SFIA Enterprise and business architecture STPL

This page provides deep dive guidance and additional material to help individuals and organisations use and apply this SFIA skill effectively. It supplements the SFIA reference material.

SFIA v6 definition of Enterprise and business architecture

The creation, iteration, and maintenance of structures such as enterprise and business architectures embodying the key principles, methods and models that describe the organisation's future state, and that enable its evolution. This typically involves the interpretation of business goals and drivers; the translation of business strategy and objectives into an “operating model”; the strategic assessment of current capabilities; the identification of required changes in capabilities; and the description of inter-relationships between people, organisation, service, process, data, information, technology and the external environment. The architecture development process supports the formation of the constraints, standards and guiding principles necessary to define, assure and govern the required evolution; this facilitates change in the organisation's structure, business processes, systems and infrastructure in order to achieve predictable transition to the intended state.

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• This is a high-level SFIA skill - which appears at SFIA levels 5 to 7 only.
• Enterprise architects have a tendency to align their role to a large number of SFIA skills (in addition to this one!). This is understandable as they must take a holistic viewpoint of organisations. However extra care should be taken to ensure that only relevant responsibilities are reflected in the skill mapping for Enterprise architect roles. A combined analysis using RACI and identified Work Outputs reveals the real skill requirements. The rest should be captured as “knowledge of …” statements.
• For organisational flexibility it is useful to capture a CORE set of skills for Enterprise architects alongside OPTIONAL specialist skills. E.g for Data, Information, Applications, Business Processes etc.

If you are looking for skills relating to:

• the overall governance of enterprise IT; try SFIA IT governance GOVN
• exploiting business opportunities from the use of technology; try SFIA Innovation
• the management of the portfolio of IT programmes, projects and services; try SFIA Portfolio management POMG
• the identification and assessment of emerging technologies; try SFIA Emerging technology monitoring
• solution architecture at a project/programme level; try SFIA Solution architecture
• software architecture at a component, module, building block level; try SFIA Systems design
• modelling representations of processes, roles, data, organisation and time; try SFIA Business modelling
• identification and realisation of benefits from programmes and projects; try SFIA Benefits management
• designing organisation structure, role profiles, culture, competencies and skills; try SFIA Organisation design and implementation ORDI

• Zachman Framework
• TOGAF® - an Open Group standard
• FEAPO - Federation of Enterprise Architecture Organizations
• IASA - An Association for All IT Architects
• ITIL - Service Strategy
• IT4IT™ Reference Architecture
• (BIZBOK® GUIDE) - A guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge®
• TOGAF in a Nutshell

• Enterprise Architecture
• Technology Leadership
• Service Architecture
• Business Architecture
• Technology Consulting

By focussing on work outputs/work products we can move the focus from activity/knowledge to performance and provide a direct link to business results. See 6 boxes model.

Leading

• senior stakeholder relationships and relationship management plan
• executive commitment to architectures, roadmaps, investment plans
• sustainable culture which recognises the value and contribution of enterprise and business architecture
• sufficient resources and capability to enact architecture projects and strategic accountabilities
• organisational model for enterprise architecture
• architecture vision and principles

Managing

• architecture/governance decision-making processes and decisions
• architecture standards and architectural framework
• architecture quality reviews
• architecture project plans/requests for architectural resources
• architecture communications
• architecture investment plans

Doing

• capability assessments
• roadmap components
• roadmaps
• implementation plans
• migration plans
• architecture requirements specifications
• architecture definition document
• impact analyis and recommendations