How to get started with Enterprise Architecture? Information management is part of business management. Part 4/4

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) defines business architecture as “description of the structure and interaction between the business strategy, organization, functions, business processes, and information needs”. Content of business architecture should be provided mostly by organization’s business management. What is missing quite many times or is not that clearly defined is that last part of the business architecture definition, information needs.

To understand information needs better, it is good to be aware of in what context information is used. Analyzing organization’s strategy is one of the best starting points for finding key information needs and potential usage scenarios. This is also an important way to build linkage between business and IT. Having understanding of data usage and definitions is vital for common understanding how to reach organization’s strategic goals and how to support this by IT solutions.

Lack of common understanding is many times one of the biggest reasons for data quality issues such as unreliable master data. Most of these kinds of information management issues are not technological topics at all but the root cause is that information needs are misunderstood in the business process management. Therefore, I’d like to emphasize the importance of conceptual data modeling as a way to analyze what is important to an enterprise especially in the future. This kind of modeling has nothing to do with databases (relational or columnar) but it is one way to manage organizational intellectual capital and knowledge.

A ‘big picture’ of how things are connected to each other in high enough level is what executives and managers are many times missing. This is where enterprise architects can become the helping hand by using Enterprise Architecture as an operational development framework to create that picture. Showing high level conceptual data flows needed in business operations, and linking your IT applications and technology to business processes lets you see the whole big picture, that is, enterprise architecture. Having this in place, both business and IT management can make predictable changes to it when needed, and understand the impact to business operations better. Keeping things simple and high level enough, enterprise architecture can be valuable tool for both business and information management.

Ari Anturaniemi

Chief Consultant, Enterprise Architecture

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