You can find the detail here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/practices/ but they describe a practice as:

"Generally speaking, a practice is set of techniques for accomplishing a goal. Usually a part of a larger process, a practice represents a chosen way to pursue a related goal. For example, suppose you want to write a story. Some possible practices are:

• Draft an outline, then evolve each section.
• Draw a cartoon of key story elements, then write the story.
• Create a character and a conflict, and then write the story from start to end.

A storyteller could choose one of these practices, or a combination of them. For each practice, there can be tool-specific guidance (tool mentors), that tell you how to create outlines in a word processor, or how to create cartoons using a graphics tool and clip art library.  In terms of software development, a practice:

• Addresses one aspect of the software development lifecycle: e.g., requirements management, use-case driven development, change management, etc.
• Evolves as improvements are discovered over time
• Is based on what has been proved successful, not on abstract scientific principles."

The AgileEA will develop the Enterprise Architecture set of Practices in this manner going forward. Partitioning apects of Enterprise Architecture into logical groups of closely related ideas, and issuing them as stand alone Components that can be used individually or together in concert.

Organisations have different levels of maturity in the area of Change Management Databases (CMDB’s).

I was particularly looking to understand information like what does the WAN and LAN look like, what Servers and Client computers do we have in the estate, what Operating system and other Applications are running on these servers, etc?

I wanted this information on a regular basis (daily to weekly) so that we could observe change and query information and have confidence that it was fully up to date.

At one end of the spectrum some organisations couldn’t spell CMDB. On the other end of the spectrum an organisation might have a fully automated and integrated CMDB offering which it exposes to its Enterprise Architecture team to do “what-if” analysis, to understand the estate and to help continuously improve network and hardware designs, etc.

We discovered an excellent Software-as-a-Service offering that is not designed as a CMDB, but primarily scans the network for vulnerabilities and security information. However it generates, as a by product of its security scanning, all the base information that an Enterprise Architecture practice can use. It draws up a visual diagram of the WAN and LAN, shows all the IP addresses and categorises all the information in terms of Infrastructure Software and Applications found. This information can then be exported out and brought into the Enterprise Architecture Models.

The best part and the reason for the Blog is that except for a few strategically placed Black Box hardware items that get plugged into the wall on one end and the network on the other end, there is nothing to install!

All the real work is done on the Remote (Software-as-a-Service) Servers in the cloud, over encrypted links to your organisation. The benefits of this are that you can get this installed extremely quickly and not have to alter any ways of working in your IT Operations and Production Environments. A quick win situation all round, without upsetting the Production people and getting really useful information rapidly. Check it out – www.Qualys.com