The purpose of this guide is to provide guidance to organization's in initiating, developing, using, and maintaining their enterprise architecture (EA) practice. This guide offers a set of Enterprise Architecture Good Practices that have proven their benefits to organizations and that addresses an end-to-end process to initiate, implement, and sustain an EA program, and describes the necessary roles and associated responsibilities for a successful EA program.

Enterprise Architecture is a complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which “acts as a collaboration force” between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks.

While EA frameworks and models provide valuable guidance on the content of enterprise architectures, there is literally no guidance how to successfully manage the process of creating, changing, and using Enterprise Architecture.

This guidance is crucially important. Without it, it is highly unlikely that an organization can successfully produce a complete and enforceable EA for optimizing its business value and mission performance of its systems. For example, effective development of a complete EA needs a corporate commitment with senior management sponsorship. Enterprise Architecture development should be managed as a formal program by an Enterprise Architecture Department that is held accountable for success.

Since that EA facilitates change based upon the changing business environment of the organization, the enterprise architect is the organization’s primary change agent.

Effective implementation requires establishment of business and system compliance with the enterprise architecture, as well as continuous assessment and enforcement of compliance. Waiver of these requirements may occur only after careful, thorough, and documented business case analysis. Without these commitments, responsibilities, and tools, the risk is great that business changes or new systems will not meet organizations business needs, will be incompatible, will perform poorly, and will cost more to develop, integrate, and maintain than is warranted.