On Enterprise Architecture Change Events

Abstract

In practice it is difficult to maintain a high quality enterprise architecture (EA) model with regards to its actuality and completeness. However, neither literature from practice and EA frameworks nor EA research literature provide sufficient guidance for the difficult task of maintaining EA models. Recently, researchers have presented methods to collect structured data from existing data sources, e.g. from IT operations in order to (semi-)automatically update EA models. In this paper, we make an argument for the additional use of EA change events from (management) information systems. These change events do not provide clearly mappable structured information, but can be used to trigger and guide manual EA model maintenance tasks when changes occur. We present the first classification of relevant events in EA literature, detailing on their sources and impact on the EA model. Finally, we propose a model maintenance workflow that is driven by events, explain an example usage case and point to open issues in the context of EA change events.