Alignment Framework in Enterprise Architecture Development

Enterprise architecture has attracted the attention of information systems (IS) academics as well as information technology (IT) and business professionals. While enterprise architecture has been proposed as a solution to the business-IT alignment problem, there is little theoretical basis that would explain how enterprise architecture work can lead to better alignment. Here we draw on the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to highlight the role of enterprise architecture in achieving and sustaining such alignment. Specifically, we argue that enterprise architecture work helps to achieve agreement and thus alignment of the interests of internal actors within the context of enterprise interests and inscribes such agreement into architectural artifacts. Such artifacts can then be used in negotiations with external parties, such as IT vendors, thereby protecting the interests of the enterprise. Enterprise architecture work is also likely to reduce the likelihood of members of the enterprise, such as IT staff, from forming close ties with external parties, such as IT solution vendors, at the expense of the interests of the enterprise. We argue that this would result in stronger business-IT alignment. We conclude by highlighting two important goals of enterprise architecture as viewed through the ANT lens: (1) to help achieve an alignment of interests within the enterprise, and (2) to serve as a tool for protecting the interests of the enterprise in internal and external negotiations. These in turn point to the importance of the soft skills of enterprise architects and the need for clear and readily understandable enterprise architecture artifacts.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been identified as a means to Business-/IT-Alignment, cost reduction or to facilitate change. Research has been focusing on the effectiveness of EA management while the enterprise architecting process is the process of developing, managing, utilizing and maintaining architectural descriptions (ADs) for EA. In this paper we present the results of a literature review on the process of enterprise architecting. Our research contribution is a consolidated view on the challenges and issues arising throughout the architecting process.

2008

The concept of Enterprise Architecture (EA) has long been considered as a means to improve system integration and achieve better IT-business alignment by IT professionals. Recently, the subject gained significant visibility by IS academics. In this paper we provide an overview of existing EA research and practice and present key functions and benefits of EA as seen by IT professionals based on the results of the SIM Information Management Practices Survey. We then identify and discuss directions for future research, including the development of EA definition and nomological net, as well as development of theoretical propositions regarding EA business value.

2011

Enterprise architecture describes the principles and guidelines in governing the implementation of information, technology and business mission in organizations. The main aim of enterprise architecture is to improve the alignment between information technology strategy and business strategy. The intent of our study is to broaden and strengthen the understanding of enterprise architecture by specifically looking at the business issues. We used Systemic Enterprise Architecture Methodology (SEAM) as the foundation of the study's theoretical framework. Data was empirically gathered using questionnaire survey respondents who are concerned with the adoption, planning and implementation of EA in their organizations. A survey research method was employed involving one hundred organizations chosen at random. Descriptive and exploratory methods were used for data analysis. The findings gave us a general outlook of the EA activities in Malaysian organizations and its future directions. The study found Business and IT Alignment, and Business Change, which is also followed closely by Application Renewal as the important business issue in which enterprise architecture is required.

Vojnotehnički glasnik

The link between business and information technology (IT) has been a constant topic in both academic and industrial circles for more than 30 years. Alignment (compliance) between business and IT is generally seen as an important component and a basis for optimizing the performance of any organization. Due to constant changes in the IT world as well as in modern business, the work on the alignment of business and IT is gaining in importance. The cause of the alignment problem lies primarily in different levels of business abstraction and IT concepts. In order to solve this problem, for a long time, the current approach to the development of information systems (IS) is based on the so-called enterprise architecture (EA). In this paper, a review of literature dealing with EA is given. The focus of the literature review was the identification of works dealing with motivational aspects for the use of EA as well as those that deal more closely with the process of development of EA using general and domain specific frameworks. The aim was also to give an insight into the current picture of academic research in this field and the use of EA in order to solve the problems of business and IT alignment. This overview can be a starting point for participants in EA development using existing frameworks as well as for developing specific frameworks that would be applied in specific domains.

2020

Business-IT alignment describes the consistency between the business strategy and processes and IT strategy and processes. Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to facilitate information systems planning and improve business-IT alignment. Effective engagement between business and IT stakeholders has long been recognized as one of the major critical success factors of EA practice enabling the realization of business-IT alignment which in turn, contributes to higher organizational performance. However, the stakeholder engagement in EA practice received only limited attention in the literature and factors that facilitate or impede effective engagement are still unclear. To address this gap, this research-in-progress paper explores in detail how organizations enhance stakeholder engagement in EA practice to achieve business-IT alignment. Based on an ongoing in-depth ...

2012

In this paper we are not so much concerned with enterprise architecture as a product or process, but rather with the competencies of the professionals who are responsible for the creation of an enterprise architecture, i.e. the enterprise architects themselves. We present the integrated result of three surveys held in the Netherlands, on the competencies required from enterprise architects. The surveys were also used to clarify the distinction between the competencies needed from enterprise architects, and the ones needed from information architects. The surveys indeed indicated there to be a fundamental difference in the competencies required from these two roles. The reported research is part of the larger research programme General Enterprise Architecting (GEA) on the governance of coherence in enterprises by means of enterprise architecture. Keywords-enterprise coherence governance, enterprise architecture, enterprise architecture competencies, information architecture competencies. α This work has been partially sponsored by the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (www.fnr.lu), via the PEARL programme.

Communications of the Association for Information Systems

Management of the enterprise architecture has become increasingly recognized as a crucial part of both business and IT management. Still, a common understanding and methodological consistency seems far from being developed. Acknowledging the significant role of research in moving the development process along, this article employs different bibliometric methods, complemented by an extensive qualitative interpretation of the research field, to provide a unique overview of the enterprise architecture literature. After answering our research questions about the collaboration via co-authorships, the intellectual structure of the research field and its most influential works, and the principal themes of research, we propose an agenda for future research based on the findings from the above analyses and their comparison to empirical insights from the literature. In particular, our study finds a considerable degree of co-authorship clustering and a positive impact of the extent of co-authorship on the diffusion of works on enterprise architecture. In addition, this article identifies three major research streams and shows that research to date has revolved around specific themes, while some of high practical relevance receive minor attention. Hence, the contribution of our study is manifold and offers support for researchers and practitioners alike.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is widely employed to reduce complexity and to improve business–information technology (IT) alignment. Despite the efforts by practitioners and academics in proposing approaches to smoothen EA development, it is not easy to find a fully successful EA. Because EA development is a complex endeavour, it is important to understand the obstacles that practitioners face during EA development. With the grounded theory, we studied how obstacles during EA development emerged from practitioners’ point of view in 15 large enterprises. The study identifies lack of communication and collaboration as the core obstacle that can explain many other obstacles. Communication and collaboration were also harmed by other perceived EA development obstacles, including lack of knowledge and support inside organization and issues imposed by external parties, hesitation in training personnel, setting too ambitious goals, constant change of management, (lack of) clarity in EA development process, lack of budget, forcing personnel to adopt EA, lack of motivation, organizational culture, and organizational structure deficiencies. The lack of communication and collaboration caused several undesired effects to organizations, such as being unable to set common goals and achieve a shared understanding, personnel’s distrust, endangered EA governance, lack of innovation capability, lost competitive edge, and ineffective EA outputs. The study highlights that organisations should improve their communication and collaboration before embarking on EA to encounter fewer obstacles. We provide four recommendations for practitioners to improve communication and collaboration in EA development.

Although researchers report challenges that occur during enterprise architecture development (in general), there is lack of an elaborate description of those that occur during enterprise architecture creation -particularly if organizational stakeholders are to be deeply involved. Yet understanding challenges of involving organizational stakeholders when creating enterprise architecture is a prerequisite for devising a relevant solution to enterprise architects. An exploratory survey was therefore conducted with the aim of investigating challenges that enterprise architects face when they involve organizational stakeholders during enterprise architecture creation. This paper presents and discusses findings from the survey. The survey results generally indicate why 90% of enterprise architects face challenges when delivering products of enterprise architecture creation, although 96% of architects closely collaborate with organizational stakeholders during enterprise architecture creation.

2011

The business and Information Technology (IT) alignment issue has become one of the top ten IT management issues since 1980. Since then IT has strived to achieve alignment with business goals and objectives through many efforts. Enterprise Architecture (EA) to provide the foundation of IT in an organization and has been extensively covered in the past two decades with most of the efforts focusing on Technology Architecture, Information Architecture and Application Architecture and less emphasis on Business Architecture (BA). This research developed an approach with supporting methodology to develop a comprehensive BA, and to address and improve business / IT alignment following a qualitative research methodology. The research was based on 1. the proposition that a comprehensive BA is required to enhance Business IT alignment, and 2. that the BA should be developed before the Information Architecture, Application Architecture, and Technical Architecture. The key deliverable of the res...

Journal of Enterprise Transformation, 2018

Enterprise architecture (EA) is more of an applied discipline than a theoretical framework. This is mainly because it is expected to guide an organization's practices, such as technology infrastructure management, business process design and information governance, toward sustainability and competitiveness. However, this has not often been the case in many organizations, in that the concept continues to gain more theoretical attention than implementation and practice. Thus, the objective of this study was to examine and gain an understanding of the implications, theorizing of EA has on both academic and business industries. The interpretivist philosophy, qualitative methods, and case study approach were employed in the study. From the analysis of the qualitative data, the implications of theorizing EA were identified. Based on the findings, a model was developed. The model draws on and shows the interconnectivity and interrelationship between EA theory and practice.

2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2011

Many organizations have adopted an Enterprise Architecture (EA) approach because of the potential benefits resulting from a more standardized and coordinated approach to systems development and management, and because of the tighter alignment of business and information technology in support of business strategy execution. At the same time, experience shows that having an effective EA practice is easier said than done and the coordination and implementation efforts can be daunting. While nobody disputes the potential benefits of well architected systems, there is no empirical evidence showing whether the organizational benefits of EA outweigh the coordination and management costs associated with the architecting process. Furthermore, most practitioners we have interviewed can provide technical metrics for internal EA efficiency and effectiveness, but none of our participants were able to provide concrete metrics or evidence about the bottom line impact that EA has on the organization as a whole. In this article we raise key issues associated with the evaluation of the organizational impact of EA and propose a framework for empirical research in this area.

ABSTRACT In a global, digitised economy, organisations in all sectors have become progressively more dependent on Information Technology (IT). It is critical that this dependency is effectively managed and for this reason, several approaches such as IT governance, IT risk management, business process management (BPM) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) frameworks have been proposed. IT is often seen not to meet business expectations and one of the reasons for this is a lack of Business-IT alignment. The alignment of IT and business strategies is, therefore, becoming more essential in organisations since most processes within a business require IT assistance. Research shows that organisations struggle to achieve this. This paper proposes the use of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework to achieve the alignment between IT and business. Using an EA framework to align the organisational and IT strategies is beneficial as the EA framework covers the organisational, operational and techn...

Information Systems and e-Business Management, 2013

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. This paper also presents the approach in practice, based on a qualitative appraisal of interviews with strategic directors across different industries. With its integrated conceptual guideline for using enterprise architecture to facilitate corporate strategic management and the insights gained from the interviews, this paper not only delves more deeply into the research but also offers advice for both researchers and practitioners.