Performance-based Enterprise Architecture

Owing in part to its roots in the information technology (IT) community, Enterprise Architecture (EA) frequently has been sub-optimized to support “information technology” planning. APCG has a different view of EA: EA is not just about IT, it’s about how mission relates to process, and how information (not technology) drives and serves processes and enables organizations to monitor, achieve, and improve upon mission success.

Instead of designing an EA to explain your organization’s IT infrastructure to decision-makers, APCG can help internal and external stakeholders realize the true value of EA as the way to explain how the organization works to everyone who wants or needs to know. In order to do this, the EA must be focused on the right thing: capturing a holistic vision of the organization.

Enterprise Architecture can be used to design, evaluate, and deploy systems (technology, processes, and people) that serve enterprise needs most effectively. It can help organizations answer critical business questions: What is it that we do? When, where, why and how do we do it? What are the resources we consume to get it done?

This holistic vision is created by logically modeling the organization, working back from the expected high-level outcomes (which justify the investment in the organization), through the outputs, processes, and inputs that are believed (through the strategic planning process) to produce these outcomes. In other words, Performance-Based Enterprise Architecture drives a consistent definition of, and a mechanism for, evaluating and managing organizational success.