Office of Enterprise Architecture

If you would like to discuss a consulting engagement with a CDT enterprise architect:

1. Open a CIO Office of Enterprise Architecture Services Request via a ServiceNow
2. Select “General EA Consultation / Other Requests”

Enterprise architecture is a professional practice and a set of business products. The practice of enterprise architecture conducts strategic business planning and design that often leverages technological elements to improve the organization’s enterprise. The goal is to provide consultation and products for business and technical leader to gain meaningful insight into assets and processes, EA Products include:

• Reference Architectures. Reference architectures are documentation to convey definitions, configurations, and guidelines for the implementation of technology and business capabilities.
• Standards and Asset Inventories. State EA practices maintain a list of organizational, industry, and external government (Federal and international) standards. EA practices also maintain an inventory of assets and asset categories to monitor their compliance with standards.
• Alignment products. State EA practices are in a unique position to see across business, policy, and technology landscapes. Enterprise architecture takes advantage of this position to document alignment between the three landscapes. This can expose gaps, redundancies, and opportunities for optimization.

EA conducts many business functions to include analysis, design, planning, and implementation, for the successful development and execution of strategy.

Management Consultancy
Enterprise architecture helps define and shape business and operating models, identify risk and opportunities, and create roadmaps/plans for improvement. In practical terms, the practice of enterprise architecture should be perceived as management consulting. EA practices bring a discipline to building the business and helps consolidate processes and improve coordination. This discipline improves planning, design, and delivery when it is time to update or replace business processes and/or systems.

EA Practitioners
Enterprise architects apply skills in business and systems analysis, process, data and information modeling, solution and technical design, integration and interoperability, stakeholder facilitation and requirements elicitation, strategic planning and roadmapping, governance and risk management, and performance measurement to translate organizational goals into conceptual blueprints and actionable transformation plans that enhance effectiveness, efficiency, agility, and continuity.

EA Benefits
Having an enterprise architecture program benefits the modern organization in many ways. The profession helps deliver a holistic, outside-in, top-down view of the business, its structures, and systems. These things are necessary for pragmatic, effective management of the related complexities. Actionable architectural analysis and documentation as a direct input to executives, managers, and staff support portfolio planning, resource planning, decision-making, and managing for business outcomes. Key benefits are:

• Managed complexity
• Actionable work products
• Increased agility

CEA/F Building Blocks
The California Enterprise Architecture Framework (CEA/F) is the State of California’s government framework for the professional practice of enterprise architecture and the effective implementation of state EA programs. CEA/F is comprised of four framework building blocks.

Each of the four building blocks is described on the Digest, Program, EA Service Catalog, and Architecture pages.

California’s statewide architectural services and activities are organized within EA capabilities. EA capabilities include activities such as facilitating user-centered design workshops and modeling efforts, creating roadmaps, or assessing vendor partner technologies and services.

Depending on the capability for which architects are asked to engage – Business and IT Strategy, Planning and Roadmapping, or Governance – the portfolio provides guides and tools to support their work efforts.

California’s statewide architecture services and activities are organized within a set of standard EA capabilities listed below.

California Statewide Enterprise Architecture Capabilities

Community

• Collaboration
• Education
• Innovation

Business Strategy

• Business Transformation
• Digital Business Modeling
• Customer Experience Lens to IT
• Digital Opportunity Demonstration
• Digital Strategy Facilitation

IT Strategy

• Support IT Strategic Plan
• Steward Information Architecture
• Assess Vendors/Partners
• Accelerate Agile Technologies
• Assess IT Talent
• Support IT Workforce Plan

Planning and Roadmapping

• Develop Future State IT Architecture
• Support IT Portfolio Modernization
• Set Technology Standards
• Create and Maintain Roadmaps
• Assess Current State IT Environment
• Assess Maturity

Governance

• Review Solution Designs
• Facilitate Integration
• Promote Standards Adherence
• Support Project Delivery
• Provide Solution Design Consultation
• Create and Manage Reference Architecture

An organization’s collection of people, technology, and business function organized to prosecute the objectives of the organization.

The purpose of having an enterprise architecture program is to deliver a “blueprint” or consultation that can be used by a wide variety the organization stakeholders to optimize business and technology. Interests of different stakeholders are different, and the “blueprint” needs to visually speak to those interests individually.

Enterprise architects, of course. However, many of the portfolio of services, and the accompanying “tools” can be put to use by a variety of other disciplines. Ideally, the enterprise architect will introduce the framework, coordinate, and organize the analysis/design work, and help make sure the stakeholders’ parts fit into the whole. Each discipline can model their view of people, processes, and systems from their perspective. Ultimately, when combined these views produce a coherent architectural “blueprint”. This is a collective modeling and implementation effort. When these practices mature and become commonplace, the enterprise architecture program becomes a readily available source of Enterprise Knowledge. This alone further promotes the speed, quality, and business value of professional architectural service.

Enterprise architecture, as a program within an organization, should help coordinate the many and often fragmented internal business efforts. As technology becomes more readily accessible to business and the related technological disruptions become wider spread, the enterprise architect can be of enormous value. We have all heard of organizations simultaneously, and often unknowingly, tackling things like “cloud services”, IT Architecture, Application Integration, and ITIL efforts as independent activities. It is not uncommon to find only superficial reference to organizational alignment, business strategy, or compliance with regulations. Unfortunately, and regardless of business process management, Six/Lean Sigma, Business Performance Management certificates exist, these efforts have an extremely high probability of producing more of the same business fragmentation. Business executives should engage enterprise architectural services. These services can provide business transformation and technology modernization consulting, and oversight services that help deliver complementary and coordinated business services.

An enterprise architecture framework provides a structure that integrates how to create and use architectural principles and practices. These principles and practices are used to create and use architectural description, or blueprint, of a system. Enterprise architecture is focused on business systems – composed of people, strategies, processes, goals, initiatives, and supporting technologies. The California Enterprise Architecture Framework helps structure the architects’ thinking by dividing the design into views that help produce models for understanding the “enterprise”. Each view represents a different discipline’s perspective of a particular challenge. Together, these views produce a coherent architectural “blueprint” of the whole. And this blueprint allows for making systemic business design decisions on all the components of the system as well as long-term decisions around new design requirements, sustainability, and support.