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• Research Overview
  • Classic Topics
    • Enterprise Architecture
    • IT Governance
    • IT Portfolio Management
    • IT Risk
• Current Projects
  • Strengthening Your Digital Business Model
  • Building Digitized Platforms Can Be Slow: What Are the Alternatives?
  • Digital Innovation: Designing
    Customer-Centric Products and Services
  • Adapting Your Business’ Genome
    to a Digital Ecosystem
  • Case Studies in Social Media Innovations
  • BYOD: Radical Changes to Managing Technology and the People and Processes Relying on It
  • Working Smarter: Seizing the Opportunities Created by Ubiquitous Data
  • Managing Your Firm’s Total Digitization:
    The Next Frontier
  • Business Complexity: Shifting IT
    from Problem to Solution
  • Managing IT Supply and Demand: How to Build a World-Class Service Organization
• Research Briefings
  • 2012 Research Briefings
  • 2011 Research Briefings
  • 2010 Research Briefings
  • 2009 Research Briefings

Introduction

MIT CISR defines enterprise architecture as “the organizing logic for business process and IT capabilities reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model.” We view architecture as a strategic, rather than technical, exercise. A firm’s architecture describes a shared vision of how a firm will operate—thus providing a shared understanding of the role of IT. We have found enterprise architecture to be a critical tool for aligning IT and business strategy and for driving business value from IT. We emphasize three key concepts in our research:

1. Operating model: a simple statement of the integration and standardization requirements for the firm’s core processes (“Forget Strategy: Focus IT on Your Operating Model”).
2. Core diagram: a visual representation of the firm’s key business processes, shared data, and integrating technology (“Enterprise Architecture: Depicting a Vision of the Firm”).
3. Architecture maturity: a description of the journey an established firm embarks upon as it transitions into more strategic use of IT ( “Maturity Matters: How Firms Generate Value from Enterprise Architecture”).