Enterprise Architecture Planning - Overview

Overview

One of the earlier professional practitioners in the field of system architecture Steven H. Spewak in 1995 defined Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) as "the process of defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business and the plan for implementing those architectures." Spewak’s approach to EAP is similar to that taken by DOE in that the business mission is the primary driver. That is followed by the data required to satisfy the mission, followed by the applications that are built using that data, and finally by the technology to implement the applications.

This hierarchy of activity is represented in the figure above, in which the layers are implemented in order, from top to bottom. Based on the Business Systems Planning (BSP) approach developed by John Zachman, EAP takes a data-centric approach to architecture planning to provide data quality, access to data, adaptability to changing requirements, data interoperability and sharing, and cost containment. This view counters the more traditional view that applications should be defined before data needs are determined or provided for.