With the city-planning metaphor, the key deliverables are the following:

• The city plan (or city vision)
• The zoning plan
• The building code
• The approved building-materials list

The City Plan: The city plan document defines the vision for the evolution of the city and is driven by the most important strategies for the city. The business visioning activity in the enterprise architecture process is the equivalent of the high-level city plan. These activities provide the context and direction for the evolution of the architecture.

The Zoning Plan: The zoning plan specifies the guidelines for the city's evolution, identifying which areas will be for residential use, for retail use, and for industrial use or for parkland. The plan also includes standards for the type of buildings that can be used in a particular area (for example, single-family dwelling, apartment, warehouse). The equivalent "zone plan" in enterprise architecture is the infrastructure patterns, which define the technical infrastructure required for specific purposes (for example, n-tier client/server for transactions). In communities, each single-family dwelling may have some variations, but they all comply with the broader definitions of single-family home, which is similar to IT, where there are many types of systems that support different business functions (for example, HR, finance, sales) but each of these systems can be classified as a transaction-oriented system - and may employ the same type of "technology building blocks" in their construction.

The Building Code: The building code specifies the building standards that are important for the community, breaking them down into different areas (for example, fire code, electrical code, plumbing code). Some codes are universally accepted (for example, every bedroom must have a window), while other building codes may be unique to a city (for example, a Mediterranean island might specify that "all houses will be whitewashed with blue trim"). Enterprise architects must first review the "universal building code" to determine which of the common building codes are applicable to their company, and then also extend that standard to the building codes that are unique to their company.

The Building-Materials List: The approved building-materials list for the enterprise architecture is the "formally approved hardware and software products, configurations, data, information, and processes used to guide the engineering of information technology solutions for a given enterprise". Standards identify an organization's preferred means of creating and managing all components and related processes for IT organizations. They protect both the company and the users by ensuring that the products have been tested and are fit for the purpose, and that the products can be migrated over time. In the enterprise architecture process, building permits cannot be issued until the architecture has been delivered, since the architecture provides the standards for compliance.

Companies that have used this city-planning approach have had success in establishing the value of architecture by providing a communication mechanism (and metaphor) that is easily understood by architecture stakeholders.

Business Impact: Enterprise architecture must be understood and supported to be successful as a method for designing and implementing change in a rapid and recurring manner. The city-planning metaphor helps accelerate the understanding and acceptance of architecture.

Bottom Line: Selling the value of architecture to the program stakeholders is an essential component of enterprise architecture success. If the nomenclature of architecture inhibits understanding and support, more useful terms should be applied. Brian Burke is an analyst with Meta Group (US)