The Architecture Services Model (ASM) breaks down enterprise and solution architecture into 39 interconnected services, supported by 51 tools and templates.
Enterprise Architecture facilitates the pursuit of the enterprise strategic priorities, considering people, process, information and technology. It uses digital representations of the enterprise to understand its current and target states, and to drive its transition over time through effective governance. It involves a coordinated interdisciplinary community, sharing a common platform for collaboration and exchange.
An organisation undergoes continuous change. The discipline of Enterprise Architectre seeks to minimise the unforeseen disruption that results from implementing change with inadequate understanding of the consequences. It is the guiding hand that translates strategy to reality, seeking to minimise wasted investment and unnecessary complexity, resulting in vital responsiveness.
The Architecture Services Model fall into two interconnected models that provide architectural perspectives on two corporate lifecycles:
- Enterprise Architecture Services Model: This is a high-level representation of a typical corporate planning / change lifecycle, which is often tightly integrated with the corporate finance and budgeting cycle. The stages have been adapted from the high-level strategy execution framework depicted in Whynde Kuehn’s book Strategy to Reality. In fast-moving industries and businesses that have adopted an agile approach to continuous change, it might run quarterly within a larger annual financial cycle. In others, it is more closely integrated with the annual finance and budgeting life-cycle. Either way, architecture acts as the bridge between strategy and implementation, shaping prioritisation and the allocation of resources, executing changes to business services and solutions and feeding the results into the next iteration of the cycle.
- Solution Architecture Services Model: this cycle typically runs in parallel, distributed across all change initiatives, projects, programmes or product teams. It is the implementation arm of Enterprise Architecture. Without it, Enterprise Architecture is reduced to an ivory tower function that produces plans that might never become a reality. With it, the organisation ensures that different change teams are all “singing from the same hymn sheet”, contributing to a unified corporate vision. The solution architecture cycle supports agile and traditional implementation approaches.
The two cycles have many points of coordination to ensure that solutions architecture services, which may be distributed across multiple “autonomous” agile teams, remain on the same page.
The services are supported by a set of tools and templates that ensure a consistent approach, avoid wasted effort and enable effective interfaces between services where appropriate.
The ASM Maturity Model enables an assessment of all architecture services in an organisation, leading to the creation of a detailed training and improvement plan to close the gap between current and target maturity states.
Select either Enterprise or Solution Architecture to explore their respective architecture services. Or view the full service catalogue here.