About this article
Thank you for visiting this site. This article is a guide listing all 6 articles in the “Enterprise Architecture (EA)” category of the Architecture Crash Course for the Generative-AI Era series.
Enterprise architecture is the domain of designing an entire organization’s IT strategy as a unified whole. Not individual projects, but the corporate-wide map — for CIOs, CDOs, corporate strategy, and IT strategy divisions. It views the enterprise through four layers — Business (BA), Data (DA), Application (AA), Technology (TA) — to prevent the sum of local optima from becoming a global catastrophe.
Article index
1. Overview — Drawing the Corporate Map with the 4-Layer Model
Covers the BA/DA/AA/TA four-layer model, AS-IS/TO-BE, the TOGAF framework, and granularity by company size — a bird’s-eye view of EA for non-specialists. Also explains the structural reason why DA becomes the core of competitiveness in the AI era.
2. Business Architecture — Making the Business Connectable to Technology
Covers capability maps, value streams, BPMN, RACI, stakeholder maps, and ArchiMate. Learn how to make the business visible in a form that connects to technology. Also covers machine-readable BA in the AI era.
3. Data Architecture (EA Perspective) — Designing Corporate-Wide Data as a Strategic Asset
Covers conceptual models, data domains, MDM, data catalogs, PII Inventory, and semantic layers. Unlike per-project data design, learn the practice of organizing data as a strategic asset across the enterprise.
4. Application Architecture (EA Perspective) — Mapping the Corporate System Landscape
Covers application portfolios, function maps, the TIME model, SaaS-first, iPaaS, and the 6R cloud strategy. Learn the decision criteria for mapping the corporate system landscape — what to keep, what to retire, and what to rebuild.
5. Technology Architecture — The Constitution for Corporate Technology Choices
Covers cloud strategy, standard stacks, Technology Radar, FinOps, and Internal Developer Platform. Including AI-era GPU/LLM Gateway, learn how to create the constitution that governs enterprise-wide technology choices.
6. EA Frameworks — Tailoring TOGAF + ArchiMate for Practical Use
Covers TOGAF, Zachman, ArchiMate, BIAN, FEAF/DoDAF usage; ADM Tailoring; Agile EA; and EA as Code. Learn how to keep frameworks from becoming dead letters and actually use them in practice.
Summary
This article listed all 6 articles in the Enterprise Architecture category of the Architecture Crash Course for the Generative-AI Era series.
EA is essential knowledge for those driving IT strategy at large and mid-sized organizations. If you work primarily on individual projects, the Solution Architecture category may be closer to your daily work. Choose your reading order based on your role.
For the overall series structure and other categories, see the master series index.
Hope you’ll check out the next article as well.