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CAVITE STATE UNIVERSITY
T3 CAMPUS
Department of Information Technology ITEC 75 – System Integration and Architecture 1

Financial
Implementing an EA involves establishing current and future views of enterprise
resources, and EA Management Plan, an update to this information at regular intervals. Like
any implementation project, establishing the initial set of EA information will require startup
funding that is more than what will be required for the periodic updates. Even after the EA is
established, cuts in an EA maintenance budget can severely affect the program, to the points
of making the EA information eventually become of little or no use if it becomes too out of
date.

Lack of Acceptance
Enterprise Architecture represents a new way of looking at enterprise resources by
providing an integrated view of strategy, business, and technology that supports the
consolidation of re-engineered of these resources to produce additional value. Former
approaches to program management that supported systems level planning will be replaced
with EA level planning that is promoted through the EA program. This will most likely create
some tensions between program level stakeholders, EA stakeholders and other affected
groups.

Loss of Key Personnel
Enterprise Architecture is an emerging area of professional practice that requires
architects, analyst, developers and programmers. Each of these skill sets is important to the
program and the loss of members of the EA team with those skills can create delays in
program implementation, as well as effect implementation costs.

Schedule Delays
As with all implementation projects, the documentation of current and future EA views
as well as the creation of the initial EA Management Plan is approached as a project that has
milestone and a specific schedule for completion. Delays to the schedule can come from many
sources and depending on the point at which ha delay occurs during EA implementation, and
how long the delay is, the effect can go from being negligible to being catastrophic for the EA
program.

Documentation Tools
One of the greatest challenges for a Chief Architect is to develop current and future
views of the EA that are rich in detail, easy to access, and which can support modeling and
decision-making types of queries. The capabilities of EA tools and supporting application at
present are such that intuitive and informative “management views” of EA information are
difficult to produce with these tools. Further, because more than one software application si
normally required in an EA program, tool integration is an issue that must be dealt with. As
new commercial tools are introduced, a Chief Architect has to consider what the effect will be
on overall documentation if that product does not integrate with other tools.

Mitigating Risk
Risk mitigation plans and activities reduce the likelihood that sources of risk will
emerge and negatively impact a program such as Enterprise Architecture. Actions that
mitigate risk (lower uncertainty) include strengthening executive support for the EA program,
solidifying budgets, not being the first adopter of EA tools and documentation techniques,
ensuring there are trained back-ups on the EA team, and using a detailed EA implementation
methodology to guide the overall program. Additionally, basic program management skills
address potential problems of key personnel turnover, cost and schedule overruns,
performance issues, and stakeholder acceptance. Overcoming issues related to technology
compatibility among EA products is achieved through the use of commercial tools that are
based on open standards, and which are mature and have significant market share.

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