels of abstraction from which this
understanding is to be viewed.
More specifically, the architecture layers defined are:
o Business - the objectives, capabilities, people and processes
of an enterprise
o Application - the functional behaviour provided by
technology systems in support of business processes
o Information - the structured and unstructured information that
support business processes, is managed by applications and is
transmitted/stored using technology
o Technology - the software and hardware technology used to
implement applications and transmit/store information.
Essential Meta Model
Ontology for Enterprise Architecture
The abstraction views defined are:
o Conceptual View - the capabilities and
concepts that represent the
fundamental elements needed to
meet the objectives of an enterprise
(Strategic Agenda)
o Logical View - the approaches taken
to realise the capabilities and
concepts of the Conceptual View
(Tactical Agenda)
o Physical View - the implementation of
the approaches described in the
Logical View (Operational Agenda).
In addition, there are a number of Support
Meta-Model concepts and relationships
provided that enable management and
governance processes that make use of
the knowledge captured in the Core Meta-
Model, as can be seen in the diagram
above.
3 Copyright ©2016 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
Easy to learn, capable of yielding results in days rather than months
Essential Architecture Manager is a toolset that is focused solely
on supporting enterprise architecture practices, applied in the
context of a variety of business and IT management processes
(e.g. strategy management, IT governance, solution delivery,
service delivery). In addition, particular emphasis has been
placed on creating a toolset that is:
o Low maintenance, in terms of both the architecture model
and the underlying tool platform
o Easy to learn, flexible and intuitive to non-technical users
o Capable of yielding results in days or weeks, rather than
months.
The toolset offers all the required features of an enterprise
architecture tool as defined by the Gartner Group*:
o A repository
o A meta model that supports business, information and
technology viewpoints as well as the solution architecture
o Provides support within the repository for relationships
among and between the objects in the above viewpoints
and solution architecture
o The ability to create or import models and artifacts
o The ability to extract repository information to support
various stakeholder needs.
Essential Architecture
Manager
Essential Meta Model Reference implementation
Fundamentally, these features can be
grouped into two areas of functionality;
functions that support users in the modelling
of an enterprise, and functions that provide
users with discrete views of this model in
support of reporting and analysis. This
grouping is reflected in the underlying design
of the toolset in that it comprises two main
components, which separate the capture of
information from the analysis:
o Essential Modeller, providing support for
capturing and maintaining the enterprise
architecture model
o Essential Viewer, responsible for
generating reports that allow users to
view and analyse the enterprise
* Enterprise Architecture Tool definition source: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, 1Q06
4 Copyright ©2016 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
Open Source Software In the best traditions of open source,
the components of the Essential
Architecture Manager have been
created using a number of well-
established and proven open source
technologies.
Essential Modeller The Essential Modeller provides a simple, primarily form-based means of capturing, managing and sharing an enterprise architecture model.
Essential Viewer The Essential Viewer provides a flexible and extensible means of generating views on the model captured using the Essential Modeller. A number of standard reports are provided by default, however, the Essential Viewer is explicitly designed to allow organisations to define and publish custom views and reports to meet their individual needs.
Copyright ©2016 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
The Essential Project - created and sponsored by Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
www.enterprise-architecture.com
Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd is registered in England and Wales: 04097721. Registered Office: Suite 428, 39A Barton Road, Water Eaton, Bletchley, Bucks, MK2 3HW
Licensing The Essential Project toolset is open
source and has been used and
tested extensively in a production
environment. These tools are
available for use by any individual or
organisation free of charge, with no
initial or on-going support or
maintenance charges, under the
GNU General Public License.
Professional Support and Consulting Support and consulting services work with your organisation to help you
support your Enterprise Architecture initiatives with the best use of the
Essential Project tools. Examples of the consulting and support services
offered include:
o Platform installation and configuration
o Practical application of the Essential Project tools to meet specific
objectives, such as
o Business and IT strategy development and management
o Solution architecture design
o Project / programme management
o Application/technology rationalisation and cost reduction
o Strategic application and technology selection
o Legacy transitioning and decommissioning
o Outsourcing / "rightsourcing" strategy development
o IT governance
o Enterprise architecture process and organisation design (including
ongoing mentoring and support).
Find out more about The Essential Project For more information visit the website at www.enterprise-architecture.org or contact the project via email at team@enterprise-architecture.org.
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