Enterprise architecture artifacts


Enterprise architecture artifacts are separate documents constituting enterprise architecture. EA artifacts provide descriptions of an organization from different perspectives important for the various actors involved in strategic decision-making and implementation of IT systems. They can be considered as key elements and cornerstones of an EA practice. Essentially, an EA practice revolves around using specific sets of EA artifacts for improving communication between different actors.

Overview

EA artifacts are main instruments of an EA practice enabling effective decision-making and IT planning in organizations. The systematic use of EA artifacts for collective decision-making distinguishes a disciplined approach to information systems planning from an ad hoc and ill-organized one.
Different EA artifacts are used by different actors at different moments for different purposes and fulfill different roles in organizations. EA artifacts can be very diverse in their basic properties and attributes. From the perspective of their properties all EA artifacts can differ in their informational contents, general meanings and lifecycles in the context of an EA practice.

Informational Contents

From the perspective of their informational contents, various EA artifacts can use different representation formats, provide different levels of detail, cover different scopes, describe different EA domains and focus on different points in time:
From the perspective of their lifecycles in an EA practice all EA artifacts can be separated into permanent EA artifacts and temporary EA artifacts:
From the perspective of their general meaning in an EA practice all EA artifacts can be separated into decisions EA artifacts and facts EA artifacts:
One of the most important properties of EA artifacts is the duality of their informational contents. Duality of EA artifacts implies that the information provided by these EA artifacts is relevant to two different audiences simultaneously, satisfies the information needs of both these audiences and presented in a convenient format appealing to both audiences. Their duality allows using EA artifacts as a means of communication and partnership between different groups of actors involved in strategic decision-making and implementation of IT systems. Duality of EA artifacts can be considered as one of the most fundamental mechanisms underpinning an EA practice and enabling effective collaboration between diverse stakeholders. Duality of EA artifacts can be explicit or implicit:
In other words, duality of EA artifacts implies either providing different information to different actors, or providing same information having different meanings for different actors. Explicit and implicit dualities in EA artifacts are often combined. However, not all useful EA artifacts are dual in nature.