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

Can Enterprise Architecture Be Based on the Business Strategy?

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a set of documents describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA facilitates information systems planning and helps improve business and IT alignment. Traditionally, the concept of EA was closely coupled with the business strategy and mainstream EA methodologies recommend starting the EA effort from documenting the business strategy and then using it as the basis for defining the required structure of information systems. This conceptual paper discusses in detail four practical problems with the business strategy that question its value as the basis for EA initiatives. The presence of these problems challenges one of the most cherished beliefs or even axioms of the EA discipline: that EA should be based on the business strategy. This paper raises a number of questions regarding the information inputs necessary for the EA effort and calls for further research in respective directions

Enterprise Architecture: A Reconceptualization Is Needed

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. Current literature conceptualizes EA as a comprehensive blueprint of an enterprise organized according to a logical framework and describing its current state, desired future state and migration roadmap. However, the current concept of EA originates from non-empirical sources, lacks demonstrated examples of its successful practical implementation and deviates from the real practical use of EA in organizations in multiple important aspects. Due to these and other problems the notion of EA needs to be reconceptualized in order to more accurately reflect empirical realities. In this paper, based on an extensive EA literature review, I describe the problems with the current concept of EA, demonstrate the critical inconsistencies between this concept and the real practice use of EA in organizations and illustrate them based on a recent exemplary case study of a successful EA practice. Although this paper justifies the need for the reconceptualization of EA and points to the most essential aspects of this reconceptualization, it does not offer an alternative ready-to-use conceptualization and represents only the first step towards developing a new, evidence-based concept of EA. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol10/iss4/2

The Problem of Engagement in Enterprise Architecture Practice: An Exploratory Case Study

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA practice is an organizational activity that implies using EA artifacts for facilitating decision-making and improving business and IT alignment. EA practice involves numerous participants ranging from C-level executives to IT project teams and effective engagement between these stakeholders and architects is critically important for success. However, the notion of engagement has received insufficient attention in the EA literature and the problem of establishing engagement has not been examined in detail. Based on a single in-depth case study, this paper explores the problem of achieving engagement in EA practice. Using the grounded theory method, we identify 16 direct and two indirect inhibitors of engagement and unify them into a holistic conceptual model. The model explains how the inhibitors of engagement undermine the ability to realize value from practicing EA

The Role of Engagement in Achieving Business-IT Alignment Through Practicing Enterprise Architecture

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 case study, we construct a preliminary model to show how EA practice can facilitate engagement to achieve business-IT alignment. The model identifies enablers and barriers to stakeholder engagement in EA practice. Our findings contribute to the EA and alignment literature by clarifying various aspects of the relationship between practicing EA, engagement and alignment as well as by identifying relevant factors affecting stakeholder engagement

Roles of Different Artifacts in Enterprise Architecture Practice: An Exploratory Study

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective consisting of multiple diverse documents, or artifacts. However, the existing EA literature does not offer any comprehensive theories explaining the practical usage and roles of individual EA artifacts constituting EA. To address this gap, based on five case studies of established EA practices and confirmatory interviews with ten EA experts, we develop a descriptive theory explaining the roles of different EA artifacts in an EA practice. The resulting theory articulates six general types of EA artifacts (Considerations, Designs, Landscapes, Outlines, Standards and Visions) and explains their type-specific practical roles, including their informational contents, typical usage scenarios and ensuing organizational benefits. This paper presents the first available theory describing the usage of EA artifacts in organizations and suggests that EA scholars should switch their focus from studying EA in general to studying individual EA artifacts

Investigating the Usage of Enterprise Architecture Artifacts

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to improve business and IT alignment. EA literature describes many detailed EA methodologies, artifacts and frameworks to organize them. However, establishing EA practice still remains a challenging endeavor with a low success rate. On the other hand, this is not surprising since most organizations successfully practicing EA do not follow EA methodologies and frameworks strictly but adapt them to their own needs or even use them only as idea contributors. Therefore, in order to improve the success rate of EA initiatives, it is necessary to understand better how exactly successful companies adapt EA methodologies in practice. In particular, we argue that the most significant problems in EA practice arise because the usage of individual EA artifacts in practice is poorly understood. In this paper we describe how we are going to investigate the usage of EA artifacts to close this gap

The Structuring of Enterprise Architecture Functions in Organizations:Towards a Systematic Theory

Enterprise architecture (EA) practice is a complex set of organizational activities enabling well-coordinated business and IT planning. Organizationally, EA practices are implemented by specialized EA functions, which have existed in many companies in some or the other form for decades. However, the problem of structuring EA functions according to the specific needs of organizations received almost no attention in the literature. To address this gap, 47 organizations and their EA functions were analyzed. Using the grounded theory method, the study develops a comprehensive theoretical model explaining the dependence between the relevant properties of organizations and the structures of their EA functions, including the appropriate numbers of architects, their specialization and structural alignment. This study offers arguably the first full-fledged theory on the structuring of EA functions and also addresses multiple practical questions that are likely to be asked by IT leaders willing to establish EA functions in their organizations.</p

Enterprise Architecture Practice under a Magnifying Glass: Linking Artifacts, Activities, Benefits, and Blockers

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts that describe an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to improve business and IT alignment. EA artifacts can be very diverse in nature and have different use cases in disparate organizational activities. Previous studies have identified numerous benefits and challenges of establishing EA practice. However, most existing studies discuss the benefits and problems of EA practice in general without relating them to any particular activities constituting EA practice. In order to address this gap, this study analyzes the benefits and blockers associated with specific EA-related activities and respective artifacts. Based on 18 interviews with practicing architects, we identify eight consistent activity areas constituting EA practice. Each of these activity areas essentially represents a separate “story” in the context of EA practice and implies certain activities supported by some EA artifacts leading to specific benefits often impeded by some blockers. These eight activity areas provide a more detailed understanding of EA practice than the one offered by the current EA literature. Moreover, our findings indicate that EA practice should not be viewed as some homogeneous organizational activity and that EA should not be conceptualized simply as a unified blueprint for information systems. We also argue for the need to rethink the very terms “enterprise architecture” and “EA practice”, which appear to be oversimplified and unsuitable for analyzing EA practice in depth. This study has significant implications for both research and practice