2 IT Pro January/February 2014 P u b l i s h e d b y t h e I E E E C o m p u t e r S o c i e t y 1520-9202/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE

IT RIsks

Charlene Chuck Walrad, Davenport Consulting

Mark Lane, PNM Resources

Jeffrey Wallk, The Value Enablement Group

Donald V. Hirst, OASIS Eugene

There are many enterprise architects, but there’s no commonly accepted baseline of knowledge or standards to ensure consistent service. Formal professions often gradually evolve over time, but given enterprise architecture’s importance to business, this profession must mature quickly. Having a roadmap helps.

Enterprise architecture is becoming in-creasingly important for organizations dealing with accelerating levels of change in the marketplace and workforce amid a

more complex (and often uncertain) number of variables, such as integrated supply chains and the growing number of online interactions with customers. Although thousands of people world-wide are practicing as enterprise architects, there’s no commonly accepted baseline of knowledge. Furthermore, no commonly agreed-upon stan-dards or guidelines exist to ensure consistent ser-vice delivery. In the past, formal professions have gradually evolved over time, arriving at maturity

over many years (or even decades, in some cases). However, as enterprise architecture emerges as a profession, its importance to business transforma-tion requires a much quicker maturation process.

The field, which has been around for 20 years, faces the following issues:

• a lack of formal, recognized governance;• significant inconsistency in practice;• an inability to provide assurances that all pro-

fessional enterprise architects deliver function-ally equivalent results; and

• a lack of agreement about what an enterprise architecture encompasses.

Architecting a Profession

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Here, we review how several organizations have agreed on a roadmap to address these issues to efficiently evolve the enterprise architecture profession.

Defining Enterprise ArchitectureEnterprise architecture is first and foremost an output of a process. It’s the “description of the structure and behavior of an organization’s pro-cesses, information flow, personnel, and organi-zational subunits, aligned with the organization’s core goals and strategic direction.”1 Although it need not include information systems, in real life, it almost always does. The modern enterprise ar-chitecture is “concerned with how an enterprise’s software systems support the business processes and goals of the enterprise.”1

Thus, an enterprise architect works at the seams where IT and information systems join with the work of their human counterparts. Un-like the business analyst of the past (or the busi-ness-process subject matter expert), assigned to figure out and describe a specific functional area or business process to an application develop-ment team, the enterprise architect knows how businesses operate and how decisions are made and applies this knowledge when modeling the enterprise architecture for a specific enterprise. This description then serves as a reference model for identifying and building new capabilities.

Developing a RoadmapAs in the early days of older professions, many grass-roots organizations have sprung up to sup-port practitioners as they struggle to agree on enterprise architecture practices, artifacts, and benefits to the enterprise. Unfortunately, with-out a unifying structure, the fragmented efforts to define a consistent set of enterprise architect capabilities have failed, as have efforts to dif-ferentiate between enterprise architecture and the many other flavors of “architecture” in the enterprise.

Now, however, the Federation of Enterprise Ar-chitecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO), a worldwide association of professional organi-zations, has developed a forum to standardize, professionalize, and otherwise advance the enter-prise architecture profession. FEAPO provides a focused hub for enterprise architecture expertise and resources, which are provided by its member

organizations. In addition to the IEEE Computer Society and Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession (CAEAP), member organizations include

• the Association of Business Process Manage-ment Professionals,

• the Business Architecture Guild,• the Business Architecture Society,• the Canadian Information Processing Society,•Data Management International, and•The International Council on Systems

Engineering.

FEAPO’s member organizations have agreed to use the Model of a Profession, developed by the IEEE Computer Society, as the basis for a road-map to help the field progress from organized, to qualified, to self-governed by 2017. The goal is to achieve increasing maturity by developing the set of elements that a profession requires. Once these elements are in place, the profession will have achieved the ability to govern itself and will have earned professional autonomy.

Step 1: Identify the Building BlocksWhat is the essential distinction between a “line of work” and a “recognized profession”? The IEEE Computer Society previously addressed this when working to recognize software engi-neering as a profession. As a founding member of FEAPO, the Computer Society is sharing its experience and its model of a profession (see www.computer.org/portal/web/pab/it). CAEAP has also worked extensively to define enterprise architecture as a profession. Both organizations have identified similar hallmarks of a profession. Fortuitously, during the same timeframe, Penn State University began addressing the need for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing educa-tion curricula to educate students and practitio-ners in the enterprise architecture field.

Discussions of the professionalization of en-terprise architecture tend to dispute whether it should be established as either a “generally ac-cepted” profession or as a “legally recognized” profession. If enterprise architecture is to be rec-ognized as a generally accepted profession, it sets its own standards and governs itself, at a mini-mum, through education, examinations, ethics, and experience.3 If enterprise architecture is to

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be legally recognized as profession, it must ad-dress additional concerns, such as certification by a recognized professional society or licensing by governmental authorities.

For either type of professional status, the field needs the following:

• a body of knowledge (BOK) founded on well-developed and widely accepted theoretical and practical bases;

• a system for certifying that individuals possess such knowledge before they start practicing;

• a progressive system of certifying practitioners as they increase both their knowledge and ex-perience in effective practice;

• a code of ethics, with a commitment to use spe-cialized knowledge for the public good; and

• a professional society, with provisions for mon-itoring individual compliance to ethical stan-dards and professional practices.3

The model developed by the IEEE Comput-er Society and enhanced by CAEAP has been

adopted by FEAPO to accelerate the maturation of enterprise architecture. The model includes the elements needed for both generally accepted and legally recognized professions: the full model re-flects the elements needed for a legally recognized profession; however, a generally accepted profes-sion doesn’t require the licensing element. This model is based on a 1996 study4 in which Gary Ford and Norman Gibbs identified the essential elements of a mature profession, validating their findings against a number of existing professions including health, law, and architecture. Their pur-pose was to lay out a path to maturity for the soft-ware engineering profession, but the work holds value for any emerging profession.

Step 2: Model the ProfessionFEAPO has ratified the model we describe here as an “organization technique” to guide the se-quence and investment of effort required to ex-pedite enterprise architecture’s evolution into a mature profession. Figure 1 shows the individual elements, which we describe here.

Figure 1. A blended model of the enterprise architecture profession (with elements from both the IEEE Computer Society and Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession Elements). The seven elements guide the sequence and investment of effort required to expedite enterprise architecture’s evolution into a mature profession.

1 2

Professional society(society of peers)

Branding

Self-governance

(National and international standing)

Body if knowledge

Preparatory educationKnowledge is organized into a bodyof knowledge which is taughtthrough preparatory educationdelivered by an accredited programwhich follows an approvedcurriculum.Curriculum

Accreditationcriteria

Certification

Licensing

Registry

External validationCertification certifies thatindividuals have definedcompetencies. Licensing extendscertification to include activeoversight of the professionincluding disciplinary action.

Professional developmentSkills to apply the knowledge to accomplish tasks are acquiredthrough professional development including on-the-job training.

Preparatoryeducation

(degree programs)

Consensus

Competencydefinitions

Standards of professionalpracticeProfessionals followa code of ethicswhile performingactivities inaccordance withdefine standards ofpractice.

ProfessionaladvancementResponsibility for groupsof activites is assignedto job roles. A career path is a progression ofjob roles and increasingresponsibility.

Job roles

Professionalpractice guide

Code of ethics

Standards ofpractice

Activities

Enterprise architecture profession

Career paths

5

4

3

6

7

Skills(skills development)

Ongoingprofessional

education

Publishing a journal

Public outreach

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Professional society. An international profes-sional society supports the world-wide advance-ment of the profession through such means as education, branding, publishing journals, and var-ious forms of public outreach. The society works to sustain employment in the profession and pro-motes active research efforts to advance the state of the profession’s knowledge. It provides a mech-anism for self-governance of the profession.

Body of knowledge. Although the BOK for en-terprise architecture resides across many books, articles, and websites, the professional society should ensure the availability of a BOK guide that clearly defines the core content and bound-aries of the discipline (what’s in and out) and can point to specialized bodies of knowledge beyond “core,” identifying supporting knowledge areas, such as technical management and enterprise operations. The guide should obtain consensual validation from practicing professionals and pro-vide a reasoned foundation for the knowledge.

Supporting structures include a curriculum mod-el, accreditation criteria, and preparatory education. A curriculum model provides educational institu-tions with a common basis for establishing and improving educational programs (curricula) and thus should be defined by recognized, authorita-tive bodies. The curriculum model should also use the profession’s BOK guide as a source of information and should be aligned with the com-petency model (discussed more later). Because the enterprise architecture BOK is extensive, differ-ent curriculum models are needed for under-graduate and graduate programs.

An accreditation system ensures the quality and suitability of preparatory education. Accredita-tion is a public statement of an institution’s abil-ity to deliver effective learning programs based on consensually agreed upon criteria. For pro-fessions that require practitioners to be certified, accreditation criteria should be aligned with cer-tification requirements.

Preparatory education programs must be readily available and comply with approved curriculum models and accreditation criteria. An enterprise architecture program should provide the educa-tion and training necessary to be employed in an entry-level position in the profession. For Ac-creditation Board for Engineering and Technolo-gy (ABET; www.abet.org/cac-criteria-2014–2015)

certification, the program must have and enforce policies for accepting both new and transfer stu-dents, awarding appropriate academic credit for courses taken at other institutions, and award-ing appropriate academic credit for work in lieu of courses taken at the institution. The program must have and enforce procedures to ensure and document that students who graduate meet all graduation requirements.

Certification represents validation, by a com-munity of peers, that an individual possesses the knowledge and competence of a professional. Meaningful certification requires a standard and recognized certification regime that’s consis-tent with the profession’s BOK and competency model. Mechanisms for competency certification shouldn’t require compliance with education re-quirements (that is, they should enable recogni-tion of competency acquired by other means). Thus, it needs to include demonstration of com-petency through practice (such as apprenticeship or experience). There should be a public registry of certified professionals, along with a defined means of recertification (for example, via con-tinuing professional development) and decertifi-cation of individuals.

Many professions, from medical practice to home inspection, require licensing. While certifi-cation is often managed by professional societies, licensing is implemented by other authoritative bodies, such as an agency of one’s state of resi-dence or the state of work.

Skills. Skill is the ability to do something well; to take what you know and apply it to cause the de-sired effect. (A certain amount of knowledge is a prerequisite of skill; you can’t be skillful without first being knowledgeable; however, you can eas-ily be knowledgeable without being very skillful.) The ability comes from aptitude and practice of the application of one’s knowledge.

Professional development opportunities might come from multiple sources of education and training that enable the advancement of skills and knowledge to succeed in the enterprise ar-chitecture profession. Increasing experience in the field is also necessary to keep current and to advance a person’s expertise in the profession.

Competency model. A competency model pro-vides a unified view of the knowledge, skills, and

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levels of competence required of professionals by defining knowledge and skills at increasing levels of maturity in professional development. It must be accompanied by an ongoing maintenance pro-gram to update the model regularly.

Job roles and career paths. Job roles are speci-fied in terms of responsibilities for the role’s required activities and in terms of the compe-tencies required to perform the activities. Role descriptions should clearly delineate the level of responsibilities that the role is accountable for. (The description of a job position, on the other hand, usually includes an explanation of where the position fits in the organization, such as to whom the position reports, and might include several job roles.)

Career path refers to a person’s progression in a profession, where successful experience in previ-ous job roles is necessary to advance to subse-quent job roles. Successive job roles are expected to require higher levels of competency.

Standards of practice. Defined and recognized professions are characterized by known standards

of practice for performing activities in one’s job role. A standard of practice represents an accept-able level of performance or an expectation for professional intervention, formulated by profes-sional organizations based upon current knowl-edge and expertise. Such information may be captured in a Professional Practice Guide, such as that provided by CAEAP. Technical standards specify techniques, methods, procedures and per-formance norms, consensually agreed by the pro-fession. Such standards often specify the form and content of work products and appropriate metrics.

Specification of an Enterprise Architecture Job Role is facilitated by the existence of a known set of activities required in the performance of an En-terprise Architect’s work. Within the profession, activity names are commonly understood and can also be used in position descriptions.

Most professions have written codes of ethics that are readily available to the public. A Code of Ethics specifies appropriate professional conduct to engage in the profession, including guidance for using specialized knowledge for the common good. (For example, customers may be the initial consumers of the Enterprise Architect’s services,

Figure 2. An overview of the maturity roadmap for enterprise architecture. The various elements are aligned with seven key maturity milestones.

FEAPOestablished

Normalizationof current EA career paths

Taxonomy of EA scope

BoK topiccandidates

Competencycandidates

Code of ethicsKey messagesInception

Foundation

Education

Acknowledgement

Registration

Profession

Maintenance

Maturity milestones

Overview of the proposed roadmap

Clearcommunication

Branding

Outreach

Journal Standards*

Professional practice

guide

Certification/Licensing

Professionaldevelopment

resources

Competencydefinitions

Preparatoryeducation

Curriculummodel

Accreditationcriteria

Jobs/roles

Recommendedcareer paths

Registry*This can include standardsof practice and technical

standards.

Knowledge areasin a guide to the

BoK

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but the professional Enterprise Architect must always ensure the needs of the public are not sac-rificed at the expense of the customer.)

Step 3: Build the ProfessionThe model given above provides elements of a vi-brant and generally recognized profession. The next step involves defining a roadmap to build out the elements using a phased approach (see Figure 2), aligned with key milestones. Several concurrent activities are in progress, as FEAPO member organizations work together to accel-erate the development of the various elements needed to unify and support enterprise architec-ture as a mature profession.

Each of the individual members have previous-ly developed artifacts that contribute to the ele-ments, and now members are using the roadmap to prioritize their efforts to bring the disparate artifacts into a coherent whole.

The first step in the roadmap has already been accomplished: FEAPO has been established and includes the key players from the set of organiza-tions serving enterprise architecture practitioners. These member organizations have individually

established valuable artifacts and stores of knowl-edge supporting the practice of enterprise archi-tecture. FEAPO’s challenge is to build on those to achieve a single profession. Achieving this goal necessarily involves collaboration in harmonizing the elements that already exist.

Figure 3 shows the timeline for this work. For example, it shows that before we can achieve fi-nal agreement on what belongs in the guide to the Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge (EABOK), we need to agree on the scope (“tax-onomy”) of enterprise architecture—what’s in and what’s out. To agree on the knowledge areas to be described in the guide, we should also agree on what competencies a skillful enterprise architecture practitioner demonstrates. These efforts are being developed in tandem with a list of topics for the EABOK. The competencies and topics can then be sorted into knowledge areas to be addressed in the EABOK. Similarly, by examining existing enter-prise architecture career paths from corporations and government bodies, we can validate the posited competencies and knowledge areas.

Agreement on the knowledge areas facilitates agreement on how to use the FEAPO member

FEAPO/Professional societiesNormalization career paths

Taxonomy of EA scope

Key messages

Code of ethics

Competency candidates

BoK caondidates

Clear communications

Branding

Knowledge areas Outreach

Curriculum model

Competency definitions

Standards of practice

Journal

Professional practice guide

Jobs/Roles Accreditation

Professional development

Certification/Licensing

Initiateroadmap

Career paths Registry

Preparatory education

2012 Timeline 2017 +

Figure 3. The timeline for building the enterprise architecture profession. For example, before we can agree on what belongs in the guide to the Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge, we need to agree on the scope.

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organizations’ existing knowledge bases and ar-tifacts. Some might be folded into or otherwise support the consensually agreed upon knowledge areas in the EABOK. In other cases, the EABOK might cite a member organization’s artifact as a primary reference. In any case, the agreed upon knowledge areas provide a basis for commonly accepted definitions of requisite competencies, thus providing a basis for developing a model curriculum. This curriculum should provide a basis for educational institutions to develop their own preparatory education courses.

Developing a competency model assembles the requisite competencies in increasing levels of competency. This lays the foundation for group-ing competencies into prototypical job roles descriptions, which can be used for laying out archetypes for possible career paths.

Envisioning the FutureThe profession will capture a skilled enterprise architect’s portfolio of knowledge, skills, and experience and will validate it via a rigorous

qualification process to ensure truth and trans-parency and promote trust. It will enable that portfolio to be transferred to future generations of enterprise architects, who will then improve upon it. In addition, the profession will support practitioner career goals by providing guideposts for practitioners who want to achieve profession-al status and by recognizing individual achieve-ments along the road to becoming fully capable professionals.

Figure 4 depicts an enterprise architecture pro-fession that delivers value across four dimensions:

•Embracing change by implementing the right structures and processes to reduce friction as-sociated with change (across the business plan-ning, operational, and technical areas).

•Enabling operational excellence, going beyond sim-ple efficiency, by ensuring that business assets (including employees) are used properly and for the right purposes.

•Enabling sustainable innovation by ensuring that the right structures are in place across the

Figure 4. The enterprise architecture profession will embrace change, enable operational effectiveness, sustain innovation, and build and extend the business.

Operational excellence

Embrace change

Innovation

Risk managementArchitecture management

Technology vision

LearningModeling

Strategy AlignmentPractice duties

GovernanceInfluence

MeasurementsFiduciary

Ethics

EducationPractice standards

Experience

AccreditationSkillsdevelopment

Professionaldevelopment

Examination

Code of ethics

Standards of the profession

Discipline

TheoryAxioms Postulates

Branding

Professionaleducation

IndustrygovernanceBody of

knowledge

TransformationInvestment oversight

Resource managementPublic

(trust, safety and security)

Building & extendingbusiness

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organization to manage the multiple portfolios that need to align and work synergistically.

•Building and extending the business (organization) by aligning strategy, risk, culture, and capabili-ties to extend an organization’s ability to de-liver sustainable value. The profession is built around a core focus of serving the public.

This foundation for the profession supports the creation of the right skills, capabilities, and knowledge to ensure consistent and ethical de-livery of services. It also provides the necessary oversight to ensure the needs of the public are addressed and standards for the profession are upheld via measurement, certification, and governance.

T he journey to build the enterprise archi-tecture profession has begun, with FEA-PO taking that first step to coordinate its

member organizations, which are now working together to instantiate the requisite elements of a profession and promote the art and science of en-terprise architecture. Member organizations are also establishing a body of ethics, principles, and maturity measures that support the enterprise ar-chitecture profession and its practice; developing and certifying a body of knowledge; and improv-ing the practice by providing consensually based artifacts, education, and certification. Finally, they’re collaborating on skills development and professional development between professional societies and establishing collaboration avenues for professional education and model curricula developers to achieve accreditation.

We invite enterprise architects and partners with an interest in the journey to join the discus-sion and participate in the building of this new profession.

References 1. L. Bass, P. Clements, and R. Kazman, Software Archi-

tecture in Practice, 3rd ed., Addison-Wesley, 2012.

2. L. Kappelman, Leon, ed., The SIM Guide to Enterprise Architecture, CRC Press, 2010.

3. G. Ford and N. Gibbs, “A Mature Profession of Soft-ware Engineering,” Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1996; www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/96tr004.cfm.

Charlene Chuck Walrad is the managing director of Davenport Consulting. Her research interests include the professionalization and advancement of those who work in computing fields. Walrad worked for over 30 years in the software industry, developing and delivering dozens of commercial products from automatic translation systems to relational database management systems and publish-ing systems. She’s a senior member of IEEE, a member of the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors, and Vice-President of Standards Activities. Contact her at cwalrad@daven.com.

Mark Lane is a senior manager of enterprise architecture at PNM Resources and is president of the Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession. He also serves on the Board for the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations. Contact him at mark.lane.100@comcast.net.

Jeffrey Wallk is a managing partner of The Value Enable-ment Group. He is interested in working with organiza-tions to transform their operations from inward to outward focus, while promoting collaboration and greater customer intimacy. Wallk received his MBA from Keller Graduate School of Business. He’s a member of the Product Develop-ment and Management Association and of INCOSE, and President of Shir Hadash Congregation. Contact him at jeffrey.wallk@gmail.com.

Donald V. Hirst is a retired enterprise architect. He en-joys teaching computer classes at OASIS Eugene. Hirst received his MS in physics from Michigan State. Contact him at dvhirst@comcast.net.

Selected CS articles and columns are available for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

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