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Responding to Enterprise Architecture Initiatives: Loyalty, Voice and Exit

Many large organizations have on-going Enterprise Architecture initiatives. Key aims include achieving more organizational agility, and to tidy up a messy portfolio of IT silo systems. A holistic approach to IT architecture has been an accepted strategy, but the results of these initiatives have been variable. An under-researched aspect is how different organizational units respond to the call for a holistic approach. In this study, we investigate how different stakeholders connected to three ongoing projects responded to the call for EA. With a qualitative approach, we identify three options of response to EA initiatives: (i) compliance with the EA strategy, (ii) loyal but isolated response, and (iii) rebel solutions. We argue for the need of a more nuanced repertoire of actions for dealing with EA, and show how these responses are useful for understanding and managing successful EA.

A Modelling Technique for Enterprise Agility

Enterprise agility, i .e., the ability of enterprises to respond to changes, is a core imperative for effective change management. It can improve operational efficiency as well as support resource optimization. Yet, it is challenging and a major concern for corporate executives. To facilitate agility, it can be useful to design modeling constructs for representing changes. Such modeling constructs can help stakeholders to represent and better understand change concepts. This research contributes by extending existing enterprise modeling approaches with new modeling constructs for representing concepts of change. These modeling constructs are integrated into a conceptual model. To demonstrate utility, we apply this meta-model to represent a real-world case study and discuss some lessons learned in this process. One major challenge faced by

Business Capability Maps: Current Practices and Use Cases for Enterprise Architecture Management

This paper provides a state-of-the-art report on the usage of business capability maps in enterprise architecture management. We conducted expert interviews with 25 organizations to reveal the benefits and challenges of capability-based enterprise architecture management and evaluated 14 use cases on the feasibility and benefit of using business capability maps in practice. The results reveal increasing interest and acceptance of the approach in practice and among support organizations.

Connected Enterprise Meets Connected Customer – A Design Approach

In an increasingly digitized environment, enterprises face new challenges. Enabled by ubiquitous Internet accessibility, people, places, and products have become more interconnected and are gradually merging into the Internet of Everything. Simultaneously, a new generation of connected customers is emerging that is establishing new requirements for the capabilities of enterprises to communicate, interact, and respond to unforeseen events. As customer satisfaction is the central source of future competitiveness, companies must initiate a transformation towards a connected enterprise. By analyzing the characteristics of the connected customer, this paper presents guidelines for enterprises to address customer needs adequately and manage their operations in the Internet of Everything. Building upon established enterprise architecture frameworks, we apply a Design Science Research procedure to derive four practical recommendations. Thus, enterprises must manage their business processes holistically, implement information systems and standards for data exchange, provide mechanisms for real-time business intelligence, and determine their optimal degree of connectivity.

An interoperability assessment approach based on criteria dependencies to support decision making in networked enterprises

In the networked enterprise, the interoperability is seen as a requirement for ensuring the collaboration among partners. Therefore, an assessment for identifying the enterprise’s strengths and weakness regarding interoperability is paramount. It involves determining the gaps between where enterprises envision themselves in the future and the enterprises’ current states. Indeed, a variety of approaches were proposed in the literature. However, based on surveys, existing methods are assessing specific aspects of interoperability and focusing only on one kind of measurement. The objective of this work is, therefore, to propose a holistic assessment approach to support the interoperability development. To do so, the criteria regarding the interoperability aspects and measurements were identified and are being formalised. The enterprise systems associated with the criteria are being modelled based on Enterprise Architecture techniques. This modelling supports the identification of existing interdependencies between criteria. Finally, case studies will be used to validate the proposed approach.

IT4IT as a Management of Technology framework: Perspectives, implications and contributions

Information technology (IT) is at the core of digitisation of existing business models and dominates in the innovation efforts of many industries. IT has until now in many ways been regarded as exempted from the structuration and automation represented by IT. The IT4IT framework released by The Open Group in October 2015 suggests to a major change. IT has to be governed and structured along defined processes of value chains, life-cycles, service propositions, customer interaction and cost control as any other area of the organization. The purpose of this paper is to review IT4IT as a practical implementation of a Management of Technology framework and to review its perspectives and implications to the MoT society as well as the contributions it has to IT professionals, innovators and MoT practitioners. Methodologically this paper is based on an extensive case study of a large IT service provider. The IT service provider used the framework, along with other frameworks, to introduce larger degree of homogeneity of its own service “catalogues”, improved processes for navigating in the heterogeneity of its customers, and to ensure uniform processes of performance management and reporting. Methodologically this paper has been challenged by the novelty of the topic of IT4IT as only very little peer reviewed materials is available