ITA&S-F Framework

ITA&S-F — The ITA&S Enterprise Architecture Framework

Most EA frameworks treat business and IT as parallel tracks. ITA&S-F was designed to integrate them — using Business Dimensions as the connective tissue across roadmaps, metrics, and data.

Business Dimensions

We introduced Business Dimensions as a core concept to:

• Scope EA roadmaps
• Qualify metrics and KPIs used to monitor whether processes meet their goals
• Support the Enterprise Dimensional Data Model

Examples of Business Dimensions include: Organization, Industry, Location, Role, Product, Service, Segment, and Channel.

A Focused Set of EA Artifacts

Enterprise Architects cannot realistically maintain the 50+ artifacts defined in TOGAF while remaining responsive to the business. ITA&S-F focuses on a deliberately limited set of EA artifacts — called EA Persistent Products — whose lifecycles are long and whose maintenance can be sustained without overwhelming the EA practice. This leaves sufficient capacity to deliver EA Offerings when the business needs them.

EA Persistent Products must be maintained in an EA tool. The primary role of these tools is to manage relationships and maps across all architecture objects. Since ITA&S-F introduces new concepts such as Business Dimensions, we developed a dedicated metamodel and implemented it in Casewise.

Decoupling Architecture from Projects

One of ITA&S-F's most important design principles is the separation of architecture dependencies from project dependencies:

• Architecture roadmaps are maintained independently of program and project timelines
• Versioned architecture objects — representing specific architectural changes — are associated with programs and projects
• When a program or project changes scope or timeline, the versioned architecture object is simply reassigned — the architecture roadmap remains unaffected
• This approach also enables monitoring of when silo program or project decisions prevent the organization from reaching its business objectives, since all versioned architecture objects are tied to business objectives

This decoupling is fully integrated into the ITA&S-F metamodel in Casewise, significantly simplifying the maintenance of architecture roadmaps.

EA Offerings

We believe Enterprise Architecture groups should be structured as EA Practices — maintaining a defined catalog of EA Services and Offerings available to their business customers. The EA Persistent Products exist precisely to ensure the practice is always ready to deliver these Offerings on demand. EA Offerings have direct business value and include:

• Strategic guidance on business direction and renewal
• Plans and roadmaps
• Business Case support
• IT Budget Planning for application portfolios
• Software and product recommendations
• Assessments
• Solution Architecture guidance
• Advice on the IT side of a merger & acquisition
• ...

When demand arises for these Offerings, there is no time to revisit and update persistent EA products such as application inventories, business process maps, or data models. The discipline of maintaining them continuously is what makes the EA Practice credible and responsive.

While ITA&S-F stands on its own, this approach is fully compatible with and can be overlaid on established frameworks such as TOGAF and FEA.