| For several years, it has been a goal of mine to write a book on
enterprise architecture. While there are many good architectural books in circulation,
they are either limited in scope or lack sufficient detail to be actionable.
Early in my career, I found it difficult to translate the principles of these
books into a logical flow of events that detail the purpose of the activities,
the consumers of the outputs, and finally the control mechanisms for the
enterprise. It is my intention to make these clear and easily referenced in
this book.
“Lightweight Enterprise Architecture” (LEA) is an architectural approach
that I have developed throughout my career to enable a quick alignment
of technology to the business strategy. Similar to the popular lightweight
programming approaches that have recently become popular, LEA has a
simple and effective framework that facilitates the alignment of technology
without a weighty methodology that typically makes architectures shelfware.
In addition, LEA can reach a wider audience and hence become
more effective within an enterprise.
In addition, architectural approaches of the past do not adapt well in
today’s environment, as systems are more complex and require tighter
integration, shorter transaction cycles, and interoperability to trading communities.
Hence, the days of large mainframes or ERP (enterprise resource
planning) solutions providing the majority of an enterprise’s needs have
been replaced by diverse systems accumulated through merger and acquisition
(M&A) activities, functionally divergent departments, geographic
separation, and other factors. The bottom line is that the system landscapes
in enterprises are becoming more complex and there is a need to control
and manage the evolution of these complex environments. |
