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Enterprise Reference Architecture |
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Ahmed Fattah
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Wednesday, 03 June 2009 |
This paper relates my experience in developing and applying an approach that successfully used Reference Architecture to bridge the gap or disconnect between Enterprise Architecture and Project-level Architecture. Although there is a huge amount of information about Reference Architecture, there is considerable confusion about what it is and how it can be used effectively. I analysed and positioned various types of RAs within a simple classification scheme that cleared up some of this confusion. The scheme delineates a category of Reference Architecture which I refer to as Enterprise Reference Architecture (ERA). The paper discusses how ERA can be used to address some of the challenges facing EA including the enterprise-wide adoption of SOA.
Reference Architecture (RA) classification scheme
Although I have used Reference Architectures for a long time, I was surprised recently when reviewing the staggering range of usage of the term. Because I knew what I meant, I assumed that some of these usages must be erroneous. I then realised that this was not the case, at least for the many instances I have surveyed: the culprit is the malleability of the term ‘architecture’ itself. Anything you can think of can have an architecture and so by extension a RA. I tried to find a way to classify this huge number of 'things' called Reference Architecture and I found useful two dimensions: breadth of Coverage and level of Abstraction.
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