Understanding the Role of Organizational Culture for Design and Success of Enterprise Architecture Management

Enterprise architecture management is considered a valuable means to guide the consistent design and evolution of increasingly complex information systems. Despite existing research on EAM methods and models, organizations often face serious difficulties making EAM effective. The paper proposes to take organizational culture as a highly aggregated construct describing the context of EAM initiatives for building situational - or for that matter culture sensitive EAM methods - into account. We find that organizational culture significantly moderates the impact of EAM’s design on EAM’s success. In group culture, hierarchical culture and developmental culture it is essential to develop EAM from a passive into an actively designing approach to make it effective. Particularly in group culture it is rewarding to strive for an EAM approach that impacts stakeholders outside the IT department

SOA-Migration und - Integration auf Basis von Service-Repositories

Zusammenfassungen: Serviceorientierte Architekturen (SOA) spielen eine wichtige Rolle in der Gestaltung von Unternehmensarchitekturen. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, wie mithilfe von Indikatoren der Migrations- und Integrationsbedarf klassischer Applikationslandschaften in serviceorientierte Architekturen bewertet werden kann. Anhand der Indikatoren lassen sich Normstrategien für die Priorisierung der Migration und Integration ableiten. Dadurch können fallspezifisch Fragestellungen, wie z. B., wie viel Serviceorientierung notwendig ist, unter wirtschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten beantwortet werden. Am Beispiel eines Service-Repositories bei der Sparkassen Informatik GmbH & Co. KG wird gezeigt, wie dieses systematisch für die Bewertung von Services genutzt werden kan

Wertbeitrag serviceorientierter Architekturen: ein Framework für Business Cases als Ergebnis einer empirischen Studie

Zusammenfassungen: Serviceorientierte Architekturen (SOA) werden von vielen als zukunftsweisendes Architekturparadigma gesehen. Jedoch können bisher nur wenige Unternehmen auf profunde Erfahrungen zurückblicken. Unternehmen, die erste SOA-Projekte abgeschlossen haben, stehen vor der Herausforderung, den Wertbeitrag der neuen Lösung zu beurteilen, um Entscheidungen für Folgeprojekte treffen zu können. Unternehmen, die vor ersten SOA-Projekten stehen, müssen evaluieren, welche Vorteile durch SOA realisiert werden können. Diese Unsicherheiten zeigen sich in unterschiedlichen Meinungen von IT- und Fachbereichen, die unterschiedliche Kosten- und Nutzenaspekte in die Bewertung einbeziehen. Im Rahmen einer empirischen Studie mit Organisationen aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum wurde ein Framework zur Bewertung der Wirtschaftlichkeit von SOA erarbeitet. Das Framework beinhaltet quantitative und qualitative Gröβen, um den Wertbeitrag für die Fach- und IT-Seite abzubilden. Um die tatsächlich durch SOA erzielten Ergebnisse zu verdeutlichen, beinhaltet das Framework Berechnungsbeispiele aus den beteiligten Organisationen. Ein weiteres Ergebnis der Studie ist ein Katalog von Risiken, die mit der Einführung von SOA verbunden sind, sowie Strategien, diese Risiken zu minimieren. Die Erfahrungen der Unternehmen zeigen, dass die Entscheidung für oder gegen SOA häufig nicht auf harten Zahlen basiert, gleichzeitig jedoch ein steigendes Bedürfnis nach solider Bewertung und Rechtfertigung besteht. Die Ergebnisse der Studie unterstützen Praktiker aus Fachbereichen und IT bei der Beurteilung von SOA durch konkrete adaptierbare Kosten-, Nutzen- und Risikodimensione

Criteria of progress for information systems design theories

According to Kuhn, science and progress are strongly interrelated. In this paper, we define criteria of progress for design theories. A broad analysis of the literature on information systems design science reveals that there is no consensus on the criteria of progress for design theories. We therefore analyze different concepts of progress for natural science theories. Based on well-founded criteria stemming from the philosophy of science and referring to natural science theories, we develop a set of criteria of progress for design theories. In summary, our analysis results in six criteria of progress for design theories: A design theory is partially progressive compared to another if it is ceteris paribus (1) more useful, (2) internally more consistent, (3) externally more consistent, (4) more general, (5) simpler, or (6) more fruitful of further research. Although the measurement of these criteria is not the focus of this paper, the problem of measurement cannot be totally neglected. We therefore discuss different methods for measuring the criteria based on different concepts of truth: the correspondence theory of truth, the coherence theory of truth, and the consensus theory of truth. We finally show the applicability of the criteria with an exampl

Business Models in the Data Economy: A Case Study from the Business Partner Data Domain

Data management seems to experience a renaissance today. One particular trend in the so-called data economy has been the emergence of business models based on the provision of high-quality data. In this context, the paper examines business models of business partner data providers. The paper explores as to how and why these business models differ. Based on a study of six cases, the paper identifies three different business model patterns. A resource-based view is taken to explore the details of these patterns. Furthermore, the paper develops a set of propositions that help understand why the different business models evolved and how they may develop in the future. Finally, the paper discusses the ongoing market transformation process indicating a shift from traditional value chains toward value networks - a change which, if it is sustainable, would seriously threaten the business models of well-established data providers, such as Dun & Bradstreet, for example

Virtual Decoupling for IT/Business Alignment - Conceptual Foundations, Architecture Design and Implementation Example

IT/business alignment is one of the main topics of information systems research. If IT artifacts and business-related artifacts are coupled point-to-point, however, complex architectures become unmanageable over time. In computer science, concepts like the ANSI/SPARC three-level database architecture propose an architecture layer which decouples external views on data and the implementation view of data. In this paper, a similar approach for IT/business alignment is proposed. The proposed alignment architecture is populated by enterprise services as elementary artifacts. Enterprise services link software components and process activities. They are aggregated into applications and subsequently into domains for planning/design and communication purposes. Most design approaches for the construction of enterprise services, applications and domains are top-down, i.e. they decompose complex artifacts on a stepwise basis. As an alternative which takes into account coupling semantics, we propose a bottom-up approach which is demonstrated for the identification of domains. Our approach is evaluated using a telecommunications equipment case stud

AN INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ARCHITECTUAL TRANSFORMATION

The need for constant transformation of enterprises is omnipresent. A discipline that has been proposed to support the coordination of enterprise transformation is Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) which has grown to a mature discipline in academia and practice. However, it can be observed in practice that it still is a challenge to introduce such an architectural coordination approach for supporting enterprise transformation. This may be due to the reason that the institutional context of EAM is only little understood, that is, the interplay between the pressures EAM exerts on the organisation and the response strategies of this organisation. The paper reviews existing work on institutional theory and confirms by means of a case study that the institutional factors of cause, constituents, content, control, and context are not only relevant for EAM but may be consistently linked to response strategies of acquiesce, compromise, avoid, defy, and manipulate. Moreover the case study implies to add additional institutional factors for EAM, namely trust and participation

Panel: A call for action in tackling environmental sustainability through green information technologies and systems

In parallel to widely accepted behavioural research, Design Research (DR) has emerged in Information Systems. Nonetheless, the debate about the scientificity of DR is still ongoing. In the course of this debate, the role of scientific progress has hardly been discussed. But, doubtlessly, scientific progress is regarded as one of the main aims of science; science can even be defined by scientific progress. Philosophy of science has therefore developed a variety of concepts for scientific progress mostly adapted to explanatory and/or predictive theories. Nonetheless, the output of DR differs from those theories; therefore, concepts developed cannot be applied to DR without further ado. In this paper, we propose a first concept for scientific progress of DR artefacts. Because of the complexity of the field we firstly restrict to the research question: What is scientific progress of DR artefacts? Progress is commonly defined as a transition from step A to B whereby B is “better” than A. The aim of our research is to identify criteria for concretizing what is “better” in the context of DR and to define criteria of progressive DR artefacts. We thereby identified the following five criteria: utility, internal consistency, external consistency, scope, and efficiency

Critical Success Factors ofService Orientation inInformation Systems Engineering: Derivation and Empirical Evaluation ofaCausal Model

Service orientation has been a major buzz-word in recent years. While the buzz is on a decline, organizations are slowly, but steadily moving towards service oriented designs. However, service orientation turns out to be as much of a managerial challenge as of a technical one. The most important complexity drivers in the service oriented design of information systems seem to be (a) inconsistent design goals of stakeholders and (b) the pursuit of exhaustive service orientation coverage. This research focuses on the following two questions: (1)What are the characteristics of successful implementations of service oriented information systems, and (2)what are the critical success factors influencing, driving and/or, determining these characteristics? Data of an empirical analysis is used to test a set of cause-effect relationship hypotheses based on nine latent variables. In the core of this model we differentiate the variables "overall service orientation infrastructure success” and "service orientation project success”. The hypothesized interrelationships between the nine variables lead to a causal model which is proven to hol