Blogging about enterprise architecture

Welcome to the Treasure Valley EA blog. As an architect whose portfolio contains the dreaded knowledge management, I feel like I'm almost required to blog. After all, what kind of knowledge management architect would I be if I didn't?

Brad Mallow and I have been discussing enterprise architecture for a few years now. We have taught ourselves The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) version 8, debated about how best to engage with various customers, worked on defining what architecture models should look like, and many other topics. I hope that all of you reading this blog will join us in these discussions.

To kick things off, I think it would be interesting to see what people think about enterprise architecture. I was recently exchanging email with a group that is standing up a new EA practice. I told them that the most important key to success for an EA practice is to define what you expect out of it up front. There are so many different aspects of EA that it becomes quite easy to go down any number of different paths and fail to deliver on what the business really wants.

So, where does your EA practice focus? Are you all about rationalizing your IT portfolio? Are you trying to align business and IT strategy? Is your focus on improving business agility? How are you measuring yourselves in these respects? What is your plan? How much value are you seeing from your EA practice?