Enterprise Architecture

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A Synthesis of Enterprise Architecture Effectiveness Constructs

Companies throughout the world use Enterprise Architecture (EA) because of benefits such as the alignment of business to Information Technology (IT), centralisation of decision making and cost reductions due to standardisation of business processes and business systems. Even though EA offers organisational benefits, EA projects are reported as being costly, time consuming and require tremendous effort. Companies therefore seek to ascertain ways to measure the effectiveness of EA implementation because of the money and time being spent on EA projects. EA Effectiveness refers to the degree in which EA helps to achieve the collective goals of the organisation and its measurement depends on a list of constructs that can be used to measure the effectiveness of EA implementation. Currently, there exist no comprehensive list of constructs that are suitable to measure the effectiveness of EA implementation. The paper reports on the results of a study that explored the development of a compreh ensive list of constructs suitable for measuring the effectiveness of EA implementation. The artefact developed in this research study is called Enterprise Architecture Effectiveness Constructs (EAEC). The EAEC consists of 6 constructs namely: – alignment

Generic EA Analysis Framework for the Definition and Automatic Execution of Analyses

Analysis is an essential part in the Enterprise Architecture Management lifecycle. An in-depth consideration of the architecture obtains its strengths and weaknesses. This provides a sound foundation for the future evolution of the architecture as well as for decision-making regarding new projects. Current literature provides a large number of different analysis approaches, targeting different goals and utilizing different techniques. To provide a common interface to analysis activities we studied the corresponding literature in previous research. Based on these results we develop a language for the definition of EA analyses as well as an execution environment for their evaluation. To cope with the high variety of meta models in the EA domain, the framework provides a uniform and tool independent access to analysis activities. Additionally it can be used to provide an EA analysis library, where the architect is able to select predefined analyses according to his specific requirements.

Enterprise Architecture beyond the Enterprise – Extended Enterprise Architecture Revisited

As the most enterprises are relying on relations to other enterprises, it is relevant to consider enterprise architecture for inter-organisational relations particularly those relations involving technology. This has been conceptualised as Extended Enterprise Architecture, and a systematic review of this discipline is the topic of this paper. This paper is taking a point of departure in general theories of business-to-business relationships along with inter-organisational information systems, interoperability and business ecosystems. The general theories are applied to the Extended Enterprise Architecture to emphasize paradoxes, problems and potentials in extending EA across organisational boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to review the concept of Extended Enterprise Architecture (EEA) theoretically and empirically to identify viability of Enterprise Architecture (EA) initiatives spanning across organisational boundaries. A case is presented of an enterprise engaging in technology-based business process integration that in turn is explicated as enterprise architecture initiatives with both more and less powerful partners. This paper underlines the necessity to be able to have EA spanning initiatives across multiple enterprises, but a range of problems is illuminated related to (lack of) precision, imbalance, heterogeneity, transformation, temporality, and (operational) maturity. The concept of EEA is seemingly vague, however this paper calls for a strengthen emphasis on redefining general architectural frameworks to embrace EEA in order to handle typical and modern forms of organisational designs relying on virtual and cross-company as cornerstones.

The Quest for Underpinning Theory of Enterprise Architecture – General Systems Theory

Enterprise architecture originates from the 1980’s. It emerged among ICT practitioners to solve complex problems related to information systems. Currently EA is also utilised to solve business problems, although the focus is still in ICT and its alignment with business. EA can be defined as a description of the current and future states of the enterprise, and as a change between these states to meet stakeholder’s goals. Despite its popularity and 30 years of age, the literature review conducted on top information and management science journals revealed that EA is still lacking the sound theoretical foundation. In this conceptual paper, we propose General Systems Theory (GST) for underpinning theory of EA. GST allows us to see enterprises as systems of systems consisting of, for instance, social organisations, humans, information systems and computers. This explains why EA can be used to describe the enterprise and its components, and how to control them to execute the managed change. Implications to science and practice, and some directions for future research are also provided.

Towards a National Enterprise Architecture Framework in Iran

National Enterprise Architecture (EA) is regarded as a catalyst for achieving e-government goals and many countries have given priority to it in developing their e-government plans. Designing a national EA framework which fits the government’s specific needs facilitates EA planning and implementation for public agencies and boosts the chance of EA success. In this paper, we introduce Iran’s national EA framework (INEAF). The INEAF is designed in order to improve interoperability and deal with EA challenges in Iranian agencies.

An investigation into applying UML to the Zachman framework

The Zachman framework is considered to be the most referenced framework for the purpose of enterprise architecture. It is commonplace to compare other frameworks with this basic one in order to show correctness and usability of those frameworks. However, this is more than a fashion, the Zachman framework is actually the best one. Despite of its popularity, the Zachman framework could be a challengeable one in practical situations because there are not enough well-known methods and tools covering all of its aspects. Three major challenges in using this framework, are discussed in this article. These challenges are lack of a methodology, a well-defined repository and a popular modeling notation. Focus of this article is on solving the last problem with the help of notations in UML (Unified Modeling Language) and UML Business Profile. At the first glance the topic seems to be already researched by others, but there are some major distinctions between this work and the others’, which make it a unique one. Most of the other work tried to cover the framework using multiple class diagrams stereotyped in different ways. This work tries to cover the Zachman framework using all of the UML features, especially those, which are convenient in common modeling tools as well as ignoring unfamiliar symobls as it is used by some authors. A case study is used upon which we show how to apply the selected notation on a sample enterprise to develop cells in second and third rows of the framework. Models are tested to consider if they are supporting Zachman rules governing the framework. Furthermore, in order to see if they could be convincing enough, a statistical study is employed. Although results of these tests are relatively acceptable, the problem of inventing new modeling notations is mentioned as an open problem.