Knowledge of the business Essay

A nonher research study, by Michael J. P. Whyte (2004), called endeavour Architecture the Key to Benefits Realization, stresses the importance of existence awargon of hardly what the moving in is about before sort trouble can be implemented. Whyte (2004) discusses why logical argument who consecrate installed increasing amounts of computing hardware and package over the last three or four decades form non been able to realize the expected benefits (p. 2). In his study, Whyte outlines the following contributing factors that have lead to such non-realization of benefits ? Manner in which IS projects proceed.Whyte criticizes almost projects for merely being stuck in the discovery phase of the project. This involves simply defining the current situation, systems or processes. During the discovery phase of a project, certain architecture-like artefacts are produced, such as process diagrams, entity relationship diagrams, and infrastructure diagrams, all of which form the basi s for the impudentlyborn project. According to Whyte, the radical problems with these artefacts are that they are created within the context of the project, and are thus seldom correct and almost never complete.They deal with the aggregates tack together in the current situation and do not identify the primitives upon which the new architecture must be based. As a result, these artefacts are not maintained and extended after the project is completed, precisely beca intention they were based on the current situation prior to implementation of the project (Whyte, 2004, p. 3). ? The silver skunk mentality According to Whyte, this is another major obstacle in benefits realization.Whyte criticizes how vendors bring home the bacon the latest and greatest hardware, the newest and most complete software suite, or the most up-to-date methodology to help companies in implementing their benefits realization programs. The problem with these offers, harmonize to Whyte, is that they do not f it together. They cannot fit into any overall contrivance which satisfies a particular plaques needinesss since the organizations needs are undefined in the first place (Whyte, 2004, p. 4). Whyte recommends what is called enterprisingness Architecture to deal with the two factors identified above.Enterprise Architecture helps the organization to full define its current state and to precisely determine the things that need to be diversityd. All aspects of the propose change can be promptly assess and the results can be analysed and quantified. Enterprise Architecture involves both the integration of the business aspect and IS in change management. It provides a means to becharm the knowledge which makes the business work, and makes this knowledge available for the ongoing benefit of the business.In other words, it provides a blueprint of the business, a complete picture of the business and all the components which make the business work. Such knowledge is quantified and captur ed as info so that it can produce information to be used by another person in a company, making change management thus not person or individual-centred. When a person who instigated the change management leaves, his or her replacement can easily pick up where he left off since knowledge of how the business works is right away available (Whyte, 2004, pp. 4-6).In obtaining this knowledge, Enterprise Architecture involves the use of the Zachman Framework. This framework involves the use of thirty positions which are required to fully define an enterprise. Each model must be explicitly recognized and implemented. According to Whyte, Each wrangle of the Zachman Framework takes a quaint perspective of the enterprise (planner, owner, designer, builder, subcontractor). Each mainstay deals with a primitive interrogative (what, how, where, who, when, why). Each of the thirty intersections of these wrangles and columns identifies a unique model of the enterprise.Each model is unique it is not an elaboration of a higher level model. Each higher level row provides requirements for the row beneath, but each perspective, hence, each model is unique (Whyte, 2004, p. 6). All models in a column are related by a fundamental meta-model (entity-relationship, function-argument, node-link, agent-work, time-cycle, ends-means). As the models are developed as is for an enterprise, it is unavoidable that discontinuities will be discovered between the higher level models (planners and owners perspective) and the lower level models (builders and sub-contractors perspective).This is because current corporate systems have usually been built starting at the lowest levels with no insure to the higher level models. So naturally, the functioning enterprise is NOT a true representation of what the corporate management desires (Whyte, 2004, p. 7). In other words, Whyte recommends Enterprise Architecture as the means to bind an organizations business side and IS side into a fully function al whole entity. companionship of the entire enterprise, from top to bottom, is necessary in order to determine not only the current situation but the framework on which change management should be based on.