2017

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Adoption of Agile Enterprise Architecture in a Large Organization: A Case Study

In the past decade, agile methodologies have become widespread, and the many organizations that employ it have proved successful. To deal with the volatility of the market and to meet dynamic business needs, agile methods seem to be a pragmatic approach. Organizations are keen to scale agile methods across the enterprise to reap the benefits seen in agile teams. Agile Enterprise Architecture can be defined as a process for handling Enterprise Architecture (EA) by applying agile development principles and methods. However, there is a research gap in the adoption of agile Enterprise Architecture. In this paper, I analyze the factors that influence agile EA adoption in large organizations using a grounded theory approach. The evolution of the Enterprise Architect role during the agile EA adoption is presented based on the complex adaptive system theory. A case study is conducted in a leading transportation company which transitioned to agile Enterprise Architecture from traditional methods. This paper focuses on agile Enterprise Architecture adoption from the Enterprise Architects’ viewpoint. My analysis shows that various significant factors influence agile Enterprise Architecture adoption in a large organization. Enterprise Architects are the key personnel in the Governance of Enterprise Architecture and deliver essential business value to an organization. My findings show the changing role of Enterprise Architects when agile Enterprise Architecture is adopted in a large organization. Furthermore, complex adaptive system theory assists in explaining this phenomenon.

Understanding the Benefits and Success Factors of Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is considered as a solution to reduce IT implementation failure, improve profitability and enhance business-IT alignment within organizations. However, explanations and evidence of EA benefits and success factors in the existing literature are still limited. Therefore, this study aims to explore how EA creates value to organizations through a qualitative study employing interviews with EA experts. This study contributes to the current knowledge of EA by providing a validated list of EA benefits and success factors. The study identified 40 EA benefits that are grouped into five categories (operational, managerial, strategic, IT infrastructure and organizational) and thirty-seven EA success factors categorized into product quality, infrastructure quality, service delivery quality and organizational anchoring. This study offers a number of implications for research and practice.

Dynamic Ambidexterity: Exploiting Exploration for Business Success in the Digital Age

In the digital age, many firms find the pace of change in their industry is increasing. New competitors emerge from previously unrelated industries and innovative digital business models can quickly disrupt well-established market dynamics. Such jolts in the competitive landscape require existing players to be continually innovating while also “keeping the lights on” to maintain existing revenue streams. This paper reviews the IS literature on ambidexterity – the ability to simultaneously pursue strategies of resource exploration and exploitation – and advances a theoretical model for embedding innovative business models into existing organizational routines. It contributes to the literature by reconciling the structural and contextual views of ambidexterity through introducing a dynamic ambidexterity framework. This approach proposes ambidexterity as a dynamic capability which requires differing mechanisms in the initiation and implementation phases of innovation.

Revisiting the Impact of Information Systems Architecture Complexity: A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective

Organizations constantly adapt their Information Systems (IS) architecture to reflect changes in their environment. In general, such adaptations steadily increase the complexity of their IS architecture, thereby negatively impacting IS efficiency and IS flexibility. Based on a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) perspective, we present a more differentiated analysis of the impact of IS architecture complexity. We hypothesize the relation between IS architecture complexity on the one hand, and IS efficiency and IS flexibility on the other hand to be mediated by evolutionary and revolutionary IS change. Subsequently, we test our hypotheses through a partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modelling (SEM) based on survey data from 185 respondents. We find that the direct negative impact of IS architecture complexity on IS efficiency and IS flexibility is no longer statistically relevant when also considering the mediating effects of revolutionary and evolutionary IS change.

Understanding IT Alignment Paradox: A Three-Way Interaction of Intellectual Alignment, Social Alignment, and Environmental Dynamism

IT alignment is generally considered to be an enabler of firm performance. However, the previous literature has found that IT alignment has no or even a negative effect on firm performance, suggesting an alignment paradox. This study aims to address this paradox by focusing on the examination of how agility is enhanced or reduced. We consider the boundary conditions of environmental dynamism under which the effect of IT alignment varies. We then conduct a paired-matched survey of business and IT executives in 148 organizations to empirically examine the proposed research model. Our findings suggest that environmental dynamism has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between intellectual alignment and organizational agility, but a positive moderating effect on the relationship between social alignment and organizational agility. Furthermore, we find that in dynamic environments, intellectual alignment increases organizational agility only when it is complemented by social alignment.

Conceptualization of an Abstract Language to Support Value Co-Creation

Companies willing to survive the numeric economy are forced to collaborate with each other in order to maximize their co-creation of value. This co-creation exists for many reasons: to sell and acquire information, goods and services, to optimize the quality of procedures, to improve security and privacy, etc. In this paper, we analyze and model value co-creation through three dimensions: the value’s nature, the method of value creation, and the business object impacted by the value. By combining these dimensions, we afterwards suggest different types of co-creation schemas, and we propose an abstract language to communicate them. The latter is finally validated by applying the The Physics of Notations guidelines.