The Value of Enterprise Architecture

I first became aware of the importance of enterprise documentation when I worked
in a headquarters organization that was responsible for the engineering and
maintenance of military air traffic control systems in Canada and overseas. The
documentation for every remote site included not only information about all of the
electronic equipment, circuit diagrams, etc., but also “as-built” drawings and
photographs of each installation. For any given site, we could pull out the drawings
and see exactly where components were placed in any room.

All air traffic control
sites were under “configuration control,” meaning no changes could be made to any
installation without their going through a formal approval process. The “as-built”
drawings were amended as changes were approved and implemented. Such tight
management of the configuration of the air traffic control systems and
documentation about them reduced the risk of unauthorized changes that might
have safety implications. It also greatly reduced the time it took to make the
authorized changes, as the engineers back at headquarters didn’t have to start from
scratch. A similar “configuration control” concept was applied to air traffic control
policies and procedures.