Description

Enterprise Architecture Enables Processes Paper – Individual Assignment

Purpose of this Assignment

This assignment gives you the opportunity to apply your critical thinking skills and understanding of the course concepts to explain how the enterprise architecture (EA) and/or the EA program supports the other IT management processes of an organization. This assignment specifically addresses the following course outcomes:

• describe enterprise architecture (EA), the appropriate application of EA frameworks, and an overall ongoing EA program
• analyze and examine how enterprise architecture and enterprise systems influence, support, and enable an organization's ability to contribute to strategic decision making and to respond and adapt to the business environment
• apply EA concepts to support business requirements and identify opportunities for enterprise solutions

Assignment

As you have learned throughout the course, EAs can be used to support a wide variety of information technology management processes, and an EA program strengthens IT management activities. While there are many different flavors of development approaches such as Waterfall, Agile (to name a few), and this assignment will focus on the System Development Life Cycle that is largely associated with a more traditional development approach. Even with an Agile or Agile-like approach, there is still considerable thought and attention paid to the foundational system and software engineering processes that take place during the development life cycle. For purposes of this assignment, let’s focus on the different phases listed below to provide insight into how EA can influence each of these activities.

A well-defined and implemented EA contributes significantly to each of the phases of the SDLC.  For this assignment you will write a 3-5 page paper (not counting any cover sheet or reference pages) that explains briefly what enterprise architecture (EA) is and then how it supplements and enables each of the phases of the SDLC:

• Initiation/planning/concept phase
• Systems Analysis and Requirements phase   - for this phase, please consider quality or non-functional requirements or the “ilities” (security, maintainability, etc.)
• System Design phase
• Development phase
• Integration and Test phase
• Implementation phase
• Operations and Maintenance phase 

Please refer to the Basic IT SDLC link provided in your content area for Week 8 for useful information on each phase.

You should explain how EA enables each phase, how it fits into each phase, and what unique qualities or capabilities a well-defined EA contributes that might not otherwise be available to the organization.  Very important!

Please do not just cite the various stages without ensuring that you emphasize how EA helps to enable each phase.

The use of at least two external scholarly resources (other than class materials) is required. (NOTE:  More than two external resources are required to receive all possible points; see Grading Rubric below.) You should use scholarly journals (rather than Wikipedia and author-less website postings). If you need assistance with determining what a scholarly journal is, the UMUC library is a very good source of information, accessed via the following link: http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/articles.cfm. Remember to correctly cite and reference all sources using APA format.

Submit your paper in Word format via your Assignments Folder as an attached document with your last name included in the filename.

Grading Rubric

Use the rubric below to be sure you have covered all aspects of the assignment.