An EAM process aims at providing a simple guideline for implementing and conducting EAM activities.
There is no commonly accepted step-by-step guidelines for organizing the EAM activities of an enterprise. Nevertheless, for the purpose of illustration, a possible EAM process comprising the five steps depicted in Figure 1 is introduced.
Figure 1: Five steps of an EAM Process.
In the first step, the current IT landscape, consisting of application and infrastructure elements as well as their dependencies is captured in an as-is model. Additionally, it is important that the model visualizes the dependencies between the IT landscape and its environment.
In a second step, the business model is depicted using a business capability map. Based on the business capability map, the quality of applications and infrastructure supporting certain business functionalities are assessed and weaknesses or gaps are identified.
Afterwards, the target state of an IT landscape, meaning its theoretically optimal state, is defined. This can be done by categorizing existing applications into target, sustain and discontinue groups and determining replacements for the discontinue applications as well as by identifying solutions for previously identified gaps.
In the fourth step, a roadmap consisting of projects which transition the current IT landscape towards the target state are defined. A possible approach for defining such projects is the managed evolution approach. The to-be models are snapshots of the IT landscape visualizing its changes year by year, which are usually created for the next three to five years. To enable progress monitoring in the next step, metrics are defined.
Finally, the progress of the EA development is monitored on a regular basis. Also, the adequacy of the to-be and target states are reviewed, making sure that they still support the continuously changing business requirements. If they don't optimally support the business needs anymore, a new EAM process is started.
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