RQ-Tech, A Strategic-Level Approach for Conceptualizing Enterprise Architectures

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present a system-theoretic based methodology and corresponding model for Enterprise Architecture development. Enterprise Architecture models can assist managers by illustrating the systemic relationships of their business and the impact their decisions can make. Unfortunately, today's modeling practices are proprietary, time-consuming, and generally ineffective as tools for communicating strategic-level planning across and down all levels of the enterprise. This research explored the most significant factors that must be considered when translating authoritative text and rich pictures of business doctrine into semantic models. An ontology, namely RQ-Tech, was used to parse and tag representative samples of strategic, operational, and tactical Department of Defense Joint doctrine publications and the results were analyzed with respect to how well the data could represent a holistic model of the business enterprise. The results of this research have the potential to add to the existing body of knowledge in systems theory, systems-based methods, and software engineering by expanding the domain of systems methodologies useful for assessment and evaluation of complex systems. This generalizable and transportable framework, the RQ-Tech methodology, was found to be useful for focusing attention on solving the right business enterprise problems.