Introduction
The last few decades have witnessed the entry of several new players in the enterprise architecture arena, bringing with them new prescriptions for better enterprise health. However, their efforts have yielded little to no results. In this rapidly evolving world of new paradigm shifts, major players are appearing with a “promise box”, announcing new collaborations and achieving certain levels of breakthrough. However, these improvements have resulted in spawning a new set of advice, buzzwords, and jargons to play with the enterprise mind.
The Harmony Classification Framework has developed a simple, 64 celled kaleidoscope to experience the enterprise architecture and a step-by-step success pattern, building a ‘preventive enterprise’.
This issue takes you to the Chamber 0, the 'meditation chamber' that will facilitate the understanding of the enterprise. The following issues will provide a modern hieroglyphic booklet, called the 'Enterprise Architecture Hieroglyphic'. This is a pictorial representation of the enterprise architecture development state that uses powerful brain mapping techniques for better enterprise communication.
Enterprise Architecture Hieroglyphic
Subliminal messages are one of the effective ways of communication with the human brain. “A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another object, designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. These messages are indiscernible to the conscious mind, but are alleged to be perceptible to the subconscious or deeper mind: for example, an image transmitted so briefly that it is only perceived subconsciously, but not otherwise noticed” [Wikipedia]. The harmony classification network has developed a set of imaged subliminal messages, inspired by the Egyptian civilization, to explain the objectives and the task for a particular stage of the enterprise architecture development, named as 'Enterprise Architecture Hieroglyphic'. This issue introduces the concept of hieroglyphic and discusses it in detail.
It is recommended to understand the meaning of the icon, which will then scan a subliminal message in the enterprise brain, flash an ‘imperceptible shadow', and will direct automatically to the steps to be followed. The following section discusses the steps in detail.
Enterprise Entity: Induction of Your Enterprise Success
In this induction room, called chamber 0, which is the enterprise divine room, the focus is to understand the objective of the enterprise architecture development exercise. Enterprise Hieroglyphic for this room is as follows:
In chamber 0, concentrate your enterprise mind to build up an 'Enterprise Master Plan" (Refer to MDA Radar Issue 16 and Issue 17). However, the plan depends on another exercise called ‘Enterprise Entity Identification’ that enables your enterprise in identifying its own backbone. Figure 1 introduces another Enterprise Hieroglyphic for this entity Identification:
Fig. 1: Enterprise Hieroglyphic for Entity Identification
GERAM and PERA stress the importance of 'Business Entity Identification'. Without identifying the nature of the entity, we will not be able to build our enterprise landscape, as the enterprise architecture development process deals with each of the enterprise entity separately while building a successful enterprise.
There are various definitions of 'Enterprise Entity' available in the current market, but the PERA definition reveals the entity nature very well, in addition to being easy to understand. “Depending upon management's desires, on the existing economic and business climate, on the expected returns from the proposed project, and especially on the availability of economic and technical resources; the size of the system covered by the proposed enterprise integration program may range from a single production line, through major plant units, to whole manufacturing plants, or even to whole companies. In any case, the overall unit, division, plant or complete company involved in the chosen study will be called the Enterprise Integration Business Entity” [PERA page 51].
Nature of Enterprise Entity
“The Enterprise Integration Business Entity or more briefly, the Enterprise Business Entity (EBE) is therefore that agreed upon selection of products, functions and locations that are the basis for the Enterprise Integration Master Plan. An Enterprise Business Entity may consist of anything from a part of a Business Unit, to several Business Units, up to and including the whole Enterprise.” [PERA page 51].
Entity therefore, depends on three main concepts:
Like any other object, Enterprise Entity has its own object-oriented identity. Therefore the Enterprise Entity is a special object in the enterprise space as depicted in Figure 2.
Fig. 2: Enterprise Entity and its Speciality
A change between two different states of an Enterprise Entity is triggered by an event is known as 'Transition'. It is very important for any enterprise to track the entity transition in terms of Life Cycle and Life History. But like the fabled blind men trying to explain the enterprise elephant, the major players often omit the life history aspect of enterprise. As they are blind to the enterprise entity identification, they naturally overlook the emphasis of enterprise life history. Harmony classification framework recommends this as the first drill to pick up in Chamber 0.
Entity Identification
Answer to these following few important questions is very useful to identify the enterprise business entity as described in PERA Master Plan [PERA]:
What is the major business activity of the Enterprise Business Entity?
Is it the only business activity of the company at this address? If not, explain the organisation and process relationships (or independence).
What is the major company purpose accomplished by this unit?
What is the management structure of the Enterprise Business Entity? Give organisational diagram, names of present incumbents, etc.
Document the physical and functional boundaries of the Enterprise Business Entity.
Does this Business Unit consider the Enterprise Business Entity as strategic?
Will capital be committed to maintain and enhance the Enterprise Business Entity?
In MDA Radar Issue 26 and Issue 12, I have already explained the Enterprise Entity structure in detail. Figure 3 explains the steps of the enterprise entity identification:
Figure 3: Enterprise Entity Identification
These Enterprise Entity Identification steps clarify the different aspects of enterprise entity identification process as recommended by the Harmony, the Enterprise Classification Framework.
Enterprise Entity Hierarchy
In many occasion with the context of GERAM, the different types of the Enterprise Entity have been discussed. Figure 4 depicts the hierarchy of GERAM recommended enterprise entity.
Fig. 4: Enterprise Entity Nomenclature
Entity Identification and Enterprise Integration
Enterprise Applications Integration approaches, as elaborated in Issue 26, could be classified in the following four general categories:
These approaches may be further categorized as below:
Static binding to static Services
Dynamic Binding to Static Services
Dynamic Binding to Dynamic Services
Another parameter is:
Distributed
Non-Distributed
Enterprise Entity Identification stage helps your enterprise to identify the enterprise integration needs at the beginning of the Enterprise architecture development phase, as illustrated in Figure 5.
Fig. 5: Enterprise Entity and Enterprise Integration
Therefore, Entity Identification is one of the stepping stones for enterprise success, which is the scope for Harmony Classification Framework, Chamber 0.
References
[GERAM] GERAM: Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology. Version 1.6.3 ( http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~bernus/taskforce/geram ) also in P.Bernus, L.Nemes and G. Schmidt (Eds) Handbook on Enterprise Architecture, Berlin : Springer (2003) pp 22-64.
Handbook on Enterprise Architecture, by Bernus, P., Nemes, L. and G. Schmidt (eds.) , Springer, (2003), ISBN is 3540003436
[PERA] A HANDBOOK ON MASTER PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION FOR ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION PROGRAMS Based On The Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture and the Purdue Methodology Purdue Laboratory for Applied Industrial Control Edited by Theodore J. Williams, Gary A. Rathwell, Hong Li. February 2001 (Revised from July 1999 PERA website version)
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