Hacks, Simon

Jung, Jürgen

English

AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Association for Information Systems AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) ICIS 2020 TREO Papers 12-14-2020 Enterprise Architecture Debts – A Concept to Manage EA Evolution? Simon Hacks KTH Royal Institute of Technology, shacks@kth.se Jürgen Jung Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, jung.juergen@fb2.fra-uas.de Follow this and additional works at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_icis2020 Recommended Citation Hacks, Simon and Jung, Jürgen, "Enterprise Architecture Debts – A Concept to Manage EA Evolution?" (2020). ICIS 2020. 5. https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_icis2020/5 This material is brought to you by the TREO Papers at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been accepted for inclusion in ICIS 2020 by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contact elibrary@aisnet.org. TREO Technology, Research, Education, Opinion Presentation at TREO Talks in conjunction with the 41st International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2020 TREO Talks are not peer-reviewed and not a formal part of the ICIS 2020 Proceedings All TREO Talks are available in the TREO Talks section of the AIS e-Library Enterprise Architecture Debts – A Concept to Manage EA Evolution? Simon Hacks (shacks@kth.se); Jürgen Jung (jung.juergen@fb2.fra-uas.de)    The EA discipline provides methods and tools for aligning business with corporate IT and even fostering (digital) innovation in an organization. Despite the plethora of research and practice, business-IT alignment is still a challenging task as it requires changes throughout an enterprise's technology, processes, and organization. The complexity of those changes does not only lie in their nature but is also influenced by the corporate environment. Established IT systems, tech-nical debt (TD), outdated processes or even an extensive EAM framework might hamper the in-troduction or renovation of required business systems and processes. Furthermore, those debts slow down innovation and impose a tremendous risk on continuously optimizing business and IT. Even though these debts might have a big impact, it is sometimes hard to identify them explicitly due to the complexity of the organization and its processes. Methodical support is required in order to help with identifying them and mitigating the associated risk.   Hitherto, we have proposed the concept of EA Debts arising from the concept of TD. While TD focuses on technical aspects, like flaws in the code basis or issues with the database design, EA Debts try to capture a holistic view on the organization. EA Debts cover aspects among all EA layers but also their interdependencies. We assume that the concept of EA Debts can help enter-prise architects to cope with the upcoming challenges related to digitalization and agile projects. It provides them with a means to visualize the consequences of certain decisions on the EA and, thus, eases their argumentation towards a more sustainable architecture. As the concept of EA Debts is relatively young, it offers a wide spectrum of future research activ-ities: Adopting established metrics that can contribute to the assessment of EA Debt, but also developing new metrics. Thresholds need to be determined that indicate when a metric’s value should be interpreted as critical. Management techniques need to be established that keep the level of EA Debt in an organization under control. Finally, socio-technical aspects related to EA Debts in organizations should not be neglected. In our talk, we like to introduce the topic to the audience and gather their feedback. Furthermore, we like to invite other researchers to contribute to the EA Debt related stream of research in future and to collaborate with us.   References Hacks, Simon; Hofert, Hendrik; Salentin, Johannes; Yeong, Yoon Chow; Lichter, Horst (2019): To-wards the Definition of Enterprise Architecture Debts. In: EDOCW, pp. 9–16. Yeong, Yoon Chow; Hacks, Simon; Lichter, Horst (2019): Prioritization of EA Debts Facilitating Portfolio Theory. In: QUASOQ. Vol-2511: CEUR-WS.org, pp. 45–52. Alexander, Peter; Hacks, Simon; Jung, Jürgen; Steffens, Ulrike; Uludag, Ömer; Lichter, Horst (2020): A Framework for Managing Enterprise Architecture Debts - Outline and Research Direc-tions. In: EMISA, vol. 2628: CEUR-WS.org, pp. 5–10. Salentin, Johannes; Hacks, Simon (2020): Towards a Catalog of Enterprise Architecture Smells. In: WI2020 Community Tracks: GITO Verlag, pp. 276–290. 

Enterprise Architecture Debts – A Concept to Manage EA Evolution?

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&amp;context=treos_icis2020

Enterprise Architecture Debts – A Concept to Manage EA Evolution?

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