Architecture Practice: a fundamental discipline for information systems

Through analysing relations and dependency of architecture concepts, activities and frameworks, this paper presents an understanding of current architecture practice and points out its relevance and importance to large Information Systems (IS) development. The improvement of architecture practice in various architecture-related activities requires a re- definition of architecture roles and establishment of linkage and dependency of architecture products and activities to produce and use them. Architecture practice is growing and should be developed towards a fundamental engineering discipline for IS development and management such that it can be systematically taught at universities

Non-functional requirements in software architecture practice

Dealing with non-functional requirements (NFRs) has posed a challenge onto software engineers for many years. Over the years, many methods and techniques have been proposed to improve their elicitation, documentation, and validation. Knowing more about the state of the practice on these topics may benefit both practitioners’ and researchers’ daily work. A few empirical studies have been conducted in the past, but none under the perspective of software architects, in spite of the great influence that NFRs have on daily architects’ practices. This paper presents some of the findings of an empirical study based on 13 interviews with software architects. It addresses questions such as: who decides the NFRs, what types of NFRs matter to architects, how are NFRs documented, and how are NFRs validated. The results are contextualized with existing previous work.Preprin

TOGAF-based Enterprise Architecture Practice: An Exploratory Case Study

Organizations use enterprise architecture (EA), which describes an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective, to improve business and IT alignment. The literature describes many different methodologies to organize EA practice. However, organizations typically adapt these EA methodologies to their specific needs rather than use them directly “out of the box”. As a result, actual EA practices often differ substantially from the original EA methodologies. Unsurprisingly, establishing a successful EA practice remains troublesome even though multiple detailed methodologies exist. However, researchers have yet to investigate the adaptation of EA methodologies in organizations. In this paper, based on an in-depth qualitative case study, I explore the adaptation of the most popular EA methodology, TOGAF, to address this gap. In this paper, I holistically describe a TOGAF-based EA practice and analyze the adaptation of the TOGAF methodology in an organization. From my findings, I conclude that none of the TOGAF-specific recommendations proved useful in the studied EA practice. Supported by ample indirect evidence available in the existing EA literature, this study questions the value of TOGAF as a standard for EA practice. Moreover, the studied EA practice hardly resembles any established EA methodologies or theoretical conceptualizations. Therefore, the EA practice that this case study describes presents a new, largely unexplored empirical phenomenon. Although this study raises multiple “inconvenient” questions challenging the status quo in the EA discipline, it does not provide definite answers to most of these questions, which calls for further research on methodological aspects of EA practice

Artifacts, Activities, Benefits and Blockers: Exploring Enterprise Architecture Practice in Depth

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective and intended to improve business and IT alignment. The purpose of this study is to identify benefits and blockers associated with specific EA-related activities and respective artifacts. Most existing studies discuss the benefits and problems of EA practice in general without relating them to specific activities constituting EA practice. This study is based on 18 interviews with architects and leverages the grounded theory approach. As a result of our analysis, we identify eight consistent activity areas constituting EA practice. Each activity area implies certain activities supported by some EA artifacts leading to specific benefits often impeded by some blockers. Our analysis indicates that EA practice includes many diverse activities usually, though not always, closely associated with specific types of EA artifacts. Moreover, benefits and blockers of EA practice are also very activity-specific

Strategic planning to build transformational preparedness : an application of enterprise architecture practice

Enterprises are continuously evolving systems; this evolution can be directed or emergent. Enterprise transformation has special aspects due to the enterprise being a socio-technical system whereupon evolution happens on the levels of individuals / humans / organisation, on the level of the technology and on the level of the Information Systems that integrates the activities performed by humans and by technology. Furthermore, changes are typically continuous, due partly to external factors and partly to strategic foresights. Either way, transformation needs to happen so that the enterprise can keep satisfying its objectives. An important transformation mechanism is to perform mergers or acquisitions (M&amp;As). Interestingly, literature reveals that an unacceptably high percentage of M&amp;As do not achieve the aimed objectives and (as we demonstrate) the success of such trajectory depends on several factors. This article proposes a methodology to overcome potential problems by making necessary anticipatory transformations opening up a possibility to perform M&amp;As with a better chance of success.<br /

Software Architecture in Practice: Challenges and Opportunities

Software architecture has been an active research field for nearly four decades, in which previous studies make significant progress such as creating methods and techniques and building tools to support software architecture practice. Despite past efforts, we have little understanding of how practitioners perform software architecture related activities, and what challenges they face. Through interviews with 32 practitioners from 21 organizations across three continents, we identified challenges that practitioners face in software architecture practice during software development and maintenance. We reported on common software architecture activities at software requirements, design, construction and testing, and maintenance stages, as well as corresponding challenges. Our study uncovers that most of these challenges center around management, documentation, tooling and process, and collects recommendations to address these challenges.Comment: Preprint of Full Research Paper, the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE '23

The use of project case histories to assess undergraduate students' understanding of professional practice issues within architecture

This case study documents and reflects on the experience of introducing a practice-based assignment into the professional practice curriculum that enabled third year Architecture students at Strathclyde University to deepen their understanding of practice through the development of project case histories. It outlines the issues involved including the benefits which may be gained and the problems encountered in the process of assessment

Concretion, abstraction: the place of design processes in today architecture practice. Case Study: Sanaa

Observing contemporary architecture, as a practitioner and teacher, we become aware of the difficulty to understand the constitutive rules of a project and even when one can identify some, they are often limited in reach. The qualifiers for the word architecture have multiplied over time: minimalism, hygienism, socio-participationism, formalism, high-tech, low-tech, sustainable and eco are some examples. After one century of avant-gardes, architectural practice has been scattered in uncountable styles and streams. This has lead to a free market situation in which architects and teachers are confronted by an almost endless catalogue of approaches and styles: between multiple-choice and pragmatist refusal, this context provokes an issue with arbitrariness and relevance.Today the design processes are fundamental for the understanding of architectural projects, since universal rules of composition (harmony) and common ideals (beauty) have failed to support them exhaustively. A possible stable common ground to all constructed projects remains in the act of construction.Where architects like Peter Zumthor or Herzog &amp; de Meuron search a new way to use and interpret the materials and their use in our globalised world, SAANA work seems to remove materiality from architecture. This absence creates a kind of timeless spatiality which is not necessarily open or closed. However, this approach is not a negation of matter (in the sense of Semper), as making matter disappear implies a very strong commitment to materiality and very sophisticated technological solutions.This paper bears relevance for both practitioners and teachers at two levels: it explores the theoretical relevance and the practical tools of an outstanding referential architect. It explores, with the specific tools of the architect, the design process of their projects through the question of the construction. The analysis is based on both their writings and the realized projects

The Future for Architects?

In this study Building Futures sets out to explore the future role of architects, asking: who will design our buildings in 2025; what roles will those trained in architecture be doing then and how will architectural practice have changed as a result? Through a series of one-to-one interviews and round table sessions the study aims to examine the breadth of those who shape the built environment: including traditional architects and those working in expanded fields of practice, as well as clients, consultants and contractors. The resulting speculations should be an opportunity for discussion and interrogation- an exploration of the imminent changes likely to affect the industry over the next 15 years

Soft set theory based decision support system for mining electronic government dataset

Electronic government (e-gov) is applied to support performance and create more efficient and effective public services. Grouping data in soft-set theory can be considered as a decision-making technique for determining the maturity level of e-government use. So far, the uncertainty of the data obtained through the questionnaire has not been maximally used as an appropriate reference for the government in determining the direction of future e-gov development policy. This study presents the maximum attribute relative (MAR) based on soft set theory to classify attribute options. The results show that facilitation conditions (FC) are the highest variable in influencing people to use e-government, followed by performance expectancy (PE) and system quality (SQ). The results provide useful information for decision makers to make policies about their citizens and potentially provide recommendations on how to design and develop e-government systems in improving public services