BYU’s Information Technology Enterprise Architecture

Source BYU CIO

http://ocio.byu.edu/ea-framework.html

As I discussed in a previous post, EA is not a documented standard but more of a conglomeration of ideas.  Take for example this page from Brigham Young University Office of the CIO.

They present another view of the EA stack.  They do list that theirs is based on the TOGAF model and draws extensively from NIH’s Enterprise Architecture model, so again looking at existing guidance and modifying it to suit your purposes.

The model is broken down into three main layers, Business, Information and Technology architecture with overarching layers of availability and security.

Their view of Business architecture seems rather simple but I like how they frame what goes into this layer.

• What do they do?
• Who does it?
• Why do they do it?
• How do they do it?
• When do they do it?
• Where do they do it?

From an implementation standpoint I think this simplicity could aid in non EA types being able to follow what the documentation is trying to explain.

The sub-layers for Information and Technology architectures are rather simple concepts as well the Technology layer seeming to me to be at a much lower level than others.

Adding the security and availability as overarching layers which should be addressed in each of the other layers is a nice touch.  I think that the simplicity of this model would be easier to define than many others I have seen.  Those closer to the day to day operations in a business should be able to understand what the individual pieces of the model are trying to document.  In looking at other models this is not always the case.