Enterprise Architecture

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The Integrated Enterprise: Enterprise Architecture, Investment Process and System Development

The enterprise architecture provides benefits to the organization that utilizes it. However, if the enterprise architecture is not tightly coupled with other enterprise level programs such as investment management and system development process, its overall effectiveness is compromised. This paper will identify the process integration and enterprise architecture touchpoints from the perspective of the investment management process and it outlines an overall Integrated Enterprise Life Cycle process flow. The paper also presents a case study of the implementation of the enterprise life cycle process flow.

Use of enterprise architectures in managing strategic change

This article discusses the benefits of applying structured, holistic analysis to human enterprises. It describes the Axum framework for enterprise architecture which the author developed as a tool for managing strategic change. This has been used successfully in many varied organisations such as civil service, Web?based betting and even a major political party. It explains how the framework evolved out of earlier work on bussiness process reengineering to provide a more holistic approach in which process is set in the context of all other things that must be managed for successful change. The application of the framework in complex diversified enterprises is also explained and illustrations from the experience of the author are given.

A Method to Redesign the IS Portfolios in Large Organisations

Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’05). Over the past decades, large organisations have developed increasingly complex portfolios of information systems to support business processes. Maintenance and leveraging of these so-called system complexes have become a major challenge to many executive boards. The challenge is even bigger for organisations that are the result of mergers. The question arises whether, from both an operational and a strategic perspective, it would be feasible to migrate to a single (new) system complex. In this paper, we describe the ‘picture approach’, a method for analysing, redesigning and combining system complexes in information-intensive organisations. The method was applied successfully in three cases (insurance companies), all operating multiple system complexes. The method consists of mapping an organisation’s information systems and showing their roles in the business processes. The picture approach is evaluated in three ways, one of which is a comparison with design principles for process modelling in Enterprise Application Integration.

SciFi architecture

(Enterprise) Architecture has emerged as a key discipline in dealing with continuous change/transformation in which models play a key role. In most current modelling languages (e.g. ArchiMate) there is a clear distinction between business concepts and IT concepts. The question that is addressed in this paper is: is that still justified? It is argued that a more symbiotic relationship between human actors and computer actors, performing essential (business) behaviour side by side is the way to long term success. We also briefly touch upon the impact of such change in (modelling) approach on the way we deal with these transformations from a methodological point of view.

Towards A Method for Developing Reference Enterprise Architectures

In most economic sectors organizations face rapid environmental changes like regulations. Such changes can force them to adjust both their organizational and operational structure. For instance, in the energy utility sector numerous developments moved German Public Utilities (PUs) towards a liberalized market. Nowadays PUs have to stay competitive while managing a heterogeneous information technology (IT) landscape. We address this demand for aligning business and IT by combining the holistic perspective of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) with the characteristic of reference modeling to reuse knowledge in a problem domain. Therefore, we utilize configurative reference modeling within Design Science Research (DSR). The artefact at hand is a method for developing a Reference Enterprise Architecture (R-EA), which is applied in the problem domain of PUs. Our contributions are the (i) adaptation of Configurative Reference Modelling (CRM) to develop a R-EA and (ii) a procedure how to elicit knowledge for R-EA development method.

Enterprise Architecture Institutionalization: A Tale of Two Cases

The purpose of this research is to examine why organizations with similar objectives and environments at the beginning obtain different outcomes when implementing enterprise architecture (EA) projects and how EA institutionalization process occurs. We conduct a qualitative multiple-case study using the lens of institutional theory through the analysis of intra-organization relations. The results show that the institutional logic of stakeholders can drive EA projects in different directions during the process of EA institutionalization, and thus organizations obtain different project outcomes ultimately. We contribute by extending the knowledge on EA institutionalization from a micro-level perspective, understanding and explaining how the organizational structure was shaped and influenced by stakeholders’ relations, as well as providing insight into stakeholders’ behaviors and activities during the process of EA institutionalization so that practitioners may improve the success rate of EA projects, particularly in the public sector.