I believe that the foundations for evidence based enterprise architecture are the following:
- An enterprise architecture framework e.g. TOGAF, Zachman supported by necessary extensions such as ITIL, BPML
- Enterprise Content Management strategy supported by an enterprise content management system and search engine.
- Master Data Management and Metadata Management policies supported by strategies and systems.
- A content authoring standard and methodology such as DITA – the Darwin Information Typing Architecture which is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information.
- Authoring methods for narrative production through users stories, use cases, scenarios, storyboards, case-controlled studies, case reports, surveys and expert opinion.
- Controls such as metamodels, taxonomies and ontologies for catagorisation and classification
- and finally a team of architects able to provide a consultation and validation process to review all architectural content and data through systematic reviews and apply an authority to the evidence.
The final point is probably the hardest to perform as this team has to be able to provide the assurances that the evidence they have identified is necessary and sufficient to be applied to future content and will add value to the user.
