Special Challenges

Enterprise architecting is most often associated with software and information technology (IT) systems; and ERA™ has several significant benefits to the development of such systems. For example, ERA™ can assess the current enterprise architecture and determine the location, type and scope of inefficiencies. But that is just scratching the surface of its capabilities. ERA™ enables a more holistic approach to software and IT systems design; and the history of IT systems development has clearly shown us such an approach is warranted.

Why do IT Projects Frequently Fail
The approximate 50 year history of IT systems projects has shown us that at least half of these projects fail to fully meet their strategic and technical objectives. Some industry monitoring groups estimate that percent to be as high as 75%. Even more discouraging, many of the projects that did succeed did so only because they were led by extraordinary talent. Additionally, projects salvaged some level of success by reducing their scope or “throwing more bodies and money” at the problem.

Why does this continue? There are many reasons and only some of them involve technology. Organizational issues include lack of tie-in to the business model and disconnect with the system user needs and external customer needs. People issues such as lack of top-down support, communication gaps at all levels, and “politics” are often at the forefront of many failures.

A More Holistic Approach is Called For
ERA™ is a holistic approach to software and IT systems development in that it incorporates the enterprise’s Human systems, as well as Administrative and Organizational systems into the requirements development process.

ERA™ uses systems engineering to properly develop requirements, create functional architectures and design architectures. The systems engineering aspect of ERA™ also creates an environment well suited for configuration management (CM). Systems engineering brings a host of analysis and control techniques to the design process. These include:

ERA™ is architecture based and can adopt existing architectural frameworks found in Military, Commercial, and Government environments. Moreover, ERA™ can facilitate the development or re-development of an IT or software system while the existing ones remains operational. The new designs can be brought on-line in a phased and structured manner.