The alignment factors of business-IT on enterprise architecture : A systematic literature review

Endi Putro, Meyliana, Achmad Nizar Hidayanto, Harjanto Prabow

Business-IT Alignment through Enterprise Architecture in a Strategic Alignment Dimension: A Review

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) refers to the fit between business and IT strategy. BITA is important for realizing the achievement of organizational goals, enhancing performance, and gaining competitive advantage in an organization. BITA is a crucial concern for organizations and remains a top topic from the perspective of business executives. BITA can be realized through Enterprise Architecture (EA), which is a comprehensive and holistic instrument for managing and maintaining BITA. However, despite numerous literature studies on the BITA model or framework through EA, the research is currently more focused on technology planning than strategic planning. Meanwhile, strategic planning is the most crucial challenge of the EA framework because it is the embodiment of BITA in the strategic alignment dimension. The current study aims to conduct a literature review of BITA through EA in the strategic alignment dimension. This literature study resulted in 25 out of 100 papers and classified into five strategic alignments. The review identified 25 relevant papers out of 100 and categorized them into five strategic alignments. The study's contributions include solutions in the form of stages for developing strategic alignment through EA based on business strategy models. The five stages are as follows: 1) Identification of vision, mission, and goals; 2) SWOT-based strategy analysis; 3) BSC-based strategy mapping; 4) BPMN-based business process mapping; and 5) Determination of IS/IT. This study's impact on further research is that it can be used as a basis for developing BITA through EA, based on the five stages identified

Business-IT Alignment through Enterprise Architecture in a Strategic Alignment Dimension: A Review

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) refers to the fit between business and IT strategy. BITA is important for realizing the achievement of organizational goals, enhancing performance, and gaining competitive advantage in an organization. BITA is a crucial concern for organizations and remains a top topic from the perspective of business executives. BITA can be realized through Enterprise Architecture (EA), which is a comprehensive and holistic instrument for managing and maintaining BITA. However, despite numerous literature studies on the BITA model or framework through EA, the research is currently more focused on technology planning than strategic planning. Meanwhile, strategic planning is the most crucial challenge of the EA framework because it is the embodiment of BITA in the strategic alignment dimension. The current study aims to conduct a literature review of BITA through EA in the strategic alignment dimension. This literature study resulted in 25 out of 100 papers and classified into five strategic alignments. The review identified 25 relevant papers out of 100 and categorized them into five strategic alignments. The study's contributions include solutions in the form of stages for developing strategic alignment through EA based on business strategy models. The five stages are as follows: 1) Identification of vision, mission, and goals; 2) SWOT-based strategy analysis; 3) BSC-based strategy mapping; 4) BPMN-based business process mapping; and 5) Determination of IS/IT. This study's impact on further research is that it can be used as a basis for developing BITA through EA, based on the five stages identified

Towards different enterprise architecture project types

This research is in the enterprise architecture (EA) research field. EA is a developing discipline that in broad terms emphasizes all aspects of organizational design and development, including enabling information technology. However, there are various interpretations and understandings of EA, with little agreement on them. Therefore, organizations use EA in numerous ways to achieve different goals. These vary from purely information technology- (IT) related, internal business and IT-related to business environment-related goals. Enterprise architects also have different understandings of EA, which influence the way they perform EA work and consequently EA deliverables and achievement of EA project goals. In this paper a preliminary list of different EA project types is compiled through a hermeneutic literature review, aiming to establish a comprehensive list of EA project types. It is suggested that knowledge of different EA project types assist in the selection of suitable enterprise architects to achieve specific EA project goals.http://www.springer.com/series/7911hj2021Informatic

Evaluating the factors influencing Alignment of IT and Business in a Cloud Computing Environment

Aligning IT with business strategically is the recent area of attention among researchers and practitioners because of its potential impact on organizational performance. Currently, large numbers of enterprises are migrating towards cloud computing as on-premise implementation of Information technology (IT) infrastructure is expensive. The purpose of this research is to examine the factors that influence the alignment of IT and business in cloud computing environment. Therefore, this study used the Strategic Alignment Maturity (SAM) model as a framework to validate the evolution of IT-business alignment in a cloud computing platform. A questionnaire-based survey method was employed for data collection. The respondents are IT and business executives of adopter firms in India. The structural equation modeling technique is used to statistically validate the model. From the results, it is found that all the constructs contribute significantly to business alignment with cloud computing except partnering and skill maturity. This study contributes to the research related to the application of SAM model in investigating the alignment of cloud computing with business. Software vendors and information technology consultants can utilize this study in assisting a client in the alignment of business with IT strategically in a cloud computing environment

Leveraging business-IT alignment through enterprise architecture—an empirical study to estimate the extents

Achieving business-IT alignment (BITA) as a long-term and appraising management issue can be accomplished in a few ways, enterprise architecture (EA) being one of them. This paper attempts to give a critical understanding of the effects of performing EA on different aspects of BITA maturity through a global survey. A total of 236 respondents from 60 countries, a relatively large response for a survey, were selected. The main purpose of the research is to examine these impacts and to identify directions for innovative practices in the future, the unique contributions of this work. A questionnaire designed on the Luftman’s maturity model as well as various other statistical methods, including PLS path modeling, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test and Mann–Whitney U test, are applied to understand how the EA can deliver benefits. The implications of our findings in this study as well as its limitations are discussed from different viewpoints to enable both academics and practitioners to detect the flaws in the existing EA frameworks and propose improvements

EXPLOITING KASPAROV'S LAW: ENHANCED INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATION IN DOD SIMULATION-BASED TRAINING ENVIRONMENTS

Despite recent advances in the representation of logistics considerations in DOD staff training and wargaming simulations, logistics information systems (IS) remain underrepresented. Unlike many command and control (C2) systems, which can be integrated with simulations through common protocols (e.g., OTH-Gold), many logistics ISs require manpower-intensive human-in-the-loop (HitL) processes for simulation-IS (sim-IS) integration. Where automated sim-IS integration has been achieved, it often does not simulate important sociotechnical system (STS) dynamics, such as information latency and human error, presenting decision-makers with an unrealistic representation of logistics C2 capabilities in context. This research seeks to overcome the limitations of conventional sim-IS interoperability approaches by developing and validating a new approach for sim-IS information exchange through robotic process automation (RPA). RPA software supports the automation of IS information exchange through ISs’ existing graphical user interfaces. This “outside-in” approach to IS integration mitigates the need for engineering changes in ISs (or simulations) for automated information exchange. In addition to validating the potential for an RPA-based approach to sim-IS integration, this research presents recommendations for a Distributed Simulation Engineering and Execution Process (DSEEP) overlay to guide the engineering and execution of sim-IS environments.Major, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Investigation of the lack of common understanding in the discipline of enterprise architecture

Despite growing interest in the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA) around the world in recent years, EA suffers from a lack of common understanding because researchers and practitioners do not use a shared approach and terminology when describing EA, its application, methodology, process or outcomes. A few studies have conducted a deep analysis on the extent of this situation but they all have methodological limitations. The objective of this thesis was to fill this gap in applying well know methodological design and techniques to shed some light on the lack of common understanding in the discipline of EA. To achieve this objective, this thesis is subdivided in three complementary studies which treat each a specific aspect. The first study conducts a Systematic Mapping Study and identifies, and classifies, sources of variety in the literature which could be on the basis of the lack of common understanding in the discipline of EA. The second study conducts a Systematic Literature Review using concepts from the academic field of terminology and thematic analysis techniques and identifies sources of implicitness, incompleteness, complexity and incoherence in the definitions of EA which could be on the basis of the lack of common understanding. The third study conducts an opinion survey with EA practitioners analyzed with the help of exploratory data analysis techniques, and identifies different EA practitioners’ major worldviews regarding organizations and the people within them. The findings of this thesis contribute to a better knowledge of the lack of common understanding in the discipline of EA and provide a better possibility to deal with this lack, as implication for practitioners. These findings also provide relevant directions to researchers for future studies concerning this topic or using the methodological design and techniques applied. To continue clarifying the characteristics of the lack of common understanding of EA, this thesis recommends both researcher and practitioner to support more descriptive and experimental research which prioritize the practice of EA (EA evolution, EA measurement, practitioners’ role, practitioners’ worldviews, etc.), to pay more attention to the definition of EA they provide when they produce a new article, and to integrate all ways of approaching EA into a shared reference, even if they seem to be divergent and conflictual sometimes

ArchiSmartCity: Modelling the Alignment of Services and Information in Smart City Architectures

Digital transformation in the public sector describes the shift from traditional creation and delivery of services, into the massive use of digital technologies to enhance public services. The digitalisation of public administration presents significant challenges for many municipalities in the social, economic, environmental, and sustainable dimensions. Cities take advantage of the rapid advances in information and communication technologies capabilities to make the provision of city services (e.g., health service, transport service, air-quality service, education service) more efficient. These modern urban environments are commonly referred to as Smart Cities, where advanced and innovative services are offered to improve the overall quality of life for the citizens. Smart Cities are complex systems that involve diverse stakeholders and concerns, use heterogeneous information systems and technologies, and aim to fulfill multiple and conflicting goals. Such complexity challenges the provision of services that may fail to achieve city goals and meet the needs of citizens due to the lack of alignment between city services and the information systems that support them. Evidence of this is the existence of city services and systems that fail to address the real needs of stakeholders, and are not perceived as valuable by them because they do not interoperate, leading to duplication of work and incompatible solutions. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an established planning and governance approach to manage the complexity of corporate systems. EA presents a holistic view of organisational business strategies and IT initiatives to achieve organisational goals by adopting a comprehensive perspective on the overall architecture. Smart Cities can be seen as urban enterprises with more complex and multi-dimensional systems that require integration among smarter services from different domains (e.g., mobility, energy, public safety, emergency, education, culture, etc.) to respond to diverse interests and objectives from a range of stakeholders. Existing research on EAs for Smart Cities uses the concept of layers and views to describe architecture content and guide its implementation. However, these approaches do not identify the concepts to describe and model the relationships between the service and information layers which are essential to address the strategic alignment. Furthermore, there is an absence of such concepts in languages and metamodels for Enterprise Modelling. These architectures and metamodels mostly emphasize technical aspects that constitute Smart Cities and they rarely focus on city services and their strategic aspects towards delivering the cities vision and objectives. This research introduces ArchiSmartCity, a metamodel that addresses the alignment between city services and information systems according to Smart City strategies to assist in the digitalisation of public city services. In this thesis, design principles and design requirements are defined and instantiated by designing the ArchiSmartCity metamodel that explicitly expresses this alignment, following a design science research approach. Further, ArchiSmartCity is developed and implemented as a coherent extension of an EA metamodel to describe an expository instantiation and its application. ArchiSmartCity is evaluated in an iterative manner within multiple-case studies, by creating real-world services models that are validated by Smart City domain experts. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates and evaluates ArchiSmartCity by developing a computer-based solution for semantic alignment analysis. Ex-post evaluation results demonstrate the quality and practical relevance of the developed metamodel extension for cities and municipalities. This study contributes to the current understanding of how city strategies should be aligned with Smart City implementations by providing a prescriptive view and metamodel to guide coherent and unambiguous architecture design in the Smart Cities field