Enterprise Engineering is defined as that body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and ope… - Donald H. Liles

The presence of an enterprise reference architecture aids an enterprise in its ability to understand its structure and processes. Similar to a computer architecture, the enterprise architecture is comprised of several views. The enterprise architecture should provide activity, organizational, business rule (information), resource, and process views of an organization.

An enterprise architecture can be thought of as a "blueprint" or "picture" which assists in the design of an enterprise. The enterprise architecture must define three things. First, what are the activities that an enterprise performs? Second, how should these activities be performed? And finally, how should the enterprise be constructed? Consequently, the architecture being developed will identify the essential processes performed by a virtual company, how the virtual company and the agile enterprises involved in the virtual company will perform these processes, and include a methodology for the rapid reconfiguration of the virtual enterprise.

Reference disciplines are existing bodies of knowledge that help establish the new discipline, that are a foundation of support for future work, and that are logical linkages to previous works. Throughout history, new disciplines have emerged from the need to solve new problems that are not fully addressed by existing disciplines. Emerging disciplines build upon the knowledge, subject matter, methods, tools, and theories of existing reference disciplines.