Where to start in EA

[Graham]

Our job is to jump start the EA practice of
a medium sized international which currently
has little or no EA activity.

My job is to analyze the application
inventory, org chart, etc., and extract the
as-is architectures and present my findings
to the executive, business management and IT
management with impact.

Can EA show impact?
Where do I start modeling the business at a
high level?
Thanks

[«Midnight»]

Take a look at the white papers and tutorials on the Sparx Web site. Start by going to the Resources page (there's a link at the top of any forum page) and go from there.

[Paul W]

Take a look at the Zachman Framework add-in. Good starting point for Enterpise Architecture projects. Could say it has certain 'impact' in EA.

There are the others as well (TOGAF,DODAF etc). Take a look at the Standards panel to the left of the Sparx home page

[GaryR]

With all due respect, your question doesn't make sense to me. What do you mean to "jump start the EA practice"? EA is just a tool, that may or may not be used effectively in your endeavor.

I think you may be talking about doing some kind of systems analysis. EA can be used to document some of your findings, but it doesn't provide any guidance in how to do systems analysis. Further, as a UML-oriented tool, it's oriented towards object-oriented systems analysis, which is different from traditional SA and requires it's own study.

I'm not sure what kind of impact you expect to discover as a result of doing an analysis.

Good luck.