Stephan Aier

A Federated Approach to Enterprise Architecture Model Maintenance

Enterprise architecture is gaining acceptance as an approach to manage change and foster IT/business alignment by (1) propagating strategy and process changes to the software and infrastructure level, by (2) supporting consistent business transformation enabled by technology innovations, and by (3) decoupling business-oriented and technology-oriented architectures. Due to constant change in business as well as in technology, enterprise architecture management is a permanent process rather than a one-time effort. To keep enterprise architecture models up-to-date, a well-engineered maintenance concept including processes, roles and schedules is needed. This paper discusses the shortcomings of existing approaches to enterprise architecture model maintenance, proposes a federated approach, and reports on its implementation at a large financial service provider.

Global Perspectives on Design Science Research

With four inspiring conferences that took place in Claremont, Pasadena, Atlanta and Philadelphia, the International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST) has developed into a premier conference for design-oriented research in Information Systems. Becoming a truly global conference series, DESRIST was held in St.Gallen, Switzerland, in 2010. DESRIST 2010 brought together researchers and practitioners engaged in design science research from all over the world to provide global perspectives on both design science and design research in the broadest sense.The design science research paradigm has been discussed thoroughly in recent years and is now gaining ground for both building knowledge and improving practice in information systems and several related disciplines. As opposed to natural and social research, design research does not crave ultimate truths, grand theories or general laws, but seeks to identify and understand real-world problemsand propose appropriate, useful solutions. It is commonly believed that design research involves building, investigating and evaluating innovative artefacts such as constructs, frameworks, models, methods, and information system instantiations in order to solve practical problems. Moreover, the study of methods, behaviours, and best practices related to the problem analysis and artefact development process are encompassed commonly referred to as design science.An ongoing debate related to the nature, scope and dominant ideologies of design science research, however, shows that the paradigm is still emerging. Its core, its boundaries and its interplay with other research approaches are increasingly being revealed and defined.The topical theme of DESRIST 2010 is Global Perspectives on Design Science Research. Once more, the DESRIST conference successfully serves as a forum for raising and discussing new ideas in the area of design science research.Among others, the papers submitted to DESRIST 2010 contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between design and organisation, design and information, design and behaviour, and design and collaboration. A number of contributions present design research exemplars, while others illuminate design research techniques or design research organisation. All papers were reviewed by at least two reviewers and the selection process was competitive. In total, 80 papers were submitted, out of which 35 were selected as full research papers (acceptance rate of 44%). Furthermore, ten submissions were accepted as short papers and presented as posters. The submissions came from authors located in 29 different countries, geographically distributed as follows: 59% of the authors are located in Europe, 32.5% in the Americas and 4.25% each in Asia and Australia.In conjunction with the main conference, DESRIST 2010 hosted three workshops on design, enterprise architecture management, and enterprise engineering. Papers accepted for CIAO! (one of these workshops) have been published in a separate volume of Springers Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing series.In addition, three invited keynoters and four panels stimulated the discussions on new and emerging issues in line with the conference topics. The panels addressed the following topics: innovation in design science research, design for use, publishing design science research, and organising design science research. We are thankful for the fruitful and inspiring discussions and the interesting impulses for future relevant work in the field of design science research. We wish to thank all the people who submitted papers to the DESRIST 2010 conference for having shared their work with us. We sincerely hope that you find the papers as interesting and inspiring as we did. Moreover, we owe special thanks to all members of the programme committee of DESRIST 2010 as well as all reviewers for their work. We are also very appreciative to the many people who were involved in the organisation of the DESRIST conference and its accompanying events. We believe that DESRIST 2010 provided detailed insights into the current state of the art, set directions for fruitful further research initiatives and truly contributed to the transfer of academic knowledge for practical problem-solving.

The role of organizational culture for grounding, management, guidance and effectiveness of enterprise architecture principles

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) has become a widely acknowledged approach for guiding the continuous change of increasingly complex organizations. While methods and models for describing and analyzing enterprise architectures (EA) have been extensively discussed, principles guiding an EA’s design and evolution are hardly covered in existing research. The paper at hand therefore analyzes the mechanisms of EA principles (EAP), that is EAP grounding, EAP management, and EAP guidance and their effects on EA consistency and EAM utility. Specifically we aim at understanding the role of organizational culture for the mechanisms and effects of EAP. Based on empirical data we find that all relations describing EAP mechanisms and their effects are significantly moderated by organizational culture. Based on our findings we give recommendations on how to deal with selected design decisions when introducing and developing EA principles in an organization.

SOA and EA - Sustainable Contributions for Increasing Corporate Agility

Service oriented architectures (SOA) have been introduced for various reasons over the previous couple of years. Analogous to the introduction of enterprise application integration (EAI) technologies before re-use and cost cutting potentials have been among the most prominent reasons. But considering the increasing complexity of an application landscape following the introduction of a SOA, the re-use and cost cutting arguments will lead to disappointment. However, service oriented architectures offer a great potential to increase corporate agility. To sustainable preserve corporate agility it is necessary to ex- plicitly manage the enterprise architecture. This paper discusses the problems of re-use and cost cutting expectations in service oriented architectures and contrasts them with the potentials related to make sustainable contributions to corporate agility. Structures, processes, and instruments to realize these potentials are discussed with reference to selected case studies.

Application of Enterprise Models for Engineering Enterprise Transformation

Enterprise models constitute a valuable basis for enterprise transformation because they usually represent a widely accepted image of an enterprise. Practitioners often put a lot of effort in the creation and maintenance of such models that therefore represent a significant investment. However, so far the information contained in enterprise models is to a large extend ‘dateless’ which means it is hardly used to describe the transformation itself consistently. Therefore we propose a method to systematically derive an enterprise transformation model based on existing models representing enterprise structures at different points in time. The result of the method application is a set of project outlines derived from enterprise models. In order to generalise our approach to a multiperiod transformation model capable of coping with dynamic changes and plan deviations we propose a respective conceptual system. Our research artefact (the method) is finally demonstrated in a case study.

How are Enterprise Architecture Design Principles Used

Most agree that enterprise architecture (EA) artifacts include not only representation models, but also design principles [35]. While EA modeling and EA models are covered broadly in the EA state-of-the-art, design activity issues and design principles in particular are still neglected. While there has been some work on EA principles recently, their use has not been systematically surveyed so far. This is surprising because EA principles play an important role in practice. Based on a review of the state-of-the-art of EA principle understanding, we summarize findings from a survey among 70 participants from Swiss and German companies. While EA principles are widely defined, well documented, based on IT strategy and generally perceived as useful, deficiencies are apparent regarding stakeholder involvement, business architecture principles (definition as well as usage), regular principle reviews, and business alignment.

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 example.

Two Speeds of EAM—A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

We discuss how enterprise architecture management (EAM) supports different types of enterprise transformation (ET), namely planned, proactive transformation on the one hand and emergent, reactive transformation on the other hand. We first conceptualize EAM as a dynamic capability to access the rich literature of the dynamic capabilities framework. Based on these theoretical foundations and observations from two case studies, we find that EAM can be configured both as a planned, structured capability to support proactive ET, as well as an improvisational, simple capability to support reactive ET under time pressure. We argue that an enterprise can simultaneously deploy both sets of EAM capabilities by identifying the core elements of EAM that are required for both capabilities as well as certain capability-specific extensions. We finally discuss governance and feedback mechanisms that help to balance the goals of flexibility and agility associated with dynamic and improvisational capabilities, respectively.

Use It or Lose It? The Role of Pressure for Use and Utility of Enterprise Architecture Artifacts

In this paper we explore the role of pressure for the use of enterprise architecture (EA) artifact. Based on a quantitative dataset on EA artifacts and enterprise architecture management (EAM) benefits, we specifically explore the relationships between the use intensity of EA artifacts, pressure to use these artifacts, and EAM benefit realization. Focusing on the role of pressure to use EA artifacts, we conceptualize four different classes of artifacts based on (1) how intensively they are used in practice and (2) to what degree pressure increases the use intensity. Our results suggest that each class (EA shelf-warmers, EA superstars, EA annoyances, EA pressure beneficiaries) requires different approaches to foster its use intensity. We derive pressure-based and pressure-free approaches for each class aiming at increasing the use intensity of EA artifacts. Additionally we identify the EA artifacts that have the highest impact on EAM utility (e.g., map of company goals, target process map, target application landscape, and the principle ease of use). We discuss management implications accordingly.

Architectural Coordination of Transformation: Implications from Game Theory

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) is considered a means to support coordination in enterprises. However, coordination between heterogeneous stakeholder groups with different interests is a challenging task to achieve. In this paper, we take a game-theoretic perspective on coordination in organizations. We identify three coordination games from literature: (1) Matching game, (2) Battle of the sexes game, and (3) Assurance game. For each game, we then provide an example and discuss which EAM deliverables can be employed to support coordination and which implications for the design of EAM can be derived. From the analysis of coordination games, we derive a proposition outlining further EAM evolution along two paths: as an active decision support discipline, but keeping its focus in the IT domain; or moving out of the IT departments and becoming a strategic decision support discipline for enterprise transformation.