Examice

Scenario -

Your role is that of Lead Enterprise Architect within the staff headquarters of a large hotel chain. The chain manages over 500 hotels across North America and

Canada, with another 230 hotels internationally in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Unlike other hotel chains, which are often a mix of company-owned and franchised units, each hotel in the chain is an independently owned and operated franchise. Many of the hotels use the same internal IT systems that they used before they joined the franchise. Until recently, the only requirement that has been placed on each hotel is that they use a standard financial reporting system to report their financial results to the headquarters on a weekly basis.

The CEO of the chain has stated his concerns about the inefficiencies of the current approach and identified the need to change. He has defined a new strategic vision that will enhance the business by providing its franchisees new support services including worldwide reservations, global, national and regional marketing as well as consolidated financials, logistics, and yield management. This strategy is part of the long-term commitment to enhance the brand image and drive superior revenue for the chain. He has also stated that he expects improved financial results by the end of the current fiscal year.

These changes will provide the chain with improved utilization of its capacity and more efficient operations. The addition of a corporate-wide data warehouse will provide analytics that will enable the marketing group to improve its ability to target advertising into key national and regional markets to improve yields.

The chain has a mature enterprise architecture practice based in its headquarters and uses TOGAF 9 as the method and guiding framework. The CIO is the sponsor of the activity.

In planning this change, the Chief Architect engaged the services of a well-known consulting firm that specializes in business strategy. An initial study has been conducted to identify the strategic changes needed to implement the CEO's vision. This recently completed with approval of a strategic architecture encompassing the entire chain, including detailed requirements and recommendations.

Based on the recommendations from the initial study, the chain has taken the decision to adopt a packaged suite of integrated applications that is tailored to the needs of the hospitality industry.

You have been asked by the Chief Architect to propose the best approach for architecture development to realize the CEO's vision.

Based on TOGAF, which of the following is the best answer?

You propose that this engagement define the baseline Technology Architecture first in order to assess the current infrastructure capacity and capability. Then the focus should be on transition planning and architecture deployment. This will identify requirements to ensure that the projects are sequenced in an optimal fashion so as to realize the vision.

You propose that the target architecture is defined first, followed by transition planning. This is because the vision is well understood and the strategic architecture agreed. The target first approach will ensure that the current problems and inefficiencies of the baseline architecture are not carried forward, and that the proposed solution addresses the requirements identified in the initial study.

You propose that the team focus on architecture definition, with a specific emphasis on understanding the strategic change parameters of the business strategy. Once understood, the team will be in the best position to identify the requirements, drivers, issues, and constraints for this engagement. You would ensure that the target architecture addresses non-functional requirements so as to ensure the target architecture is robust and secure.

You propose that the team focus on defining the target architecture by going through the architecture definition phases (B-D). This is because the initial study identified the need to change. This will ensure that the change can be defined in a structured manner and address the requirements needed to realize the vision.