Enterprise Architecture Justification Paper
Purpose of this Assignment
This assignment gives you the opportunity to apply your critical thinking skills and understanding of the course concepts to explain how the enterprise architecture (EA) and/or the EA program benefits an organization. This assignment specifically addresses the following course outcomes:
- describe enterprise architecture (EA), the appropriate application of EA frameworks, and an overall ongoing EA program
- analyze and examine how enterprise architecture and enterprise systems influence, support, and enable an organization’s ability to contribute to strategic decision making and to respond and adapt to the business environment
- apply EA concepts to support business requirements and identify opportunities for enterprise solutions
Assignment
Using the DMV case study provided, determine how an EA could be used to help the DMV accomplish the objectives stated explicitly and implicitly in the case study. The organization discussed in the case study has many issues with its current environment and many changes that it wants to make. It has not established an EA program yet.
The purpose of your paper is to briefly explain what an EA program is, and then justify a recommendation to establish an EA program for the organization. The DMV has taken on the CSI Redesign initiative so this presents an opportunity to explore how EA can be a benefit. You need to orient this assignment to justify recommendations on how the DMV can benefit from implementing a more holistic (EA) solution. You can use the CSI redesign effort as a basis on which to build, but your recommendations for EA should scale sufficiently.
You should provide at least four specific examples from the case study to show how an EA program could be of benefit, and you should provide at least two examples of how EA specifically benefitted another organization in solving problems similar to ones in the case study. (NOTE: More than four examples are required to receive all possible points; see Grading Rubric below.) Your paper will be graded on both the accuracy and the strength of your justifications; it needs to make a strong and compelling case for establishing an EA program for the DMV.
Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length (not counting any cover sheet or reference pages). The use of at least two external scholarly resources (other than class materials) is required. (NOTE: More than two external resources are required to receive all possible points; see Grading Rubric below.) You should use scholarly journals (rather than Wikipedia and authorless website postings). If you need assistance with determining what a scholarly journal is, the UMUC library is a very good source of information, accessed via the following link: http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/articles.cfm. Remember to correctly cite and reference all sources using APA format.