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Deadline: 28th April

Task 2: Report

Task Details:
This Task is designed to assess develop your skills in Enterprise Architecture (EA). You are
required to develop knowledge on EA methodology, EA Framework, data model and emerging
EA. In completing this Task successfully, you will be able to know major widely accepted
Enterprise Architecture (EA) domains, layers, frameworks and governance, which will help in
achieving ULO-3, ULO-4, and ULO-5.
Report: Part-I (Case Study) (1200 words) [Suman]
Coco-Oil is a mid-size Oil and Gas company. A couple of years ago Coco-Oil decided to
establish a full- fledged EA practice to accommodate with the growing problems around non-
transparency of its IT investments and poor business and IT alignment in general. To boost its
EA initiative, the company decided to purchase a specialized software tool for enterprise
architecture. For this purpose, its IT leaders studied the available offerings on the EA tool
market, contacted most promising vendors, organized meetings with vendor representatives and
listened to their presentations. As a result, Coco- Oil had selected and acquired a rather
powerful and expensive tool for enterprise architecture from a well-known vendor. Then, the
company had installed and configured the tool, established a central repository for storing
architectural information and sent its architecture team to a special training supplied by the tool
vendor. After the training, architects had documented most areas of the organizational IT
landscape and associated business processes in the EA repository and started to update this
information to keep it current. Architects were also impressed with the modeling, visualization
and analytical capabilities offered by their new EA tool.
However, Coco-Oil’s CIO is sceptical towards the chosen EA tool. He believes that the
company is only wasting money on the tool as it is essentially nothing more than a
sophisticated repository of current- state information. Furthermore, the tool is used by only 4-5
people in the entire organization (all architects), does not facilitate informed decision-making
among business stakeholders in any sense and does not contribute to achieving the original
objectives of the EA initiative to improve business and IT alignment.
As a newly employed manager at Coco-Oil; Coco-Oil’s CIO has asked you to provide a report
that addresses the following:
 1. Discuss 5 reasons why the implementation of the EA tools at Coco-Oil would make
Coco-Oil have competitive advantage over its competitors.

EA1 tools allow the examination of the requirements, along with the impacts created/to be created
by the change in any organization. EA tools are used to understand the relationships and links
between the different models, phenomena, and applications. These tools help in making the
decisions related to the investments in both the IT as well as the broader enterprise. Since Coco-
oil is in the competitive market of Oil and Gas Company, it needs to understand the ever-
updating requirements and adjust to the competitive market. The major five reasons why the
implementation of the EA tools at Coco-Oil would make it have a competitive advantage are
described below:
I. Business agility of the company is enhanced
The agility2 of the Coco-oil will be increased to a certain level, as EA creates positive
changes in the overall environment of the organization. The use of EA services will help in
quick and effective responses to queries. And also the operational and the working capacity
of the organization/company will increase. As the EA tools and frameworks are scalable and
adoption of the new technologies is very easy and smooth, the agility is helped in terms of IT
infrastructure. With the ease of expanding into new markets and flexibility to change the
work pattern, EA tools help in the business agility of the Coco-Oil.

II. Change Analysis Impact3

One of the topmost benefits of implementing the EA tools in the Coco-Oil company is the
visualization and hence utilization of the acquired knowledge on how the changes have
impacted the organization. The change analysis helps to remove the chance of the
showstopper's arrival in any operations of the company.

III. Reduction of IT costs and complexity

In a company as big as the Coco-Oil company, there are many operations 4 that are occurring
continuously which are not even being thought of. The alignment of the activities and
investments with the strategy of the company is not measured. EA tools help the company to
stop unnecessary tasks from being performed, and hence the production time can be utilized
for better activities. The working complexity of the company decreases by a large measure.
Therefore EA tools help by maintaining stability and overall quality. The cost of the IT
systems is reduced as EA tools generate the required details only. The hardware components
and software products that align with the strategy of the company are properly managed.
This will give a significant edge in terms of time and costs.

IV. Standardization
It is always important for a company to have standard operating procedures. The
standardization improves the working of the IT landscape. Standardization helps to reduce
the risks and hence leads to having an IT landscape with lower complexity.

V. Enables innovations
Changes and transformations are the new norms of the modern-day business industry. Every

1
http://library.nic.in/e-journalNew/JEAMagazines/JEA_2006-2.pdf
2
https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2014.471
3
https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/10409-000
4
https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201815403008
company needs to adopt new concepts and working methodologies. With the EA tools
implemented in Coco-Oil Company, it makes it easier for the executives and board members
to know how everything is configured, related, and performs in the company, and what
could be the consequences of the change in the near future.
a.
 2. Recommend one cloud-based EA software that would be used in Coco-oil and
discuss 5 major role that the specialized software would play in Coco-Oil EA
practice.

Since the last decade cloud services have taken over the IT market compared to the
on-premise services. One of the famous cloud-based EA software that could be used
in Coco-Oil is Sparx Systems. The Sparx System Cloud Services is dedicated to
providing access to the Enterprise Architect models in a seamless way, anywhere
around the globe. Sparx Systems are majorly focused on offering high performance
for remote access, secure links that are encrypted, and optimizing the WAN
connections with the high latency. The cloud service it offers is SaaS (Software as a
Service) which can be utilized by the Coco-Oil company for their EA practice. This
cloud-based EA software prevents the necessity of buying complex hardware for
setting up the software components. The specialized EA software (cloud-based) will
play the following five major roles in the Coco-Oil EA practice.
i. Creation of the visuals
The visual5 representation of the data analyzed is presented by the EA tools. The
visualization styles that are easy to use and are easily able to handle the large
datasets are used to create the results. The specialized software uses tools like
tableau or some JS packages to create the graphics and visuals. All the activities
of the Coco-Oil EA will be displayed visually.
ii. Proper organization of the data
Huge bulky data of the company can be simply organized by the use of EA
software. The EA software helps to store, manage6, and locate the required data
at any time.
iii. IT assets catalogue
The major issue of the Coco-Oil company is the mismanagement of the IT assets
in the company. Due to this management, there has been a very serious issue
related to the operations and utilization of the IT assets in the Company. SO,
making a catalog of the IT assets in the company will help Coco-Oil immensely
to understand the overall IT collections in their periphery. Sparx has got the best
of the catalogue UI/UX that helps the company stakeholders to better understand
the IT assets owned and managed by them.
iv. Assist in the interdepartmental communication
With the help of the EA software, the management team of the company can
promote communication among the personnel of different departments. Events
and programs conducted by the company in any building or department can be
easily conveyed to another. Especially, in the case of the Coco-Oil company the
IT operations, new technology adoptions, etc. information can easily flow
among the departments.

5
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2995850
6
https://books.google.com.np/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=WAZYsfeMi4kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=EA+for+visualization&ots=gEeRPq1H-x&sig=xh-
9kTqE2dS2JuYVm4NbxWIu_X4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=EA%20for%20visualization&f=false
v. Provide cloud based adoption on strategy/policy, and decision-making.
As the company wants to leap its competitors in the market, the cloud-based EA
software of The Sparx will provide them with the data and analytics that assist
them to make strategic as well as operational decisions. The visuals presented
and the reports generated by the Sparx system will allow the Coco-Oil company
to better plan its policies and take futuristic decisions.
 3. Discuss standard as an architect and the roles implementation of standard will play
in EA practice at Coco-Oil.
Standard7 as architect refers to the architectural guidelines or the design standards
that set the policies and the procedures of the company. These standards play
important role in improving the architectural structure and making any necessary
modifications and amendments as per the interest or the requirement of the
company. The responsibility of overseeing the company’s architectural standards
lies over the architectural committee. This committee is separate from the main
board of the company. The standard helps to meet the business strategy. The roles
that the implementation of standards will play in EA practice at Coco-Oil could be:
 Align8 the business processes with the technology infrastructure of
the company.
 Defining the company’s current tech platforms along with the to-be
tech direction.
 Maximization of the services and the resources available to the
company. With the architect standard there comes a sequence to
every work, and every situation. Tasks will be allocated to specific
human resources. So, the management will improve.
 Quicker and smooth integration of the emerging technologies in the
company.
 All the processes, events, controls, and products will be organized
better.
All in all the stakeholders9 will find it easy to trace the IT assets and organize the
day to day tasks in the Coco-Oil company. The transparency of the IT investments
will also be maintained.

7
https://eabok.org/developing-an-ea/standards/
8
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2021.11.067
9
https://digitalimpacts.net/ea-standards/
Report: Part-II (1200 words) [Gaurav]

TechCon is a diversified, multi-profile company. Essentially, it is a conglomerate company

consisting of three diverse strategic units acting as independent businesses under separate
brands in different industry sectors: Unit Foodtech, Unit Foodtech and Unit Hoteltech.
TechCon is governed from the central head office, which oversights the three subsidiary
business units and their financial performance indicators, though without any operational
interventions. Each strategic business unit has its own managing director with full discretion
and responsibility over its competitive strategy, investment priorities, budget allocation and
ensuing yearly profits.
Unit Foodtech is in the food manufacturing business. The unit produces and distributes a
variety of goods including, but not limited to, vegetables, groceries, meat and dairy products.
Each of these product lines requires unique production processes, storage arrangements,
transportation approaches and underlying equipment and is organizationally implemented by a
separate specialized product department. However, these products are delivered largely to the
same circle of customers, including both major retailers and local food shops. All product lines
are also served by a number of common unit-wide functions, e.g. HR, finance, accounting,
logistics, legal, marketing and sales support.
Unit Restaurtech competes in the restaurant business with 94 IT staff. Specifically, the unit
controls a chain of small fast-food restaurants occupying the low-cost market niche. In total, the
chain includes more than 159 restaurants located in different geographies and more restaurants
are planned to be opened in the foreseeable future. All restaurants offer same interiors, menus,
prices, meals and services to their customers and imply standardized policies, working
procedures and supporting equipment. However, each restaurant is run separately by a chief
manager responsible for its overall financial well-being and all necessary business processes,
e.g. recruiting, training, procurement, cooking, servicing, cleaning and complaints
management. With the exception of Unit F Restaurtech’s lean central office, where chain-wide
branding, marketing and other strategic decisions are made, the restaurants operate
independently from each other and even have their own profit and loss statements.
Finally, Unit Hoteltech runs a chain of resort hotels. These hotels gravitate towards the high-
end price segment and offer premium-quality services to their customers. Unit Hoteltech’s
competitive strategy implies improving its brand recognition and achieving consistent customer
experience. For this purpose, the unit’s leadership plans to standardize all customer-facing and,
to a lesser extent, back- office processes across all hotels of the chain as well as all its suppliers
and service providers. Moreover, Unit Hoteltech also intends to become “closer” to its
customers and build lifelong customer relationships. This strategy requires collecting more
information about customers, their individual preferences and transaction histories, aggregating
this information globally and leveraging it for providing customized services, launching loyalty
programs, developing special offers and promoting personalized discounts.
As an EA manager at TechCon, you are required to write a report that discusses the following:
1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the operating model used in each
unit in Techcom organization.
 2. Discuss four reasons why outsourcing of EA practice is NOT a good option for TechCon
3. Discuss four type of goverance committees that TechCon would implement and;
discuss why it is important to implement decision escalation path.
4. Discuss 5 reasons why implementation of Architecture Debt is very important in TechCon
5. Based on IT staff ratio model and degree of decentralization as a factor, name and
discuss architects positions that would be required in Unit Foodtech.

Note: The answers must be based on the information provided in lecture notes and
recommended text books.
Report: Part-III (1200 words) [Binit]
SmartFin is a large financial and stockbroker company. 8 years ago SmartFin decided to
establish a full-fledged EA practice to accommodate with the growing problems around non-
transparency of its IT investments and poor business and IT alignment in general. The
establishment of EA practice was successful, and it was completed last 1 year. Due to recent
advancement in technologies, SmartFin wants to implement Cloud Computing technologies
that would empower their staff and customers for example, implementation of analytical
Cloud Computing Technologies that would enable SmartFin staff to approve credit card
application within 30 minutes of the submission of the application.
However, SmartFin’s CEO is sceptical towards the implementation of cloud computing
technologies. He believes that the company is only wasting money on the cloud computing
technologies as it is essentially nothing more than a sophisticated collection of data.
As a newly promoted IT manager at SmartFin, you are required to write a report that
discusses the following:
 1. 5 (five) major differences between Big Data and EA.

Criteria

Report Part-I: All the problems are clearly identified, provided excellent solutions and
Case Study EA very clearly

Report Part- Shows full knowledge on EA practice, identification, comparison

II: presented in detail, very comprehensively examine the relation of EA
Report Part- Comprehensive analysis of situation and provide correct solutions with
III excellent explanation.