Christopher Schulz

A Conceptual Framework for Enterprise Architecture Design

An ambiguous terminology as well as a lack of clarity prevail in information systems research when focusing on enterprise architecture (EA) and its corresponding management function. Sound definitions for key terms in the field of EA design, i.e. strategies, principles, and goals, are too often used interchangeably with slightly different meaning. Addressing this situation, the present article proposes a conceptual framework for EA design that covers the aforementioned terms and organizes them along two dimensions, namely their underlying EA conceptualization and their role in the design process. The framework is exemplified and mirrored against state-of-the-art literature in the realm of EA and the corresponding management function. Finally, the article sketches further research trends centering around the design of an EA.

Towards an Agile Design of the Enterprise Architecture Management Function

Enterprise architecture (EA) management provides an engineering approach for the continuous advancement of the enterprise as a whole. The high number of involved components and their dense web of interdependencies nevertheless form a major challenge for such approach and demand high initial investment into documentations, communications, and analysis. Aforementioned fact has in the past been an impediment for successful EA management in practice. In the field of software engineering recently lightweight and agile methods have become more and more important. These methods aim at quickly creating results, while staying flexible in respect to the design goals to attain. In this article we explore to which extent the de-facto standard for agile methods, namely Scrum, can be applied to EA management. Thereby, we derive challenges for an agile EA management approach and revisit current approaches regarding their agility. Finally, we outline how agile EA management can be implemented based on the method of Scrum.

Testing & quality assurance in data migration projects

New business models, constant technological progress, as well as ever-changing legal regulations require that companies replace their business applications from time to time. As a side effect, this demands for migrating the data from the existing source application to a target application. Since the success of the application replacement as a form of IT maintenance is contingent on the underlying data migration project, it is crucial to accomplish the migration in time and on budget. This however, calls for a stringent data migration process model combined with well-defined quality assurance measures. The paper presents, first, a field-tested process model for data migration projects. Secondly, it points out the typical risks we have frequently observed in the course of this type of project. Thirdly, the paper provides practice-based testing and quality assurance techniques to reduce or even eliminate these data migration risks.

Modeling the Supply and Demand of Architectural Information on Enterprise Level

Enterprise architecture (EA) management aims at analyzing and improving the enterprise as a whole. A correct and consistent analysis is based on reliable EA data. However, current industrial practice shows that many persons need to collect, prepare, and disseminate EA relevant data while only a small group of persons actually benefits from this information. This state of affairs has a negative impact on the motivation of those who are in charge of gathering EA information. Additionally, the monetary value of this information is often implicit. To overcome this situation, this paper presents an approach to model the supply and demand situation for EA information. The resulting model helps to understand, explain, and ease EArelated information gathering. The applicability of the resulting model is demonstrated with the help of a real world case study from the German federal government.

Exemplifying a Framework for Interrelating Enterprise Architecture Concerns

In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) management has gained increasing attention as means to support enterprises in adapting to changing markets and in seizing new business opportunities. A multitude of approaches and frameworks making prescriptions on how to document the different states of the EA have been developed. These approaches target different purposes and correspondingly different concerns (areas of interest) in the architecture. Hence, an enterprise seeking to develop or evolve an organization-specific EA documentation technique most likely runs into difficulties to understand the interdependencies between different frameworks and approaches.

Enterprise architecture management patterns for company-wide access views on business objects

Modern application landscapes consist of a multitude of inter-connected business applications exchanging data in many ways. These business applications are used by employees who take on several organizational roles. However, when broadening the scope to an enterprise-wide perspective, lack of clarity prevail with respect to the questions which roles have access to which business applications as well as the business objects managed by them. This paper focuses on challenges related to enterprise-wide availability of business objects and compliance and associated confidentiality aspects. Motivated by best practices from industry, this paper describes patterns to develop, analyze, and justify an enterprise-wide access matrix. The paper presents three enterprise architecture management (EAM) patterns. The methodology pattern describes the steps to be performed to document, analyze, and manage the access on business objects; the viewpoint pattern provides respective graphical models facilitating a business object access management on enterprise-level; the information model pattern defines the concepts and relationships that need to be documented in order to create the graphical model.

Agile Enterprise Architecture ManagementAn Analysis on the Application of Agile Principles

Enterprise Architecture (EA) management has proven to be an efficient instrument to align business and IT from a holistic perspective. Many organizations have established a permanent EA management function responsible for modeling, analyzing, and defining the current and future EA state as well as the roadmap. Similar as in software development, EA management initiatives face challenges that delay results, complicate the collaboration, and deteriorate the overall work quality. While in software development, agile principles and values reflected in tangible methods like Scrum and Extreme Programming are increasingly adopted by organizations, there is little known whether these practices have already made their way into EA management. Based on three research questions, this paper sheds light on the status-quo of agile principles applied to EA management. We present results of an online survey among 105 industry experts working for more than 10 industry sectors across 22 different countries.

Towards a Unified and Configurable Structure for EA Management KPIs

The discipline Enterprise Architecture (EA) management aims to align business and IT, foster communication, and support the everlasting transformation of the organization. Thereby, EA management initiatives are driven by respective EA management goals, whose degree of achievement must be measurable. This calls for the definition of corresponding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) enabling enterprise architects to plan, forecast, benchmark, and assess the goal fulfillment. As recent literature in the field shows, there are only few KPIs dedicated to validate EA management goal achievement. Moreover, existing indicators are differently structured, selective regarding the specific EA management goals, too general and vague with respect to the required data, and do not provide any adoption techniques for the enterprise context. In this paper we present a structure enabling the unified and configurable description of EA management KPIs. While the artifact ensures consistency among documented KPIs, it further provides guidance during their introduction and organization-specific adaptation. As first evaluation results prove, EA management domain experts consider the artifact on the whole as being helpful and applicable while simultaneously confirming the relevance of its constituents.

A method for consolidating application landscapes during the post-merger-integration phase

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have become frequent events in todays economy. They are complex strategic transformation projects affecting both - business and information technology (IT). Still, empirical studies reveal high failure rates regarding the achievement of previously defined objectives. Taking into account the role and importance of IT in modern business models, the consolidation of application landscapes and technical infrastructure represents a challenging exercise performed during the post-merger-integration. Unfortunately, not many artifacts in the form of tangible concepts, models, and methods exist facilitating the endeavors of merging IT. After providing a broad overview on relevant literature in the area of M&A from a business and IT perspective, this article presents a method artifact for consolidating application landscapes in the course of a merger. It originates from the approach applied during a case study in the telecommunication industry where the application landscapes of two formerly independent lines of business have been merged.

A pattern-based approach to presentations using slide facilities

Providing information on the basis of electronic slides represents a common instrument of todays communication. Presented either synchronously within a talk or asynchronously by means of a hand-out, slides are an important carrier of data. Whereas elaborated slide facilities might ease the transmission of information, poor slide designs may rather confuse the audience, making communication more difficult. In the past 20 years, we attended or gave more than 500 slide-based presentations taking place in a professional or private setting. We noticed several reoccurring presentation facilities that had widely positive impact on the overall quality of the talk. In leveraging the pattern format we document seven of these techniques in this article.