About Enterprise Architecture (AboutEA.com) - An Information Technology Weblog

IT to manage your IT? Show Me The Models!

ITM launches integrated suite to manage the business of IT - Computerworld

The ITM Business Suite is a set of five modules designed to help IT executives manage vendor relationships, technology project portfolios and the process of aligning internal IT skills with business needs. Mountain View, Calif.-based ITM began shipping an IT governance and compliance management module, which integrates with other modules that are already shipping, and formally unveiled the entire suite in its announcement.

This dovetails with something I've been thinking about a lot recently: Where are the business / information / application / technical architectural artifacts (models, processes, etc.) for an IT shop? Or, more pointedly for us here, for an Enterprise Architecture Program Office? I'm talking about using the same type of architectural artifacts to describe your IT / EA efforts that you would use when describing other, more business-core value chain processes and the IT that supports them. Having this kind of back-up to explain your EA efforts would have the additional benefit of educating your business process owners and data stewards on EA process and it's utility for them. Selfishly, having EA process models and artifacts would make the process of 'doing' EA a whole lot easier.

I would think that the IT / EA models would need to be available for a company like ITM to build their solution.