Enterprise Architecture Documentation: Empirical Analysis of Information Sources for Automation

Abstract

Over the past decade, Enterprise Architecture (EA) management emerged to a mature discipline commonly applied to realize cost saving potentials while increasing effectiveness of IT in organizations. Typically, EA management starts by documenting the current state in an EA model and deriving future planned states heading towards an optimized EA. In practice, organizations struggle with the documentation of their current state due to the complexity of their enterprise architecture and its frequent changes. Current research activities seek to automate the data collection process by integrating existing EA information sources of operative systems. However, a comprehensive analysis of possible information sources and their appropriateness for EA is not yet provided. To build an empirical basis, this paper presents findings of a survey conducted on the key problems in EA documentation as well as the appropriateness of specific EA information sources for automation with respect to provided data types and data quality.