Enterprise Architecture Practice Research Articles

An integrative model of enterprise architecture value: a grounded theory study to position its artifacts

PurposeDespite the relevance of how enterprise architecture (EA) contributes to organizational performance in contemporary digital technology-driven strategic renewal, little is known about the position of EA artifacts. Therefore, this study aims to build an integrative model of EA artifact-enabled EA value supplemented with a research agenda to enhance our understanding further.Design/methodology/approachThis study leveraged grounded theory techniques and a systematic review approach to develop the integrative model and research agenda.FindingsWe inductively build a model of the position of EA artifacts in EA value creation. Additionally, we elaborate a research agenda that proposes (1) an investigation of the role of an EA practice in successful strategic change, (2) an examination of how to manage EA practice value generation and (3) longitudinal research to gain insight into the evolution of value creation by EA practices.Originality/valueThis study presents a model of EA artifact-enabled EA value, thereby contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms, inhibitors and success factors associated with EA value. Following our model, the proposed research agenda contains future research areas to help us better understand the mechanisms and interrelatedness of EA practices in highly dynamic environments.

Modeling Business Capabilities in Enterprise Architecture Practice: The Case of Business Capability Models

ABSTRACT Business capability modeling is a narrow domain of enterprise architecture modeling, which currently remains insufficiently explored. This study identifies nine general business capability modeling approaches and corresponding usage scenarios of business capability models most of which have not been systematically described or even mentioned in the existing literature. This study represents arguably the first intentional effort to explore the practical usage of business capability models in organizations for the purposes of aligning business and IT.

Future Trends for Direction in Enterprise Architecture: Systematic Literature Review

In the modern business era, enterprise architecture is becoming increasingly important for companies to achieve their business goals. However, designing and implementing an effective enterprise architecture can be challenging, especially due to the ever-increasing complexity of information systems, changing business needs, and pressure to continually improve efficiency and performance. This study aims to analyze the literature review to map future trends in enterprise architecture related to technological developments and business needs. The research method used This study was conducted by conducting a systematic literature search using leading academic databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. Inclusion and exclusion criteria have been established to ensure that the selected articles are relevant to the topics discussed. Articles that met the inclusion criteria were then analyzed and critically assessed to identify trends in enterprise architecture. The results of this study produce arguments for the importance of enterprise architecture in helping companies to operate efficiently and integrate different systems and applications. The results of this study indicate that the future trends and topics of enterprise architecture help organizations achieve strategic goals and enable companies to adapt quickly to changes in business and technology. This study concludes that future trends in enterprise architecture can help companies adopt future information technology trends in enterprise architecture. The findings in this study have significant practical implications for enterprise architecture practices. Enterprises should take these trends into account when designing and deploying their enterprise architecture, to ensure that they maximize the benefits of the latest technologies and meet changing business needs.

Scaling Agile Company-Wide: The Organizational Challenge of Combining Agile-Scaling Frameworks and Enterprise Architecture in Service Companies

Many organizations have embraced agile methods. Studies show a trend of large-scale application of agile frameworks company-wide. Emergent architecture design as part of an agile approach is effective at the project level but causes issues when services need to interact seamlessly at the enterprise level. Enterprise architecture (EA) can provide such coherence. Combining the scaling agile methods with EA is challenging. However, such a combination could benefit from the flexibility that agile approaches offer and provide the consistency and long-term focus that EA pursues. This article uses the longitudinal case study research to explore how organizations can effectively govern Agile and EA in large-scale agile transformations. Our case analysis shows that methods for scaling Agile do not provide sufficient guidance to properly handle the transformation from existing EA practices to an Agile EA combination company-wide. We propose how EA can be applied effectively in large-scale agile transformations despite the two seemingly conflicting approaches of Agile and EA. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual model for future research that incorporates factors that take EA into account in the governance of agile-scaling frameworks. Our findings extend current literature on coordination mechanisms between architects and agile teams in large-scale agile transformations, thereby balancing emergent and intentional architectures.

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE – A QUEST FOR CHILI AGROSYSTEM

This study intends to reveal the enterprise architecture (EA) framework that fits the chili agrosystem concerning its perishable nature and supply chain diversity. The chili agrosystem faces many challenges, and the EA artefacts that represent the building block of a chili enterprise system (ES) are yet to be pursued. EA and EA frameworks (EAF) are not a new problem. Various methodologies, methods, and approaches have offered to describe EA and EAF practices and their implementation. There are more than 100 EAF available and used in many areas. Our study is part of developing the ES to monitor chili production, consumption, and price. The first step toward ES development is recognizing worthy chili EA and EAF that characterize existing chili market conditions. Our study aims to answer three research questions: RQ1 - What is the Indonesia chili agrosystem outlook? RQ2 - What is the state-ofart of EA? and RQ3 - What is the EAF state-of-the-art for the chili agrosystem? The study uses a state-of-the-art approach, employing predetermined keywords, to six research databases and data gathered from the corresponding institutional agencies. The findings on RQ1 revealed that there are eight dynamics chili main supply chain patterns, and there exists data segregation among institutional agencies. The RQ2 disclosed numerous studies on EA; however, none offered for the chili agrosystem. Similarly, the RQ3 results are multiple and exposing different EAF characteristics. Again, no study considers its applicability for the chili agrosystem. In conclusion, the strength of enterprise architecture is the resulting deliverables that fall into three categories. These factors are chili agrosystem, enterprise, and architecture factors. Of many available frameworks, the Zachman framework gives more offerings. Hence, we select the 3x6 matrix of Zachman Framework the Ontology (version 3.0) producing Blue Print of Smart Enterprise System Chili.

The practical roles of enterprise architecture artifacts: A classification and relationship

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA is typically defined as a comprehensive blueprint of an organization covering its business, data, applications and technology domains and consisting of diverse EA artifacts. EA has numerous potential stakeholders and usage scenarios in organizations. However, the existing EA literature does not offer any consistent theories explaining the practical roles of individual EA artifacts and fails to explain how exactly different types of EA artifacts are used in practice. This study intends to explore the roles of different EA artifacts in organizations and develop a generic descriptive theory explaining these roles. The theory purports to cover various properties of EA artifacts as well as the relationships between them. The research method of this study follows two consecutive phases: theory construction and theory validation. First, theory construction is based on the qualitative in-depth analysis of five case organizations with established EA practices. Next, theory validation includes confirmatory interviews with ten EA experts. This study develops a descriptive theory explaining the roles of different EA artifacts in an EA practice. The resulting theory defines six general types of EA artifacts (Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines and Designs, CSVLOD) and explains their type-specific practical roles, including their informational contents , typical usage, ensuing organizational benefits and interrelationships with each other. This study presents the first systematic theory describing the usage of EA artifacts in organizations. Our theory facilitates better theoretical understanding of the concept of EA and also provides evidence-based solutions to the commonly reported practical problems with EA. This study suggests that the EA research community should focus on studying individual EA artifacts instead of studying EA in general and calls for further research on EA artifacts and their usage as part of EA practices.

Transdisciplinary Approach in Studying Organisational Transformations

Digital transformation has a notorious record of failures. Maybe the enterprise architects do not have a holistic model to study and model the organisational transformation. An enterprise consists of several structural components, which vary from culture to technology layers defined in the Enterprise Architecture. Usually, the transformation of an enterprise involves most of the interrelated layers in connection to the environment around the organisation. Seemingly, no single science provides frameworks to study the transformation of a whole system of systems (including the layers of enterprise strategy, culture, business, information, and technology). Therefore, the paper proposes a transdisciplinary approach combined with spiral research design as a framework for the business sciences and enterprise architecture. The proposed framework connects different sciences of sociology, business, strategy, history, information, and technology to understand the evolutionary particularities of each layer of enterprise in transformation. The transdisciplinary approach supports the modelling of the entire enterprise in all of its complexities and over a longer time. In contrast, the current monodisciplinary focuses only on parts of an enterprise at a particular window of time. By definition, transdisciplinary research fuses findings across the disciplines, between the disciplines and beyond the disciplines. Furthermore, the framework supports spiralling between scientific methods and non-scientific practices. The case study utilised a spiralling research process that provided a tighter feedback loop from application in practice to model development in theory. The transdisciplinary spiralling approach provided an iterative approach to verify the outcome, reduce the complexity, and address the practitioner’s reality. Hopefully, the research approach used in the case study and the tool created will improve enterprise architecture practice to ensure a successful digital transformation of military organisations.

A Survey on the Application of Enterprise Architecture in Healthcare Systems

Enterprise architecture (EA) has been present in scientific literature since the 1980s and has branched out into several research fields. EA delivers value by presenting business and information technology leaders with recommendations for adjusting policies to achieve business goals. Although there are many works on the EA application in healthcare systems, the literature lacks studies that provide a systematic approach to this topic. This work presents a broad systematic literature review (SLR) to select studies demonstrating current EA practices in healthcare systems. The researchers established an SLR protocol returning 280 primary studies after the first step of the data selection and a consolidated inclusion of 46 articles after the second step. They assessed the level of disagreement during the team's evaluations using Cohen's Kappa. This SLR revealed essential aspects of state-of-the-art EA application in healthcare systems, such as the challenges, positive impacts, and critical success factors described by the studies' authors based on empirical approaches.

Healthcare Organizations and Enterprise Architecture: A Case Study in Canada

The paper focuses on exploring the perceptions of stakeholders (medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, IT staff and other employees) in healthcare organizations in Canada on how they developed Enterprise Architecture (EA) to improve managerial decision making and align business activities and Information Technology (IT). Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted for this research. A total of 120 questionnaires were sent out but only 72 responses were received. Participants included industry professionals involved in implementing information systems (IS) within healthcare organizations. Data was collected physically and through emails. Also 3 subject matter experts (experts) were interviewed for the study. These experts each have over ten years’ experience in EA practice and are doctorate degree holders (PhDs). The results of the study showed that stakeholders see the potential for EA to be a tool for planning IT/IS projects, breaking down organizational silos, creating digital transformation, and proactively responding to disruptive forces. They do not see EA as the necessary tool for integrating IT solutions.

Stakeholder engagement in enterprise architecture practice: What inhibitors are there?

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA practice is an organizational activity that implies using EA artifacts for facilitating decision-making and improving business and IT alignment. EA practice involves numerous participants ranging from C-level executives to project teams and effective engagement between these stakeholders and architects is critically important for success. Moreover, many practical problems with EA practice can be also attributed to insufficient engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders. However, the notion of engagement received only limited attention in the EA literature and the problem of establishing engagement has not been intentionally studied. This paper intends to explore in detail the problem of achieving effective engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders in an organization, identify the main inhibitors of engagement and present a theoretical model explaining the problem of establishing engagement in practice. This paper is based on a single in-depth revelatory case study including nine interviews with different participants of EA practice (e.g. architects and other EA stakeholders) and documentation analysis. It leverages the grounded theory method to construct a conceptual model explaining the problem of engagement in the studied organization. This paper identifies 28 direct and indirect inhibitors of engagement and unifies them into a holistic conceptual model addressing the problem of achieving engagement that covers the factors undermining both strategic and initiative-based engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders. This paper focuses on the notion of engagement and offers arguably the first available theoretical model that explains how typical engagement problems between architects and other stakeholders inhibit the realization of value from EA practice. However, the developed model has a number of limitations and we call for further empirical research on engagement problems in EA practice and coping strategies for addressing these problems.

Enterprise Architecture Practice under a Magnifying Glass: Linking Artifacts, Activities, Benefits, and Blockers

Enterprise Architecture Practice under a Magnifying Glass: Linking Artifacts, Activities, Benefits, and Blockers

The theoretical basis of enterprise architecture: A critical review and taxonomy of relevant theories

Enterprise architecture is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. Practicing enterprise architecture in organizations implies using these artifacts to facilitate information systems planning and improve business and IT alignment. Despite its long history, the enterprise architecture discipline still remains largely atheoretical and lacks a solid theoretical basis. Based on our previous empirical studies of the practical usage of enterprise architecture artifacts in multiple organizations and broad literature analysis, this conceptual article identifies and discusses in detail 10 theories that can be considered key for understanding how an enterprise architecture practice works: actor-network theory, boundary objects theory, cognitive fit theory, communities of practice theory, decision-making theories, information processing theory, knowledge management theory, management fashion theory, media richness theory, and uncertainty principle. Taken together, these theories offer a comprehensive theoretical view of an enterprise architecture practice explaining the role of enterprise architecture artifacts, their usability, and participation of stakeholders and, therefore, may constitute a theoretical basis of the entire enterprise architecture discipline. Although this article does not elaborate on any of these theories, it brings these theories to light, establishes their critical importance for comprehending an enterprise architecture practice, and positions them as central to the enterprise architecture discourse. Each of these theories can be leveraged by enterprise architecture scholars in their future studies for analyzing enterprise architecture practices through respective theoretical lenses. This article intends to provide fresh theoretical insights on enterprise architecture, spark new waves of theoretical enterprise architecture research, and contribute to the development of a sound theoretical foundation for the enterprise architecture discipline.

Development and Validation of Enterprise Architecture (EA) Readiness Assessment Model

Enterprise architecture (EA) proves to be a holistic strategy in aligning business and information technology. An increasing number of organizations, especially in the public sector, have adopted EA in order to take advantage of the opportunities that it offers. Through EA, the efficiency of the organization is improved, with the optimization of resources and the elimination of duplication and redundancy. However, the successful establishment of EA relies on the organization’s readiness and ability to adopt EA practices because without proper readiness, the practices will probably fail. EA readiness refers to the assessment of how ready an organization is to adopt and to establish EA practices. EA readiness helps the organization to measure their stage of readiness, to identify any gaps, and then to redesign its strategy in order to adopt EA practices. EA is a merger between business and IT. Thus, the important elements of EA readiness should comprise of people, process, technology, and catalyst enabler. There is a lack of readiness for an assessment model that shapes these four elements towards EA; hence, a clear gap has been identified. Therefore, the objective of this study is to validate the EA Readiness Assessment Model (EARAM) by performing the Delphi technique. The study adopts a three-round Delphi Technique to verify the identified elements and factors and this is followed by developing and validating the proposed model. Results from the Delphi analysis have validated four (4) major elements of EARAM, namely people, process, technology, and catalyst enabler. The number of factors that contributes towards the readiness of the EA establishment is fourteen (14). It is anticipated that this model (EARAM) can help the Malaysian Public Sector (MPS) organization to identify and understand the elements and factors that must be considered when assessing the readiness to practice EA.

Enterprise architecture and enterprise architecture artifacts: Questioning the old concept in light of new findings

Enterprise architecture is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to bridge the communication gap between business and IT stakeholders and improve business and IT alignment. Enterprise architecture consists of multiple different artifacts providing certain views of an organization and the available enterprise architecture literature offers a number of comprehensive lists of artifacts that can be used as part of an enterprise architecture practice. However, these lists of enterprise architecture artifacts were never validated empirically and the practical usage of different artifacts still remains largely unexplored. Based on a comprehensive empirical analysis of enterprise architecture artifacts used in 27 diverse organizations, this study identifies the list of 24 common artifacts that proved useful in practice and describes in detail their usage and purpose. Although this study does not attempt to theorize on the findings, it makes a significant empirical contribution to the enterprise architecture discipline. In particular, this study (1) provides the first consistent list of enterprise architecture artifacts that actually proved useful in organizations, (2) offers the first available systematic description of their usage, (3) questions the common view of enterprise architecture as a set of business, information, applications and technology architectures and (4) questions the widely accepted conceptualization of enterprise architecture as a set of the current state, future state and transition roadmap. This study provides compelling empirical evidence in favor of reconceptualizing enterprise architecture and calls for further research in this direction.

Dynamic Metamodel Approach for Government Enterprise Architecture Model Management

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is widely adopted by many organisations to align their business and IT together to ensure the resources optimization is achieved. This recent EA development not only brings positive impacts to the business organisation but the government organisation as well. Nevertheless, during the implementation of EA, one of the challenges is to create a standardised and dynamic metamodel that able to integrate the government agencies business models. To date, it is still yet to find any dynamic metamodel that designed for this purpose. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an EA dynamic metamodel design based on complex cognitive activities (CCA) concept. This study starts with an investigation of EA metamodel concept and current practice through literature review and preliminary interviews, followed by the design on EA dynamic metamodel for government agencies with a selection of Malaysian education EA Reference as a pilot case study. As a result, a Dynamic EA Metamodel by using CCA concept is proposed by utilizing the four layers of dynamic design using cognitive action (physical, perceptual, functional, conceptual) and Archimate generic metamodel schema. This is a new contribution to EA Body of Knowledge (EABoK) and EA practice as it helps for better management of EA models especially for a large and complex organisation of the government sector. This model will allow the EA team in multiple organisations to design and develop their EA models according to their own business process but yet still following the EA metamodel set by the top EA office.

First in-depth analysis of enterprise architectures and models for higher education institutions

Enterprise Reference Architectures (ERAs) and Reference Models (RMs) have emerged over the last years as relevant instruments for improving the quality and effectiveness of enterprise architecture (EA) practice. Whilst a wide variety of different ERAs and RMs have been proposed for different industries and types of business, only few of them have been devoted to the Higher Education (HE) sector. In this paper, we propose an in-depth analysis process which we then critically apply to review, compare and classify 20 existing ERAs and RMs targeted to the HE domain. Our process uses a common set of 12 definitional attributes. In so doing, we contribute to the existing body of knowledge by providing a unified, structured and comprehensive analysis process and catalog of these abstract EA artifacts. With this we aim to create awareness on their potential practical utility and to increase their visibility, transparency and opportunity for their reusability by different HE stakeholders. Hence, the proposed process and catalog is expected to be useful both for practitioners and researchers by providing a panoramic view of more or less ready-to-use existing ERAs and RMs for HE, as well as a structure way to regard them. Moreover, and by specifying their main scope, coverage and extend of knowledge captured, the process and catalog might become a valuable tool for providing guidance to HE stakeholders on making better-informed decisions on the selection of suitable architectural artifacts for being conveniently adapted or applied in different EA practices conducted at their respective institutions.

Ea Governance towards Sustainability of Ea Practices in Digital Government: A Systematic Review

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been identified as one of the prime initiative to drive the establishment of digital government towards world class public service delivery. However, building upon several public sector agencies that had implemented these initiatives, it was reported as unfavourable in sustaining EA practices. This study aims to i. review and identify related issues ii. identify factors that influence sustainability of EA practices also iii. identify elements of EA governance. Through the systematic literature review (SLR) five related issues were discerned, four key factors were established in sustaining EA practices while five elements of EA governance emerged in the construction of EA governance framework.

Promoting Business -IT Alignment through Agent Metaphor Based Software Technology

Business-IT alignment (BITA) addresses the nature of connection between business activities, enterprise architecture (EA) and software technology. Luftman's strategic alignment maturity model suggests usage of matured IT standards and approaches. This work examines improving IT approaches to EA modelling with an emphasis on improved CASE automation in EA practice. This work uses Zachman framework (ZF) as a representative EA technology and compares the capability of UML and agent oriented models to provide ZF grid cell models with various EA diagram kinds using criterion such as maintain the syntactic and semantic continuity across grid cell models of each columns of ZF. This work argues the 'agent oriented modelling' technology provides better business model aligned modelling taxonomy and model diagram kinds that improves maintainability and CASE automation in ZF leading to improved EA practice environment. Agent abstraction is also shown to satisfy the information requirements of manufacturing industry oriented ISO 19440/19439 standards.

Enterprise Architecture: A Reconceptualization Is Needed

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. Current literature conceptualizes EA as a comprehensive blueprint of an enterprise organized according to a logical framework and describing its current state, desired future state and migration roadmap. However, the current concept of EA originates from non-empirical sources, lacks demonstrated examples of its successful practical implementation and deviates from the real practical use of EA in organizations in multiple important aspects. Due to these and other problems the notion of EA needs to be reconceptualized in order to more accurately reflect empirical realities. In this paper, based on an extensive EA literature review, I describe the problems with the current concept of EA, demonstrate the critical inconsistencies between this concept and the real practice use of EA in organizations and illustrate them based on a recent exemplary case study of a successful EA practice. Although this paper justifies the need for the reconceptualization of EA and points to the most essential aspects of this reconceptualization, it does not offer an alternative ready-to-use conceptualization and represents only the first step towards developing a new, evidence-based concept of EA.

A theory building study of enterprise architecture practices and benefits

Academics and practitioners have made various claims regarding the benefits that Enterprise Architecture (EA) delivers for both individual projects and the organization as a whole. At the same time, there is a lack of explanatory theory regarding how EA delivers these benefits. Moreover, EA practices and benefits have not been extensively investigated by empirical research, with especially quantitative studies on the topic being few and far between. This paper therefore presents the statistical findings of a theory-building survey study (n=293). The resulting PLS model is a synthesis of current implicit and fragmented theory, and shows how EA practices and intermediate benefits jointly work to help the organization reap benefits for both the organization and its projects. The model shows that EA and EA practices do not deliver benefits directly, but operate through intermediate results, most notably compliance with EA and architectural insight. Furthermore, the research identifies the EA practices that have a major impact on these results, the most important being compliance assessments, management propagation of EA, and different types of knowledge exchange. The results also demonstrate that projects play an important role in obtaining benefits from EA, but that they generally benefit less than the organization as a whole.