Exploring Intentional Modeling and Analysis for Enterprise Architecture

Abstract

An enterprise architecture is intended to be a comprehensive blueprint describing the key components and relationships for an enterprise from strategies to business processes to information systems and technologies. Enterprise architectures have become essential for managing change in complex organizations. While "motivation" has been recognized since Zachman 0 as an important element of enterprise architecture, yet to date, most enterprise architecture modeling only deals with structure, function, and behaviour, neglecting the intentional dimension of motivations, rationales, and goals. The contribution at hand explores this challenge and aims to illustrate the potentials of intentional modeling in the context of enterprise architecture. After introducing two intentional modeling languages and their potential relation to an enterprise architecture construction process, we report on an explorative case study that aimed to investigate the practical implications of intentional modeling and analysis for enterprise architectures. Finally, we present key observations from interviews that were conducted with practitioners to obtain feedback regarding the material developed in the case study.