Who are we, and how do we relate to each other? Luciano Floridi, one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy, argues that the explosive developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is changing the answer to these fundamental human questions.
Business Model Innovation: From Understanding the Process to Tracking the Change
This paper suggests a new type of enterprise models called fractal enterprise models (FEM), with accompanying methodological support for their design. FEM shows interconnections between the business processes in an enterprise by connecting them to the assets they use and manage. Assets considered in the model could be tangible (buildings, heavy machinery, etc.) and intangible (employees, business process definitions, etc.). A FEM model is built by using two types of patterns called archetypes: a process-assets archetype that connects a process with assets used in it, and an asset-processes archetype that connects an asset with processes aimed to manage this asset (e.g., hiring people, or servicing machinery). Alternating these patterns creates a fractal structure that makes relationships between various parts of the enterprise explicit. FEM can be used for different purposes, including finding a majority of the processes in an enterprise and planning business change or radical transformation. Besides discussing FEM and areas of its usage, the paper presents results from a completed project in order to test the practical usefulness of FEM and its related methodological support.
The number of publications, along with the organization of new conferences are a couple of the relevant elements that usually indicate the progress of an area of study over the years. This is definitely true in the case of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline, which went from having its first journal article published in 1989 to over two hundred published articles by 2015. But in spite of this evolution, EA is still suffering from a considerable lack of common understanding. It has become very important to investigate the current state of affairs concerning the EA discipline through its relevant publications in order to shed some light on this challenge. 171 journal papers published between 1990 and 2015 were systematically selected and examined in order to accomplish this investigation. The quantitative and qualitative findings of this examination show that EA is a young discipline which raises a growing interest in recent years. This examination also confirms the lack of common understanding in EA, which can be observed in the different descriptions of the term “enterprise architecture,” and in the diversity of perspective with regards to the whole discipline. Several issues related to this lack has been reported, such as multidisciplinary issue, language issue, structure of research and mode of observation issues. The major issue concerns the absence of enough research to shed some light on this challenge. In addition to this investigation, helpful directions for future research in this area was proposed.
Today, and for the foreseeable future, organizations will face ever-increasing levels of complexity and uncertainty. Many believe that enterprise architecture (EA) will help organizations address such difficult terrain by guiding the design of adaptive and resilient enterprises and their information systems. This paper presents the Grand Challenges that we believe will challenge organizations in the future and need to be addressed by enterprise architecture. As a first step in using enterprise architecture as a solution for overcoming identified challenges, the Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework is used to guide and structure the discussion. The paper presents the Grand Challenges and discusses promising theories and models for addressing them. In addition, current advances in the field of enterprise architecture that have begun to address the challenges will be presented. In conclusion, final thoughts on the future of enterprise architecture as a research field and a profession are offered.
The objective of this study is to assess the capability and priority for Enterprise Architecture (EA) implementation in the context of Malaysian public sector agency. This study uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on the judgments and opinions of EA team members from three different agencies at federal level. There are 27 assessment criteria which are grouped into six categories, Internal Process, Learning and Growth, Authority Support, Cost, Technology and Talent Management. The top capability of all cases is Internal Process and the top criteria for priority assessment is Authority Support. From the findings it can be concluded that AHP is a useful and cost effective method to assess, priorities and plan for EA implementation. Addressing the capability and priority criteria will ensure the optimum EA is implemented thus it shall reduce the risk of EA implementation failure.
