Over the past month there has been a flurry of interest in what is referred to as the Enterprise Architecture Toolkit (EATK). The last mention of the EATK was in my post recapping the Japan Strategic Architecture Forum I mentioned the launch of the EATK.
What is the EATK
So what exactly is the EATK? Well simply put it is a set of tools that will aid Enterprise, Solution and Domain Architects with their architecture efforts in a pragmatic way. The EATK does so by providing a set of base tools built in existing products that they may already have or use for the same purpose. The value of how the EATK rationalizes these solutions is by extending common interfaces used in enterprises such as Microsoft Word and Visio.
Below is a summary of what the EATK is:
Solution Accelerator for Enterprise Architecture
Series of Add-Ins to Existing Products
Set of Smart Architecture Templates
System Architecture Document
Architecture Decisions
Architecture Review Board
Architecture Viability Assessment
Architecture Portal which includes:
Hosted Process and Collaboration Workflow
Knowledge Management System
Asset Management System
Based on Industry Standards
Supports IEEE 1471
Supports TOGAF ADM
Provides a Bill of Materials
Source Code
Whitepapers
Rich Media
Why the EATK
You maybe wondering, "why build on top of existing tools such as Word?". Well the answer is simple, from our research most architects are using these tools. The issue is that they are not used in the context of describing architectures but rather simple word processors.
There is an opportunity to still leverage many of the great features of these tools with out the baggage of a word processor. It's a matter of changing the context of the usage of the tools from a word processor to a User Interface for describing architectures.
The goals of the EATK are to:
Introduce New and Creative Capabilities to Architecture
Simplify and Consolidate Solutions for Architecture Design
Leverage the Tools You Have
Simplify the process
Introduce Collaboration into the Architecting Process
Surface Information in the Scope and Context of the Architect
Scenarios EATK is Based on:
The EATK was built not as a fully featured product but rather concentrated on a series of common architecture scenarios. The reason for this was because I wanted to go deep on these aspects rather than go broad and shallow.
Ten common scenarios where defined by talking with customers around the world, informal surveys and what I have observed through forums, blogs and analyst reports.
Describing an Architecture with Current Tools
Building a Collaborative Solution Architecture Design
Extend Architecture Meta-Data into the Visio Modeling Environment
Deriving to an Architecture with a series of Architecture Decisions
Architecture Management
Understanding Architecture Policy
Managing an Architecture Life Cycle
Navigate and Explore Approved IT Patterns
Navigate and Explore Existing IT Architectures
Obtaining the information for IT Strategy Management
Determining the Total Cost of Ownership of an Architecture
Manage and publishing of Principles, Policies and Standards
Key Technologies Used
Microsoft SharePoint 2007 – Architecture Portal
Hosted Windows Workflow Foundation
Web Parts
Enterprise Content Management
Microsoft Office 2007 – Templates and Add-Ins
Word
PowerPoint
Visio
Web Services – Architecture Message Bus
SQL Server – Architecture Meta-Data Repository
Complements Existing Products
One of the most common questions I get is if the EATK conflicts or competes against existing development tools at Microsoft. The short answer is no. It actually complements the capabilities of the following areas:
Development
Visual Studio
Project Portfolio Management
Project Server
Application Portfolio Management
Portfolio Server
Service Management
Systems Center
Methodologies
Microsoft Operations Framework
Microsoft Solutions Framework
Over the course of several months there will iterative enhancements done to the EATK that will introduce new materials, templates and integration points.
Tags: Enterprise Architecture
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