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Roger Sessions (2008)

33 important questions on Roger Sessions (2008)

The enterprise architecture field initially began to address two problem? Which two?

System complexity - organizations were spending more and more money building IT systems
Poor business alignment - organizations were finding it more and more difficult to keep those increasingly expensive IT systems aligned with business nee

What is meant by blended methodology?

It means that you choose bits and pieces from each of these methodologies and modify and merge them according to the specific needs of your organization

What is an enterprise architect?

This is the architect who specializes in the broadest possible view of architecture within the enterprise. This is the architect's architect, the architect who is responsible for coordinating the work of all of the other architect

What is an architectural artifact?

A specific document, report, analysis, model, or other tangible that contributes to an architectural description

What is an architectural description?

A collection of products (artifacts) to document an architecture

What is an architectural framework?

A skeletal structure that defines suggested architectural artifacts, describes how those artifacts are related to each other, and provide generic definitions for what this artifacts might look like

What is an architectural methodology?

A generic term that can describe any structured approach to solving some or all of the problems related to architecture

What is an architectural process?

A defined series of actions directed to the goal of producing either an architecture or architectural description

What is an architectural taxonomy?

A methodology for organizing and categorizing architectural artifacts

What is an enterprise architecture?

An architecture in which the system in question is the whole enterprise, especially the business processes, technologies, and information systems of the enterprise

Explain the building industry analogy which Zachman uses to explain the IT taxonomy

In that industry, architectural artifacts are implicit organized using a two dimensional organization.

One dimension is the various players in the game
The second dimension is the descriptive focus of the artifact

What are the three suggestions of the Zachman taxonomy?

Each architectural artefact should live in one and only one cell
architecture can be considered a complete architecture only when every cell is complete
Cells in columns should be related to each other.

What are some issues that Zachmann doesn't address?

It does not give a step-by-step process for a new architecture
It doesn't help deciding if the future architecture is the best possible architecture
It doesn't show an approach to show a need for a future architecture

What are the four categories in the TOGAF?

Business architecture - describes the processes the business uses to meet its goals
Application architecture - describes how specific applications are designed and how they interact with each other
Data architecture - describes how the enterprise datastores are organized and accessed
Technical architecture - describes the hardware and software infrastructure that supports applications and their interactions

What are the architectures in the TOGAF Enterprise Continuum?

Foundation architecture
Common system architecture
Industry architecture
Organizational architecture

Describe Foundation architecture.

These are architectural principles that can, theoretically, be used by any IT organization in the universe

Describe Common system architecture

These are principles that one would expect to see in many - but perhaps not all - types of enterprises

Describe Industry architecture

These are principles that are specific across many enterprises that are part of the same domain

What are the knowledge-bases that are defined TOGAF?

Technical Reference Model (TRM) - The TRM is a suggested description of a generic IT architecture.
Standards Information Base (SIB) - The SIB is a collection of standards and pseudo-standards that The Open Group recommends that you consider in building an IT architecture.

According to the author, the TRM and SIB are flawed for the same reason. What reason?

They are biased toward application portability at the expense of application interoperability and application autonomy.

What is FEA perspective on EA?

The FEA perspective on EA is that an enterprise is built of segments.

What is a segment?

A segment is a major line-of-business functionality

Why two types of segments are there?

Core mission area segments: one that is central to the mission or purpose of a particular political boundary within the enterprise
Business services segments; one that is foundational to most, if not all, political organizations

What is an enterprise service?

Another types of enterprise architecture asset is an enterprise service. An enterprise service is a well-defined function that spans political boundaries.

What is the difference between enterprise services and segments?

The difference is that business service segments have a scope that encompasses only a single political organization. Enterprise services have a scope that encompass the entire enterprise.

Why is the comparison between either segments or services with services as in service oriented architectures not correct? Name two.

Firstly, enterprise services, business-service segments and core mission-area segments are all much broader in focus than services found in service oriented architecture
Secondly, segments are an organizational unit for an enterprise architecture, whereas services are an organizational unit for technical implementations.

What are the five reference models?

Business Reference Model
Performance Reference Model
Components Reference Model
Technical Reference Model
Data Reference Model

What is the FEA process?

The FEA process is primarily focused on creating a segment architecture for a subset of the overall enterprise.

What are the overall segment-architecture development process steps?

Architectural analysis
Architectural definition
Investment and funding strategy
Program management plan and executive projects

FEA succes management: in which three main categories are federal agencies rated as to their overall maturity levels?

Architectural completion - maturity level of the architecture itself
Architectural use - how effectively the agency uses its architecture to drive decision making
Architectural results - the benefits being realized by the use of the architecture

What is meant by the phrase 'Architecture is a verb, not a noun' ?

It means that it is an ongoing process of creating, maintaining, and especially, leveraging an enterprise architecture that gives an enterprise architecture its vitality.

Which three constituents should be brought together according to Gartner?

The business owners
The information specialists
The technology implementers

What are the two most important things to Gartner?

Where an organization is going
How it will get there

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Enterprise Architecture as a Business Strategy

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