Enterprise Architecture - Scope

Scope

The term enterprise is used because it is generally applicable in many circumstances, including

• Public or private sector organizations
• An entire business or corporation
• A part of a larger enterprise (such as a business unit)
• A conglomerate of several organizations, such as a joint venture or partnership
• A multiply outsourced business operation
• Many collaborating public and/or private organizations in multiple countries

The term enterprise includes the whole complex, socio-technical system, including:

• people
• information
• technology
• business (e.g. operations)

Defining the boundary or scope of the enterprise to be described is an important first step in creating the enterprise architecture. Enterprise as used in enterprise architecture generally means more than the information systems employed by an organization. A pragmatic enterprise architecture provides a context and a scope. The context encompasses the (people), organizations, systems and technology out of scope that have relationships with the organisation(s), systems and technology in the scope. In practice, the architect is responsible for the articulation of the scope in the context, engineers are responsible for the details of the scope (just as in the building practice). The architect remains responsible for the work of the engineers, and the implementing contractors thereafter.