Enterprise Architecture Quarter

Enterprise Architecture Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the third of four lectures of Portfolio Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise design, or, in other words, to concepts related to creating architecture for achieving enterprise goals; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Lecture outline

The predecessor lecture is Feasibility Study Quarter.

Concepts

1. Enterprise architecture. A composition of the interrelated businesses, process assets, enterprise factors, and personnel that together are known as an enterprise.
   • Enterprise. An undertaking to create something and/or develop somebody, which takes some level of enterprise effort. In other words, an enterprise is one or more businesses unified in one system. An enterprise can also refer to an organizational unit, organization, or collection of organizations that share knowledge bases and other enterprise resources.
2. Enterprise business. The actual or potential practice of making enterprise's profit by engaging in commerce.
   • Business. (1) An individual's regular occupation, profession, or trade; (2) the practice of making one's profit by engaging in commerce.
   • Departmentalization. The basis by which jobs in an enterprise are grouped together.
3. Startup business (or, simply, startup). A business in its search of its business model or its ways of making money.
   • Startup. A startup company is a company in the early stages of operations. Startups are usually seeking to solve a problem of fill a need, but there is no hard-and-fast rule for what makes a startup. A company is considered a startup until they stop referring to themselves as a startup.
4. Operational business. Any business, which business model generates revenue.
5. Portfolio engineering.
   • Engineering. The application of scientific principles to practical ends.
   • Market engineering.
6. Segmentation.
   • Sector. The market that a startup companies product or service fits into. Examples include: consumer technology, cleantech, biotech, and enterprise technology. Venture Capitalists tend to have experience investing in specific related sectors and thus tend not to invest outside of their area of expertise.
7. Core competency. An organization's major value-creating capability that determines its competitive weapons.
   • Competitive advantage. What sets an enterprise apart; its distinctive edge.
8. Innovation. Taking change ideas and turning them into new products, product features, production methods, pricing strategies, and ways of enterprise administration.
   • Sustaining innovation. Small and incremental changes in established products rather than dramatic breakthroughs.
   • Disruptive innovation (or disruption). Innovations in products or processes that radically change existing markets including an industry's rules of the game.
9. Context diagram. An analysis model that illustrates product scope by showing the system in its environment with the external entities (people and systems) that give to and receive from the system.
   • Context. The users, other systems and other features of the environment of the system that the system will interact with.
10. System design. The identification of all the necessary components, their role, and how they have to interact for the system to fulfill its purpose.
    • System integration. The activity of integrating all the components of a system to make sure they work together as intended.
    • Interdisciplinarity. People from different disciplines working together to design systems.
    • Specification. The technical requirements for system design.
11. Systems engineering. The orderly process of bringing a system into being using a systems approach.
    • Systems approach. The application of a systematic disciplined engineering approach that considers the system as a whole, its impact on its environment and continues throughout the lifecycle of a project.
    • Human factor. Also called ergonomics. The scientific discipline of studying interactions between humans and external systems, including human-computer interaction. When applied to design, the study of human factors seeks to optimise both human well-being and system performance.
    • Datapoint-device architecture.
    • Object-oriented modeling. An approach to software engineering where software is comprised of components that are encapsulated groups of data and functions which can inherit behavior and attributes from other components; and whose components communicate via messages with one another. In some organizations, the same approach is used for business engineering to describe and package the logical components of the business.
12. Exit strategy. This is how startup founders get rich. It's the method by which an investor and/or entrepreneur intends to "exit" their investment in a company. Commons options are an IPO or buyout from another company. Entrepreneurs and VCs often develop an "exit strategy" while the company is still growing.
    • Exit strategy. A business strategy that seeks to withdraw an enterprise out of a particular business at the lowest cost and biggest gain.
    • Buyout. A common exit strategy. The purchase of a company's shares that gives the purchaser controlling interest in the company.
    • Liquidation. The process of dissolving a company by selling off all of its assets (making them liquid).
    • IPO. Initial public offering. The first time shares of stock in a company are offered on a securities exchange or to the general public. At this point, a private company turns into a public company (and is no longer a startup).
    • Harvesting. Exiting a venture when an entrepreneur hopes to capitalize financially on the investment in the future.

Roles

1. Data architect.
2. Knowledge engineer.
3. Enterprise architect.

Instruments

1. BCG matrix. A strategy tool that guides resource allocation decisions on the basis of market share and growth rate of strategic business units.
   • Strategic business unit. A single independent business of an organization that formulates its own competitive strategy.

Results

1. Enterprise portfolio. A collection of all businesses in which a particular enterprise is.
   • Portfolio. A range of investments held by a legal entity, an individual or organization.

Practices

The successor lecture is Iterative Development Quarter.