Article

Many companies expect their IT developers to understand their business strategy and to specify IT systems that will impact favorably the execution of their business strategy. Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) address these issues. In this paper, we present a course that introduces EA and SOA to undergraduate CS students. The course is based on an immersive problem-based pedagogy coupled with role playing. The goal is to have the students conceptualize the theory out of the practical experience they gain in he course. Their experience is developed through a game in which the student teams manage competing companies, specify and then develop an IT system (using workflow and web-services). The course places an emphasis on the enterprise-wide impact of the IT systems. Through their practice, the students discover some of the important good-practices used in the industry. They also learn a systematic approach to address enterprise-wide problems.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) in the context of enterprise engineering addresses aspects of developing, improving and integrating organizations. The article introduces an approach to EA proposing Integration Concepts (IC) to reconcile changing business process requirements and information systems. Being process-driven and supporting integration issues the chosen IC is a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Therefore the contribution aims at developing a methodology to support service engineering by defining architectural domains in an EA. The paper shows the need for methods in the field of domain engineering supporting the design of a SOA. The main contribution of the article is an algorithm based modeling approach and a methodology to support service domain clustering. The clustering algorithms are using a model considering business processes, information systems and information system interfaces. The algorithm adopts network-centric approaches used in the field of social network analysis to define and/or identify service domain clusters in complex scenarios. The article summarizes a case study in a globally operating company and closes with a conclusion. The article is organized by chapters addressing context, objective, approach, case, results and lessons learned.

A fast and continuously changing business environment demands flexible software systems easy to modify and maintain. Due to the extent of interconnection between systems and the internal quality of each system many IT decision-makers find it difficult predicting the effort of making changes to their systems. To aid IT-decision makers in making better decisions regarding what modifications to make to their systems, this article proposes extended influence diagrams and enterprise architecture models for maintainability analysis. A framework for assessing maintainability using enterprise architecture models is presented and the approach is illustrated by a fictional example decision situation.

The aim of research is to develop an information agent framework for knowledge discovery in enterprise architecture (EA). This framework is based on specific purpose ontology and knowledge discovery techniques. Such a framework would facilitate strategic decision making for EA stakeholders by enabling them to analyze and monitor the portfolio of processes, data, applications, and organizational units in term of their correlation and impact in the overall organization. This framework is very useful for affording key stakeholders with the appropriate view that is reliant on an accurate and concise picture of systems, applications, technologies and other infrastructure elements in the business and how these integrate to serve the enterprise. The article discusses the concepts and components of this framework. Potential benefits of this framework over existing approaches are also described.

This article builds on the capability of enterprise architectures (EAs) to define the organization’s systems development environment but places special emphasis on their power as communication tools. The concept of Organizational Self-Awareness (OSA) is offered as the contextual framework for the discussion. OSA is a process which involves, firstly, the efforts of the individual organizational member in getting to know his/her work environment, through sense-making. Sense-making is influenced by a number of factors, some related to the individual’s psychological makeup, others related to the individual’s work environment. EAs can play a relevant role in sense-making. From activity theory the article highlights the process of consciousness formation in human beings as well as the mediating artifacts that shape an constrain the acquisition, accumulation and development of knowledge and self-knowledge. Among the many mediating artifacts in the work environment EAs are a special type. EAs are also boundary objects due to their organizational sense-making. The article concludes that the design and use of EAs can play a crucial role in the formation of a collective mind about the state of the organizational processes and therefore about the state of the organization.