Enterprise architecture artifacts are powerful tools for educating and engaging your stakeholders in your enterprise architecture efforts. Let's explore the basics of building artifacts with real impact.
Enterprise architecture artifacts are the bread-and-butter of your EA practice. This shared documentation acts as a focal point for your stakeholders to conceptualize and collaborate on your architecture.
By modeling your enterprise architecture in a way that your stakeholders can understand at a glance, they can see for themselves the importance of your work. Different people from different teams will then be able to work from the same reference point to optimize your technology.
Perfecting your ability to construct artifacts with real impact is, therefore, vital for success in enterprise architecture. Let's explore the basics of enterprise architecture artifacts so you can ensure your documentation is perfect.
To find out more about how SAP LeanIX can help you collate your enterprise architecture information and create impactful artifacts, book a demo:
Enterprise architecture artifacts are documents that illustrate how your business connects to and is supported by your enterprise technology. Mapping this relationship with diagrams and visualizations allows you to optimize the way you do business in a digital market.
A model of both your organization's digital and offline workflows will make inefficiencies and wastage immediately apparent, while also allowing you to test new architecture and road map change before implementation. That's why artifacts are the primary output and tool of enterprise architects.
Traditionally, visualizing enterprise architecture is seen as a way to explain your infrastructure to non-technical stakeholders, such as CFOs or trainers. Yet, even technical specialists can benefit from conceptualizing your infrastructure in a way that they can see.
Even the most technically minded specialists are human and human beings work visually. A single person can't hold all your infrastructure data in their mind at once, but they can look at a diagram of it.
Even better, all your stakeholders can use a diagram as a point of reference to ensure they have a mutual understanding and appreciation of your enterprise architecture. This allows them to collaborate using the same terminology and work towards the same goal.
Of course, the better the artifact, the easier this will be. This is why it's important to build the best artifacts possible, but what will those look like?
Enterprise architecture artifacts that will engage and connect stakeholders with your work will fit a certain standard. The style will be the same, but different artifacts will also serve different purposes for different audiences.
When building your artifacts, you should look to make three versions of each type:
You should aim to make the three levels take one minute, ten minutes, and sixty minutes to fully consume, respectively. This also considers the amount of time and bandwidth that your stakeholders have.
Regardless of the level of detail, all your artifacts should:
It's easy to dismiss the visual appeal of the artifact, but this is increasingly important. Put simply, the nicer your artifact is to look at, the more likely your stakeholders are to consult it.
This means that enterprise architects must also be graphic designers with a touch of creative artistry. This skill can only be learned through observation of effective artifacts and the iterative experience of creating them. [p]Gaining that experience means getting hands on with building enterprise architecture artifacts. So, how do you go about the process?
Enterprise architecture artifacts can be thought of as an assembly of building blocks. It's inefficient to create a new artifact from scratch each time, when you can represent any architecture you need using one set of pre-optimized objects assembled in different ways.
Brand guidelines might offer a series of icons and pictures that you can use to create content for your customers. In the same way, you can assemble a library of objects to use to build enterprise architecture artifacts.
These objects will fit into one of three categories:
The simpler your diagram, the easier it will be for your stakeholders to understand and the more aesthetically appealing it will be to them. This will allow you to create consistent, useful artifacts.
For icons, it can be useful to use skeuomorphism principles, using symbols that are familiar to users from their everyday lives. An envelope symbol that represents an email server can be instantly recognizable to non-technical users, for example.
Try to avoid humor, however, as your priority should be clarity. A quirky and appealing visual that complicates a diagram isn't supporting your goals.
Once you have your enterprise architecture artifact elements in place, including objects, icons, and connectors, you need to arrange them in your diagram. There are several factors to bear in mind when you're doing so:
The key here is consistency. If all of your diagrams follow the same structure, then they will be instantly clear and comparable to other artifacts, as well as being quicker to create.
This is particularly the case if you choose a recognizable pattern, such as a tree or flow diagram. Whichever pattern you choose, be sure that there's a consistent flow in one direction to ensure clarity, and symmetry for aesthetic appeal.
It's also good to keep to three visual levels or fewer so as not to over-complicate the diagram. Lastly, look to group similar items by keeping them in a consistent shape, position, or color.
To ensure your structure is consistent, build a template and a style guide for artifacts so you don't need to re-invent your artifact structure every time you create a new artifact. This will ensure consistency and quality across all your artifacts.
Color makes artifacts more visually appealing, but can also bring clarity. A color code can convey information visually without increasing complexity.
Keep in mind that too many colors can be overwhelming, so try to keep to no more than six colors in an artifact. Likewise, strong colors can be distracting, so use lighter colors.
It's also worth keeping in mind that some of your stakeholders may have color blindness or other visual impairments. Using shades can make your artifacts accessible to everyone.
Once again, having an established artifact style guide with pre-built objects and formats will ensure consistent quality. This means that a color will mean the same thing across all your artifacts.
As much as a picture says a thousand words, not all your information can be conveyed with diagrams. You will need to add labels and text where necessary, even if this is best kept to a minimum.
Once again, consistency is vital. Using the same font, taxonomy, and type of annotation across all your artifacts will improve their value. [p]That text style should also follow best practice. This means keeping notes short, free of jargon, in the active voice, and using the same taxonomy.
Perfecting your enterprise architecture artifacts requires using a consistent format and also having the right information. No matter how good your artifacts are, they're of no value unless they're accurate.
SAP LeanIX allows you to store all your enterprise architecture information in a single repository that is designed specifically for EA. This live information can be completed with discovery tools and automated surveys.
With all that information, you can use our sophisticated, artificial intelligence-supported (AI) diagramming tools to build comprehensive and consistent enterprise architecture artifacts that can be updated instantly as your IT landscape evolves. To find out more about SAP LeanIX, book a demo: