Enterprise Architecture Management Archives

Enterprise architecture management and its role in corporate strategic management

A considerable number of organizations continually face difficulties bringing strategy to execution, and suffer from a lack of structure and transparency in corporate strategic management. Yet, enterprise architecture as a fundamental exercise to achieve a structured description of the enterprise and its relationships appears far from being adopted in the strategic management arena. To move the adoption process along, this paper develops a comprehensive business architecture framework that assimilates and extends prior research and applies the framework to selected scenarios in corporate strategic management.

Measuring the realization of benefits from Enterprise Architecture Management

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) has become an intensively discussed approach to manage enterprise transformations. While many organizations employ EAM, a notable insecurity about the value of EAM remains. In this paper*, we propose a model to measure the realization of benefits from EAM. We identify EAM success factors and EAM benefits through a comprehensive literature review and eleven explorative expert interviews. Based on our findings, we integrate the EAM success factors and benefits with the established DeLone & McLean IS success model resulting in a model that explains the realization of EAM benefits. This model aids organizations as a benchmark and framework for identifying and assessing the setup of their EAM initiatives and whether and how EAM benefits are materialized. We see our model also as a first step to gain insights in and start a discussion on the theory of EAM benefit realization.

Governance of Enterprise Transformation and the Different Faces of Enterprise Architecture Management

Today, enterprises more than ever find themselves confronted with a constant need to transform themselves to better cope with current pressures and to prepare for future opportunities and challenges. Enterprise architecture management plays a crucial role in that context. It may not only aid in shaping the future enterprise, but it may also facilitate subsequent transformation governance. Based on the perception of enterprise architecture management as both a strategic and an operational exercise, this article distinguishes between four general modes of architectural transformation governance and presents the different faces of enterprise architecture management prevalent in these modes. In particular, this involves solution architecture, roadmapping, and business architecture activities.

Auditing the Implementation of Enterprise Architecture at the Federal Railroad Administration

After several years of work, implementing enterprise architecture in the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA – a part of the US Dept. of Transportation), in Fall 2009, attention was turned to the question: How to efficiently yet comprehensively audit their implementation of enterprise architecture, to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for future improvement? At that time, US agencies such as OMB and GAO had issued guides for reviewing (or evaluating, appraising, or auditing) government agency implementations of enterprise architecture, but these guides were not completely consistent with one another. A new, harmonizing version was being developed by GAO and was released in August 2010, containing the Enterprise Architecture Management Maturity Framework, Version 2.0 (EAMMF 2.0). This provides a management maturity framework which can permit an organization to achieve increasingly higher states of enterprise architecture management maturity. This article presents a pilot test project developed and conducted within the FRA, using the new EAMMF 2.0 elements and an audit methodology drawn loosely from the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®) models and its companion Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI) SM appraisal methods. The audit methodology proved to be an efficient way to assess FRA’s efforts in enterprise architecture. Findings also show that FRA’s implementation of enterprise architecture reflects very high enterprise architecture management maturity, suggesting that FRA has positioned itself well to support future initiatives such as the US development of high- speed rail and to continue to coordinate with its many constituencies including the railroad industry, other federal agencies, state and local government railroad agencies, and the public-at-large, to realize the benefits of enterprise architecture, all while dealing with rapid change, value, agility, standards, risk, and transformation.