Purpose of this Assignment
This assignment gives you the opportunity to apply your critical thinking skills and understanding of the course concepts to explain how the enterprise architecture (EA) and/or the EA program supports the other IT management processes of an organization. This assignment specifically addresses the following course outcomes:

•describe enterprise architecture (EA), the appropriate application of EA frameworks, and an overall ongoing EA program

•analyze and examine how enterprise architecture and enterprise systems influence, support, and enable an organization’s ability to contribute to strategic decision making and to respond and adapt to the business environment

•apply EA concepts to support business requirements and identify opportunities for enterprise solutions

Assignment
As you have learned throughout the course, EAs can be used to support a wide variety of information technology management processes, and an EA program strengthens IT management activities. A well-defined and implemented EA contributes significantly to each of the phases of the systems development life cycle (SDLC). For this assignment you will write a 3-5 page paper (not counting any cover sheet or reference pages) that explains briefly what enterprise architecture (EA) is and then how it supplements and enables each of the phases of the SDLC:

•initiation/planning/concept phase
•requirements analysis phase
•design phase
•development phase
•integration and testing phase
•implementation/deployment/support/maintenance phase
You should explain how EA enables each phase, how it fits into each phase, and what unique qualities or capabilities a well-defined EA contributes that might not otherwise be available to the organization.

The use of at least two external scholarly resources (other than class materials) is required. You should use scholarly journals (rather than Wikipedia and author-less website postings). If you need assistance with determining what a scholarly journal is, the UMUC library is a very good source of information, accessed via the following link: http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/articles.cfm. Remember to correctly cite and reference all sources using APA format.