1 Creating an Enterprise Architecture on a Shoestring: A Light Weight Approach to Enterprise Architecture James J. Cusick Wolters Kluwer, Corporate Legal Services New York, New York j.cusick@computer.org William Tepfenhart Monmouth University Monmouth, NJ wtepfenhart@monmouth.com Abstract The creation of an Enterprise Architecture requires dedicated resources, or does it? At CT Corporation an Enterprise Architecture was developed using part time resources over a one year period. This architecture fulfilled the goals set out in the team’s charter and covered the applications, functionality, and data that were embodied in the systems that run the business. This paper describes the approach taken to develop this architecture, its uses, and the remaining gaps in its development. 1 Introduction When most people think about an Enterprise Architecture (EA) they sigh and say that would be nice but who has the time to do everything required to build one. Especially in these days of reduced IT budgets, off-shoring, and lean and mean business environments an EA can be seen as a luxury. At CT Corporation, a legal services firm owned by the publisher Wolters Kluwer, our technology leadership saw it as necessary to build an EA and to put in place a process to keep applications compliant to its framework. This effort was done on a very limited resource budget using managers and architects across the company to collaborate on the creation of the EA and the analysis and solution of related architecture problems in a part-time committee format. The efforts of this committee translated into several key architecture artifacts that illuminated the systems architecture of the company and provided valuable insights into relationships among these systems and allowed for forward planning. This paper covers the genesis of this effort, some key best practices used in putting the work together, the major outputs of the process, and some gaps and next steps for the effort. The approach used is simple, flexible, and has provided useful knowledge for the company and can be replicated by anyone seeking similar results.