July 26, 2007

EA Owns Structure, Not Content

In user-centric EA, the EA program owns the structure of the information, not the contents. On the other hand, the business programs and technical subject matter experts own the contents of the EA, and are responsible for ensuring that it remains current, accurate, and complete.

In my agency, we have institutionalized these EA roles and responsibilities as follows:

  • EA Product Stewards are the EA team members that develop and maintain the structure of the information products. The stewards are responsible for understanding user requirements, designing information products to fulfill these, facilitating the capture of information, analyzing and cataloging it, serving it up to the user through robust delivery mechanisms (such as EA website, handbooks, CDs, and so on), and keeping the information under strict configuration management. In these ways, the stewards ensure the products are relevant, understandable and accessible to the end-users.
  • EA Product Coordinators serve as the content managers and approval authority for new and changed information in the architecture. The coordinators are responsible for participating in the development of the agency’s EA and ensure ongoing updates as new information becomes available. In this way, the coordinators ensure that the information in the EA stays relevant to the end-users.

By having these complementary roles of product coordinators and stewards, for developing and maintaining the EA, the users are assured useful and usable information for their needs.


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