Often I wonder why people start thinking about Enterprise Architecture only when “Information system” word comes on the table. All seems defined and almost decided, when the baton is passed to IT people who are requested to manage an ERP system integration project or a CRM one. Then, the IT people worry is upon alignment, asking how to implement the selected  solution to best meet the business needs and requirements.  They go back to Business to capture and model requirements in details,  and they plan accordingly integration and roll-out. Around there, an Enterprise Architect brings a global point of view which insure that no impact have been missed in the project plan.

When the project scope comes to include several IT solutions, it becomes a true challenge, even for experimented solution architects, to drive such a project.  So, when enterprise architect has been called, it has to roll-back to business expectations to produce a realistic business plan.  Indeed, to sort out functioning enterprise complexity, enterprise architect ought to work at usages level.

Who could doubt of functioning enterprise complexity ? Enterprise may be compared to a knot of flows. For each of them,  the enterprise perform some activities and manage those done by partners or contractors.  For example, in the RH flow, collecting applying forms and qualifying them may be done by a subcontractor, or payroll activity may be outsourced. If it does not perform an activity required for a flow, at least enterprises need to control it. The same occurs for customers relationship flow, end customers may not be direct enterprise customers, nevertheless the entire flow has to be controlled.

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