Svyatoslav Kotusev is an independent researcher, educator and consultant. Since 2013, he has been studying enterprise architecture practices in organizations. He is an author of the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment" (now in its second edition), the book "Enterprise Architects: The Agents of Digital Transformation", more than 50 articles and other materials on enterprise architecture that appeared in various academic journals and conferences, industry magazines and online outlets (visit https://kotusev.com for more information). Svyatoslav received his PhD in information systems from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Prior to his research career, he held various software development and architecture positions in the industry. He can be reached at kotusev@kotusev.com.
Business capability modeling is a narrow domain of enterprise architecture modeling, which curren... more Business capability modeling is a narrow domain of enterprise architecture modeling, which currently remains insufficiently explored. This study identifies nine general business capability modeling approaches and corresponding usage scenarios of business capability models most of which have not been systematically described or even mentioned in the existing literature. This study represents arguably the first intentional effort to explore the practical usage of business capability models in organizations for the purposes of aligning business and IT.
Enterprise architecture (EA) involves a collection of special documents, or artefacts, describing... more Enterprise architecture (EA) involves a collection of special documents, or artefacts, describing various aspects of an organisation from an integrated business and IT perspective. Knowledge management is a practice of generating, storing and sharing knowledge within an organisation and EA artefacts can be clearly viewed as special instruments for managing knowledge. Based on the analysis of EA artefacts used in 27 diverse organisations, we study the properties of the most popular artefacts through the conceptual lenses of knowledge management. Specifically, we analyse what forms of knowledge these EA artefacts represent, what knowledge management strategies they implement, what knowledge management systems they leverage and how these features correlate with other properties of EA artefacts. This study provides arguably the first available in-depth analysis of EA artefacts as instruments for managing knowledge. Our analysis demonstrates a wide diversity of EA artefacts from the perspective of their approaches to knowledge management.
A rather unexpected event surprising for many in the enterprise architecture (EA) community was t... more A rather unexpected event surprising for many in the enterprise architecture (EA) community was the recent release of TOGAF version 10, now marketed as the TOGAF Standard, 10th Edition. The official whitepaper from The Open Group introducing the new release barely explains exactly what has changed substantially in their EA framework, except for elucidating why its documentation was restructured. Instead, the whitepaper strongly accentuates that the TOGAF Standard embodies “best practice” (mentioned there 33 times) which is “proven” (15 times), “stable” (27 times), “enduring” (11 times) and even “universal” (24 times). In their announcement on the website, The Open Group leaders also say nothing specific about TOGAF’s changes in substance, but only praise its new modular structure and also declare its allegiance to the now-hottest buzzwords “agile” and “digital transformation”.
Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of ... more Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA artifacts intend to bridge the communication gap between business and IT stakeholders to improve business and IT alignment in organizations and, therefore, can be considered as boundary objects between diverse business and IT communities. However, an intentional analysis of EA artifacts as boundary objects in the current EA literature has been rather shallow and insufficient. Objective: This study aims to explore how exactly EA artifacts as boundary objects facilitate communication between different professional communities. Specifically, it intends to identify what types of EA artifacts represent boundary objects, analyze their properties and usage scenarios, as well as the differences between them. Method: This study is based on an in-depth case study of an organization with an established EA practice. Data collection procedures include both interviews with various participants of its EA practice and comprehensive scrutiny of its EA documentation. Results: We identify five specific types of EA artifacts used in the organization as boundary objects and analyze them in detail. In particular, we analyze their informational contents and usage scenarios, their target audiences and value for cross-community collaboration, as well as their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic boundary-spanning capacity. Moreover, we also introduce the notion of duality as a characteristic of interpretive flexibility of EA artifacts and distinguish two different types of duality leveraging somewhat different boundary-spanning mechanisms: implicit duality and explicit duality. Conclusions: This paper provides arguably the first inductive qualitative analysis of EA artifacts as boundary objects available in the existing EA literature. It contributes to our understanding of their boundary-spanning properties, distinctive features and general roles in an EA practice. Also, the concepts of implicit and explicit duality that we introduce further advance the theory of boundary objects.
Purpose: Information architecture (IA) is often understood as a comprehensive master plan for org... more Purpose: Information architecture (IA) is often understood as a comprehensive master plan for organizational data assets and is widely considered as an essential component of broader enterprise architecture (EA). However, the status and practical operationalization of IA still remain largely unclear. In order to clarify these questions, this paper investigates what instruments related to IA are actually employed in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach: This study builds on the analysis of architecture practices in 27 diverse organizations. Based on the semi-structured interviews with architects and the examination of utilized architectural documents, we explore IA-related instruments with their usage scenarios that have been adopted in the studied organizations.
Findings: The authors identify 12 distinct instruments used in the industry and analyze in detail their features, properties and relationships. This paper analysis shows that these instruments are rather diverse and largely inconsistent across different organizations. The study findings also suggest that IA cannot be considered as a comprehensive plan for information, but rather as a variable set of loosely related instruments and practices that help organizations manage information.
Originality/value: The study offers a unique perspective on the concept of IA, as it is practiced in the industry today, as well as a critical scrutiny of the respective prescriptions abundant in the existing literature. Although this study does not attempt to theorize on the findings, it makes a significant empirical contribution by offering a solid evidence-based view of IA and its key instruments currently missing in the available literature.
Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated busine... more Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA is typically defined as a comprehensive blueprint of an organization covering its business, data, applications and technology domains and consisting of diverse EA artifacts. EA has numerous potential stakeholders and usage scenarios in organizations. However, the existing EA literature does not offer any consistent theories explaining the practical roles of individual EA artifacts and fails to explain how exactly different types of EA artifacts are used in practice. Objective: This study intends to explore the roles of different EA artifacts in organizations and develop a generic descriptive theory explaining these roles. The theory purports to cover various properties of EA artifacts as well as the relationships between them. Method: The research method of this study follows two consecutive phases: theory construction and theory validation. First, theory construction is based on the qualitative in-depth analysis of five case organizations with established EA practices. Next, theory validation includes confirmatory interviews with ten EA experts. Results: This study develops a descriptive theory explaining the roles of different EA artifacts in an EA practice. The resulting theory defines six general types of EA artifacts (Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines and Designs, CSVLOD) and explains their type-specific practical roles, including their informational contents, typical usage, ensuing organizational benefits and interrelationships with each other. Conclusions: This study presents the first systematic theory describing the usage of EA artifacts in organizations. Our theory facilitates better theoretical understanding of the concept of EA and also provides evidence-based solutions to the commonly reported practical problems with EA. This study suggests that the EA research community should focus on studying individual EA artifacts instead of studying EA in general and calls for further research on EA artifacts and their usage as part of EA practices.
Who in the enterprise architecture (EA) community has not heard that EA efforts should start from... more Who in the enterprise architecture (EA) community has not heard that EA efforts should start from business strategy? The idea of the primacy of strategy in EA initiatives is likely to be familiar to virtually everyone as it is loudly voiced and permeates, explicitly or implicitly, much of the EA discourse. For many people, it is almost axiomatic that architectural planning should ensue from and enable organizational business strategy. But what kind of architectural plans can you derive from business strategy?
Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2021
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts that describe an organization from an i... more 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.
Traditionally, the mainstream discourse in the enterprise architecture (EA) discipline has been i... more Traditionally, the mainstream discourse in the enterprise architecture (EA) discipline has been incredibly superficial. Moreover, it has been characterized by a persistent bias towards fashionable topics (e.g. fake tools), rather than topics that are really worth discussing (e.g. real tools). Many publications that appeared on the subject in the popular media either speculated on the advantages and disadvantages of existing EA frameworks, or addressed some fancy matters of passing interest, which resonate with the fuss of the day, but lose their relevance on the next morning and add no lasting value to our understanding of enterprise architecture. For example, recently EA gurus seriously discussed the relationship between enterprise architecture, Brexit, coronavirus and even the BLM movement. All these musings represent merely entertainment and convey no real information to EA practitioners. At the same time, some truly fundamental questions, whose importance to the EA discipline is difficult to overemphasize, received surprisingly limited attention, if any attention at all.
Enterprise architecture is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organizatio... more Enterprise architecture is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. Practicing enterprise architecture in organizations implies using these artifacts to facilitate information systems planning and improve business and IT alignment. Despite its long history, the enterprise architecture discipline still remains largely atheoretical and lacks a solid theoretical basis. Based on our previous empirical studies of the practical usage of enterprise architecture artifacts in multiple organizations and broad literature analysis, this conceptual article identifies and discusses in detail 10 theories that can be considered key for understanding how an enterprise architecture practice works: actor-network theory, boundary objects theory, cognitive fit theory, communities of practice theory, decision-making theories, information processing theory, knowledge management theory, management fashion theory, media richness theory, and uncertainty principle. Taken together, these theories offer a comprehensive theoretical view of an enterprise architecture practice explaining the role of enterprise architecture artifacts, their usability, and participation of stakeholders and, therefore, may constitute a theoretical basis of the entire enterprise architecture discipline. Although this article does not elaborate on any of these theories, it brings these theories to light, establishes their critical importance for comprehending an enterprise architecture practice, and positions them as central to the enterprise architecture discourse. Each of these theories can be leveraged by enterprise architecture scholars in their future studies for analyzing enterprise architecture practices through respective theoretical lenses. This article intends to provide fresh theoretical insights on enterprise architecture, spark new waves of theoretical enterprise architecture research, and contribute to the development of a sound theoretical foundation for the enterprise architecture discipline.
The Enterprise Architecture (EA) literature provides a number of well-known taxonomies for organi... more The Enterprise Architecture (EA) literature provides a number of well-known taxonomies for organizing EA artifacts; e.g., the Zachman Framework. However, these taxonomies are often unable to unambiguously classify real EA artifacts used in successful EA practices. More importantly, existing taxonomies hardly explain the usage, purpose, and other critical aspects of EA artifacts. This article provides yet another taxonomy for EA artifacts which addresses these problems. The new taxonomy described in this article classifies EA artifacts from the perspective of their usage and purpose into six general types: Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines, and Designs (CSVLOD). These six general types of EA artifacts provide reasonably accurate descriptions of all EA artifacts used in organizations from the perspective of their usage, purpose, and specific roles in the context of an EA practice.
For many people, the very notion of enterprise architecture (EA) is closely associated with EA fr... more For many people, the very notion of enterprise architecture (EA) is closely associated with EA frameworks, if not entirely synonymous to them. These frameworks allegedly offer the necessary guidance for practicing enterprise architecture and addressing the problem of business and IT alignment in organizations. Existing EA frameworks are covered in many mainstream sources. These sources include, among others, a pretty well-known article of Roger Sessions presenting four leading EA frameworks, Zachman, TOGAF, FEA and Gartner, whose influence can be noticed even in the latest industry publications, as well as a rather famous book “How to Survive in the Jungle of Enterprise Architecture Frameworks” discussing 14 EA frameworks. Furthermore, the very genre of musing on frameworks is extremely popular among various EA writers. For example, the academic literature offers tens of papers devoted to analyzing, comparing and formulating selection criteria for EA frameworks. Gartner alone issued nearly a dozen of several hundred dollars-worth reports with its advice on how to analyze, choose and deal with EA frameworks properly. Local consulting companies and software tool vendors offer their own comparisons and framework selection guidelines as well.
The fate of enterprise architecture (EA) practices in many organizations historically has been bu... more The fate of enterprise architecture (EA) practices in many organizations historically has been bumpy and stormy. In my conversations with EA practitioners, predominantly in Australia, I often hear the stories of disbanded architecture teams and reorganized EA functions. Many companies experience periodical ebbs and flows in the number of employed architects and the overall enthusiasm towards enterprise architecture. Anecdotal evidence from the United States and Europe suggests that such failures and restarts of EA practices are far from being uncommon there as well. Some time ago, Gartner even estimated that “as many as 25% of all organizations may be in this restart situation”. At the same time, in many companies EA practices seemingly operate rather smoothly and evolve organically without being a subject of constant reorganizations.
In the current turbulent and unpredictable markets, competitive advantage can no longer be achiev... more In the current turbulent and unpredictable markets, competitive advantage can no longer be achieved through high product quality or efficient processes alone. Modern firms are currently pressured to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations to achieve the firm’s strategic direction and unlock the true potential of new and disruptive digital business models [1,2]. Under these conditions, firms should align and integrate their information systems (IS), information technology (IT) assets, and resources with business processes to efficaciously respond to changing environmental and market conditions [3,4]. To orchestrate these business and IT assets and resources, components, and capabilities in digital and organizational transformations, firms increasingly adopt Enterprise Architecture (EA).
Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of ... more Context: 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 project teams and effective engagement between these stakeholders and architects is critically important for success. Moreover, many practical problems with EA practice can be also attributed to insufficient engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders. However, the notion of engagement received only limited attention in the EA literature and the problem of establishing engagement has not been intentionally studied. Objective: This paper intends to explore in detail the problem of achieving effective engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders in an organization, identify the main inhibitors of engagement and present a theoretical model explaining the problem of establishing engagement in practice. Method: This paper is based on a single in-depth revelatory case study including nine interviews with different participants of EA practice (e.g. architects and other EA stakeholders) and documentation analysis. It leverages the grounded theory method to construct a conceptual model explaining the problem of engagement in the studied organization. Results: This paper identifies 28 direct and indirect inhibitors of engagement and unifies them into a holistic conceptual model addressing the problem of achieving engagement that covers the factors undermining both strategic and initiative-based engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders. Conclusions: This paper focuses on the notion of engagement and offers arguably the first available theoretical model that explains how typical engagement problems between architects and other stakeholders inhibit the realization of value from EA practice. However, the developed model has a number of limitations and we call for further empirical research on engagement problems in EA practice and coping strategies for addressing these problems.
Agile is currently a fad in the world of enterprise architecture (EA), but the definition of “Agi... more Agile is currently a fad in the world of enterprise architecture (EA), but the definition of “Agile architecture” is neither clear nor concrete. Instigated by this hype, EA managers may rush to implement fashionable Agile approaches to the detriment of their organizations. Instead, they should strike a balance between up-front planning and agility — because no firms can plan their future in every detail, and not one single company can avoid planning altogether to stay perfectly Agile. This is valid and applicable in the EA context, too. As we explore in this Executive Update, EA managers should determine the “golden mean” between total planning and full agility that best meets the specific needs of their organizations.
International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), 2020
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT... more 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.
In recent years, the literature has emphasized theory building in the context of Enterprise Archi... more In recent years, the literature has emphasized theory building in the context of Enterprise Architecture (EA) research. Specifically, scholars tend to focus on EA-based capabilities that organize and deploy organization-specific resources to align strategic objectives with the technology’s particular use. Despite the growth in EA studies, substantial gaps remain in the literature. The most substantial gaps are that the conceptualization of EA-based capabilities still lacks a firm base in theory and that there is limited empirical evidence on how EA-based capabilities drive business transformation and deliver benefits to the firm. Therefore, this study focuses on EA-based capabilities, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical foundation, and develops and tests a new research model that explains how dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities lead to organizational benefits. The research model’s hypotheses are tested using a dataset that contains responses from 299 CIO’s, IT managers, and lead architects. Based on this study’s outcomes, we contend that dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities positively enhance firms’ process innovation and business-IT alignment. These mediating forces are both positively associated with organizational benefits. The firms’ EA resources and specifically EA deployment practices are essential in cultivating dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities. This study advances our understanding of how to efficaciously de-lineate dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities in delivering benefits to the organization.
Enterprise architecture (EA), as a set of planning approaches and techniques, is widely regarded ... more Enterprise architecture (EA), as a set of planning approaches and techniques, is widely regarded as an instrument for improving business and IT alignment in organizations. In mainstream literature, the very concept of enterprise architecture was always strongly associated, if not equated, with systems thinking. The reasons for this linkage are rather evident: modern enterprises represent complex socio-technical systems consisting of numerous interrelated business and IT components, or hierarchical systems of systems. Systems thinking calls for attending to things in a holistic way, understanding mutual dependencies between various system elements and uncovering existing feedback loops in their dynamic behavior. Unsurprisingly, systems thinking is praised by many EA gurus and academics. It would be arguably fair to say that today systems thinking represents one of the core paradigms occupying the mindset of EA practitioners, if not the single most prominent paradigm. And yet, is systems thinking actually so helpful for architects and EA practices?
At the present moment, “agile” represents one of the hottest buzzwords in the world of business a... more At the present moment, “agile” represents one of the hottest buzzwords in the world of business and IT. Today, as much of the mainstream promotion suggests, absolutely every company must immediately adopt agile, otherwise it allegedly will not be able to survive the “digital transformation” and perish tomorrow. Moreover, literally all aspects of organizations now must become agile, from software development to business models. And enterprise architecture (EA) is certainly not an exception. For example, Gartner hype cycle reports on enterprise architecture for both 2018 and 2019 conclude that “agile architecture” is right at the peak of inflated expectations. But what exactly is agile enterprise architecture? Similarly to many, if not most, current agile innovations, agile architecture has a strong positive connotation (who would not like to be agile?), but no particular meaning. For instance, one of the Gartner hype cycle reports offers only an elusive definition of this notion: “Agile architecture refers to architecture practices that embrace the principles and values of agile, which enable the continuous delivery of valuable software”. Likewise, one of the recent academic papers defines agile enterprise architecture as “the process for infusing and managing enterprise architecture modeling and redesign efforts with principles of agile methods for faster development times”. At the same time, any more or less concrete descriptions or ideas on what specific practices constitute the phenomenon of agile architecture can hardly be found.
Business capability modeling is a narrow domain of enterprise architecture modeling, which curren... more Business capability modeling is a narrow domain of enterprise architecture modeling, which currently remains insufficiently explored. This study identifies nine general business capability modeling approaches and corresponding usage scenarios of business capability models most of which have not been systematically described or even mentioned in the existing literature. This study represents arguably the first intentional effort to explore the practical usage of business capability models in organizations for the purposes of aligning business and IT.
Enterprise architecture (EA) involves a collection of special documents, or artefacts, describing... more Enterprise architecture (EA) involves a collection of special documents, or artefacts, describing various aspects of an organisation from an integrated business and IT perspective. Knowledge management is a practice of generating, storing and sharing knowledge within an organisation and EA artefacts can be clearly viewed as special instruments for managing knowledge. Based on the analysis of EA artefacts used in 27 diverse organisations, we study the properties of the most popular artefacts through the conceptual lenses of knowledge management. Specifically, we analyse what forms of knowledge these EA artefacts represent, what knowledge management strategies they implement, what knowledge management systems they leverage and how these features correlate with other properties of EA artefacts. This study provides arguably the first available in-depth analysis of EA artefacts as instruments for managing knowledge. Our analysis demonstrates a wide diversity of EA artefacts from the perspective of their approaches to knowledge management.
A rather unexpected event surprising for many in the enterprise architecture (EA) community was t... more A rather unexpected event surprising for many in the enterprise architecture (EA) community was the recent release of TOGAF version 10, now marketed as the TOGAF Standard, 10th Edition. The official whitepaper from The Open Group introducing the new release barely explains exactly what has changed substantially in their EA framework, except for elucidating why its documentation was restructured. Instead, the whitepaper strongly accentuates that the TOGAF Standard embodies “best practice” (mentioned there 33 times) which is “proven” (15 times), “stable” (27 times), “enduring” (11 times) and even “universal” (24 times). In their announcement on the website, The Open Group leaders also say nothing specific about TOGAF’s changes in substance, but only praise its new modular structure and also declare its allegiance to the now-hottest buzzwords “agile” and “digital transformation”.
Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of ... more Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA artifacts intend to bridge the communication gap between business and IT stakeholders to improve business and IT alignment in organizations and, therefore, can be considered as boundary objects between diverse business and IT communities. However, an intentional analysis of EA artifacts as boundary objects in the current EA literature has been rather shallow and insufficient. Objective: This study aims to explore how exactly EA artifacts as boundary objects facilitate communication between different professional communities. Specifically, it intends to identify what types of EA artifacts represent boundary objects, analyze their properties and usage scenarios, as well as the differences between them. Method: This study is based on an in-depth case study of an organization with an established EA practice. Data collection procedures include both interviews with various participants of its EA practice and comprehensive scrutiny of its EA documentation. Results: We identify five specific types of EA artifacts used in the organization as boundary objects and analyze them in detail. In particular, we analyze their informational contents and usage scenarios, their target audiences and value for cross-community collaboration, as well as their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic boundary-spanning capacity. Moreover, we also introduce the notion of duality as a characteristic of interpretive flexibility of EA artifacts and distinguish two different types of duality leveraging somewhat different boundary-spanning mechanisms: implicit duality and explicit duality. Conclusions: This paper provides arguably the first inductive qualitative analysis of EA artifacts as boundary objects available in the existing EA literature. It contributes to our understanding of their boundary-spanning properties, distinctive features and general roles in an EA practice. Also, the concepts of implicit and explicit duality that we introduce further advance the theory of boundary objects.
Purpose: Information architecture (IA) is often understood as a comprehensive master plan for org... more Purpose: Information architecture (IA) is often understood as a comprehensive master plan for organizational data assets and is widely considered as an essential component of broader enterprise architecture (EA). However, the status and practical operationalization of IA still remain largely unclear. In order to clarify these questions, this paper investigates what instruments related to IA are actually employed in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach: This study builds on the analysis of architecture practices in 27 diverse organizations. Based on the semi-structured interviews with architects and the examination of utilized architectural documents, we explore IA-related instruments with their usage scenarios that have been adopted in the studied organizations.
Findings: The authors identify 12 distinct instruments used in the industry and analyze in detail their features, properties and relationships. This paper analysis shows that these instruments are rather diverse and largely inconsistent across different organizations. The study findings also suggest that IA cannot be considered as a comprehensive plan for information, but rather as a variable set of loosely related instruments and practices that help organizations manage information.
Originality/value: The study offers a unique perspective on the concept of IA, as it is practiced in the industry today, as well as a critical scrutiny of the respective prescriptions abundant in the existing literature. Although this study does not attempt to theorize on the findings, it makes a significant empirical contribution by offering a solid evidence-based view of IA and its key instruments currently missing in the available literature.
Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated busine... more Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective. EA is typically defined as a comprehensive blueprint of an organization covering its business, data, applications and technology domains and consisting of diverse EA artifacts. EA has numerous potential stakeholders and usage scenarios in organizations. However, the existing EA literature does not offer any consistent theories explaining the practical roles of individual EA artifacts and fails to explain how exactly different types of EA artifacts are used in practice. Objective: This study intends to explore the roles of different EA artifacts in organizations and develop a generic descriptive theory explaining these roles. The theory purports to cover various properties of EA artifacts as well as the relationships between them. Method: The research method of this study follows two consecutive phases: theory construction and theory validation. First, theory construction is based on the qualitative in-depth analysis of five case organizations with established EA practices. Next, theory validation includes confirmatory interviews with ten EA experts. Results: This study develops a descriptive theory explaining the roles of different EA artifacts in an EA practice. The resulting theory defines six general types of EA artifacts (Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines and Designs, CSVLOD) and explains their type-specific practical roles, including their informational contents, typical usage, ensuing organizational benefits and interrelationships with each other. Conclusions: This study presents the first systematic theory describing the usage of EA artifacts in organizations. Our theory facilitates better theoretical understanding of the concept of EA and also provides evidence-based solutions to the commonly reported practical problems with EA. This study suggests that the EA research community should focus on studying individual EA artifacts instead of studying EA in general and calls for further research on EA artifacts and their usage as part of EA practices.
Who in the enterprise architecture (EA) community has not heard that EA efforts should start from... more Who in the enterprise architecture (EA) community has not heard that EA efforts should start from business strategy? The idea of the primacy of strategy in EA initiatives is likely to be familiar to virtually everyone as it is loudly voiced and permeates, explicitly or implicitly, much of the EA discourse. For many people, it is almost axiomatic that architectural planning should ensue from and enable organizational business strategy. But what kind of architectural plans can you derive from business strategy?
Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2021
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts that describe an organization from an i... more 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.
Traditionally, the mainstream discourse in the enterprise architecture (EA) discipline has been i... more Traditionally, the mainstream discourse in the enterprise architecture (EA) discipline has been incredibly superficial. Moreover, it has been characterized by a persistent bias towards fashionable topics (e.g. fake tools), rather than topics that are really worth discussing (e.g. real tools). Many publications that appeared on the subject in the popular media either speculated on the advantages and disadvantages of existing EA frameworks, or addressed some fancy matters of passing interest, which resonate with the fuss of the day, but lose their relevance on the next morning and add no lasting value to our understanding of enterprise architecture. For example, recently EA gurus seriously discussed the relationship between enterprise architecture, Brexit, coronavirus and even the BLM movement. All these musings represent merely entertainment and convey no real information to EA practitioners. At the same time, some truly fundamental questions, whose importance to the EA discipline is difficult to overemphasize, received surprisingly limited attention, if any attention at all.
Enterprise architecture is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organizatio... more Enterprise architecture is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective. Practicing enterprise architecture in organizations implies using these artifacts to facilitate information systems planning and improve business and IT alignment. Despite its long history, the enterprise architecture discipline still remains largely atheoretical and lacks a solid theoretical basis. Based on our previous empirical studies of the practical usage of enterprise architecture artifacts in multiple organizations and broad literature analysis, this conceptual article identifies and discusses in detail 10 theories that can be considered key for understanding how an enterprise architecture practice works: actor-network theory, boundary objects theory, cognitive fit theory, communities of practice theory, decision-making theories, information processing theory, knowledge management theory, management fashion theory, media richness theory, and uncertainty principle. Taken together, these theories offer a comprehensive theoretical view of an enterprise architecture practice explaining the role of enterprise architecture artifacts, their usability, and participation of stakeholders and, therefore, may constitute a theoretical basis of the entire enterprise architecture discipline. Although this article does not elaborate on any of these theories, it brings these theories to light, establishes their critical importance for comprehending an enterprise architecture practice, and positions them as central to the enterprise architecture discourse. Each of these theories can be leveraged by enterprise architecture scholars in their future studies for analyzing enterprise architecture practices through respective theoretical lenses. This article intends to provide fresh theoretical insights on enterprise architecture, spark new waves of theoretical enterprise architecture research, and contribute to the development of a sound theoretical foundation for the enterprise architecture discipline.
The Enterprise Architecture (EA) literature provides a number of well-known taxonomies for organi... more The Enterprise Architecture (EA) literature provides a number of well-known taxonomies for organizing EA artifacts; e.g., the Zachman Framework. However, these taxonomies are often unable to unambiguously classify real EA artifacts used in successful EA practices. More importantly, existing taxonomies hardly explain the usage, purpose, and other critical aspects of EA artifacts. This article provides yet another taxonomy for EA artifacts which addresses these problems. The new taxonomy described in this article classifies EA artifacts from the perspective of their usage and purpose into six general types: Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines, and Designs (CSVLOD). These six general types of EA artifacts provide reasonably accurate descriptions of all EA artifacts used in organizations from the perspective of their usage, purpose, and specific roles in the context of an EA practice.
For many people, the very notion of enterprise architecture (EA) is closely associated with EA fr... more For many people, the very notion of enterprise architecture (EA) is closely associated with EA frameworks, if not entirely synonymous to them. These frameworks allegedly offer the necessary guidance for practicing enterprise architecture and addressing the problem of business and IT alignment in organizations. Existing EA frameworks are covered in many mainstream sources. These sources include, among others, a pretty well-known article of Roger Sessions presenting four leading EA frameworks, Zachman, TOGAF, FEA and Gartner, whose influence can be noticed even in the latest industry publications, as well as a rather famous book “How to Survive in the Jungle of Enterprise Architecture Frameworks” discussing 14 EA frameworks. Furthermore, the very genre of musing on frameworks is extremely popular among various EA writers. For example, the academic literature offers tens of papers devoted to analyzing, comparing and formulating selection criteria for EA frameworks. Gartner alone issued nearly a dozen of several hundred dollars-worth reports with its advice on how to analyze, choose and deal with EA frameworks properly. Local consulting companies and software tool vendors offer their own comparisons and framework selection guidelines as well.
The fate of enterprise architecture (EA) practices in many organizations historically has been bu... more The fate of enterprise architecture (EA) practices in many organizations historically has been bumpy and stormy. In my conversations with EA practitioners, predominantly in Australia, I often hear the stories of disbanded architecture teams and reorganized EA functions. Many companies experience periodical ebbs and flows in the number of employed architects and the overall enthusiasm towards enterprise architecture. Anecdotal evidence from the United States and Europe suggests that such failures and restarts of EA practices are far from being uncommon there as well. Some time ago, Gartner even estimated that “as many as 25% of all organizations may be in this restart situation”. At the same time, in many companies EA practices seemingly operate rather smoothly and evolve organically without being a subject of constant reorganizations.
In the current turbulent and unpredictable markets, competitive advantage can no longer be achiev... more In the current turbulent and unpredictable markets, competitive advantage can no longer be achieved through high product quality or efficient processes alone. Modern firms are currently pressured to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations to achieve the firm’s strategic direction and unlock the true potential of new and disruptive digital business models [1,2]. Under these conditions, firms should align and integrate their information systems (IS), information technology (IT) assets, and resources with business processes to efficaciously respond to changing environmental and market conditions [3,4]. To orchestrate these business and IT assets and resources, components, and capabilities in digital and organizational transformations, firms increasingly adopt Enterprise Architecture (EA).
Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a collection of artifacts describing various aspects of ... more Context: 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 project teams and effective engagement between these stakeholders and architects is critically important for success. Moreover, many practical problems with EA practice can be also attributed to insufficient engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders. However, the notion of engagement received only limited attention in the EA literature and the problem of establishing engagement has not been intentionally studied. Objective: This paper intends to explore in detail the problem of achieving effective engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders in an organization, identify the main inhibitors of engagement and present a theoretical model explaining the problem of establishing engagement in practice. Method: This paper is based on a single in-depth revelatory case study including nine interviews with different participants of EA practice (e.g. architects and other EA stakeholders) and documentation analysis. It leverages the grounded theory method to construct a conceptual model explaining the problem of engagement in the studied organization. Results: This paper identifies 28 direct and indirect inhibitors of engagement and unifies them into a holistic conceptual model addressing the problem of achieving engagement that covers the factors undermining both strategic and initiative-based engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders. Conclusions: This paper focuses on the notion of engagement and offers arguably the first available theoretical model that explains how typical engagement problems between architects and other stakeholders inhibit the realization of value from EA practice. However, the developed model has a number of limitations and we call for further empirical research on engagement problems in EA practice and coping strategies for addressing these problems.
Agile is currently a fad in the world of enterprise architecture (EA), but the definition of “Agi... more Agile is currently a fad in the world of enterprise architecture (EA), but the definition of “Agile architecture” is neither clear nor concrete. Instigated by this hype, EA managers may rush to implement fashionable Agile approaches to the detriment of their organizations. Instead, they should strike a balance between up-front planning and agility — because no firms can plan their future in every detail, and not one single company can avoid planning altogether to stay perfectly Agile. This is valid and applicable in the EA context, too. As we explore in this Executive Update, EA managers should determine the “golden mean” between total planning and full agility that best meets the specific needs of their organizations.
International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), 2020
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT... more 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.
In recent years, the literature has emphasized theory building in the context of Enterprise Archi... more In recent years, the literature has emphasized theory building in the context of Enterprise Architecture (EA) research. Specifically, scholars tend to focus on EA-based capabilities that organize and deploy organization-specific resources to align strategic objectives with the technology’s particular use. Despite the growth in EA studies, substantial gaps remain in the literature. The most substantial gaps are that the conceptualization of EA-based capabilities still lacks a firm base in theory and that there is limited empirical evidence on how EA-based capabilities drive business transformation and deliver benefits to the firm. Therefore, this study focuses on EA-based capabilities, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical foundation, and develops and tests a new research model that explains how dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities lead to organizational benefits. The research model’s hypotheses are tested using a dataset that contains responses from 299 CIO’s, IT managers, and lead architects. Based on this study’s outcomes, we contend that dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities positively enhance firms’ process innovation and business-IT alignment. These mediating forces are both positively associated with organizational benefits. The firms’ EA resources and specifically EA deployment practices are essential in cultivating dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities. This study advances our understanding of how to efficaciously de-lineate dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities in delivering benefits to the organization.
Enterprise architecture (EA), as a set of planning approaches and techniques, is widely regarded ... more Enterprise architecture (EA), as a set of planning approaches and techniques, is widely regarded as an instrument for improving business and IT alignment in organizations. In mainstream literature, the very concept of enterprise architecture was always strongly associated, if not equated, with systems thinking. The reasons for this linkage are rather evident: modern enterprises represent complex socio-technical systems consisting of numerous interrelated business and IT components, or hierarchical systems of systems. Systems thinking calls for attending to things in a holistic way, understanding mutual dependencies between various system elements and uncovering existing feedback loops in their dynamic behavior. Unsurprisingly, systems thinking is praised by many EA gurus and academics. It would be arguably fair to say that today systems thinking represents one of the core paradigms occupying the mindset of EA practitioners, if not the single most prominent paradigm. And yet, is systems thinking actually so helpful for architects and EA practices?
At the present moment, “agile” represents one of the hottest buzzwords in the world of business a... more At the present moment, “agile” represents one of the hottest buzzwords in the world of business and IT. Today, as much of the mainstream promotion suggests, absolutely every company must immediately adopt agile, otherwise it allegedly will not be able to survive the “digital transformation” and perish tomorrow. Moreover, literally all aspects of organizations now must become agile, from software development to business models. And enterprise architecture (EA) is certainly not an exception. For example, Gartner hype cycle reports on enterprise architecture for both 2018 and 2019 conclude that “agile architecture” is right at the peak of inflated expectations. But what exactly is agile enterprise architecture? Similarly to many, if not most, current agile innovations, agile architecture has a strong positive connotation (who would not like to be agile?), but no particular meaning. For instance, one of the Gartner hype cycle reports offers only an elusive definition of this notion: “Agile architecture refers to architecture practices that embrace the principles and values of agile, which enable the continuous delivery of valuable software”. Likewise, one of the recent academic papers defines agile enterprise architecture as “the process for infusing and managing enterprise architecture modeling and redesign efforts with principles of agile methods for faster development times”. At the same time, any more or less concrete descriptions or ideas on what specific practices constitute the phenomenon of agile architecture can hardly be found.
Enterprise Architecture Practice on a Page is an evidence-based model of an EA practice on a sing... more Enterprise Architecture Practice on a Page is an evidence-based model of an EA practice on a single page. It provides a one-page aggregated view of the core processes constituting an EA practice with their interrelationships and most essential properties, including their main goals and motives, necessary participants, underlying EA artifacts and documents, key activities and associated techniques, temporal nature and general meaning.
Enterprise Architecture on a Page is an evidence-based model of enterprise architecture (EA) on a... more Enterprise Architecture on a Page is an evidence-based model of enterprise architecture (EA) on a single page. It provides a one-page aggregated view of popular EA artifacts used in organizations with their most essential properties, including their informational content, representation format, high-level structure, overall meaning, typical usage, temporal lifecycle, general role, key purpose and associated benefits.
Enterprise Architecture Teaching Pack. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other m... more Enterprise Architecture Teaching Pack. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Teaching Case: What Went Wrong with the Enterprise Architecture Consulting Engagement? The full t... more Teaching Case: What Went Wrong with the Enterprise Architecture Consulting Engagement? The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Teaching Case: Useless Software Tool for Enterprise Architecture. The full teaching pack with 19 ... more Teaching Case: Useless Software Tool for Enterprise Architecture. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Teaching Case: Design of the Architecture Function at a Manufacturing Company. The full teaching ... more Teaching Case: Design of the Architecture Function at a Manufacturing Company. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Tests for Lecture 3: The Role of Enterprise Architecture Practice. The full teaching pack with 19... more Tests for Lecture 3: The Role of Enterprise Architecture Practice. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Tests for Lecture 2: The Concept of Enterprise Architecture. The full teaching pack with 19 lectu... more Tests for Lecture 2: The Concept of Enterprise Architecture. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Tests for Lecture 1: Introduction. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other mater... more Tests for Lecture 1: Introduction. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Lecture 3: The Role of Enterprise Architecture Practice. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures,... more Lecture 3: The Role of Enterprise Architecture Practice. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Lecture 2: The Concept of Enterprise Architecture. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests... more Lecture 2: The Concept of Enterprise Architecture. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Lecture 1: Introduction. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based... more Lecture 1: Introduction. The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
Introduction to the Course "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture". The full teaching pack with... more Introduction to the Course "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture". The full teaching pack with 19 lectures, tests and other materials based on the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment", which can be freely used for teaching purposes, adapted or translated with references to the original, is available on request to the author (visit http://kotusev.com)
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Articles by Svyatoslav Kotusev
Objective: This study aims to explore how exactly EA artifacts as boundary objects facilitate communication between different professional communities. Specifically, it intends to identify what types of EA artifacts represent boundary objects, analyze their properties and usage scenarios, as well as the differences between them.
Method: This study is based on an in-depth case study of an organization with an established EA practice. Data collection procedures include both interviews with various participants of its EA practice and comprehensive scrutiny of its EA documentation.
Results: We identify five specific types of EA artifacts used in the organization as boundary objects and analyze them in detail. In particular, we analyze their informational contents and usage scenarios, their target audiences and value for cross-community collaboration, as well as their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic boundary-spanning capacity. Moreover, we also introduce the notion of duality as a characteristic of interpretive flexibility of EA artifacts and distinguish two different types of duality leveraging somewhat different boundary-spanning mechanisms: implicit duality and explicit duality.
Conclusions: This paper provides arguably the first inductive qualitative analysis of EA artifacts as boundary objects available in the existing EA literature. It contributes to our understanding of their boundary-spanning properties, distinctive features and general roles in an EA practice. Also, the concepts of implicit and explicit duality that we introduce further advance the theory of boundary objects.
Design/methodology/approach: This study builds on the analysis of architecture practices in 27 diverse organizations. Based on the semi-structured interviews with architects and the examination of utilized architectural documents, we explore IA-related instruments with their usage scenarios that have been adopted in the studied organizations.
Findings: The authors identify 12 distinct instruments used in the industry and analyze in detail their features, properties and relationships. This paper analysis shows that these instruments are rather diverse and largely inconsistent across different organizations. The study findings also suggest that IA cannot be considered as a comprehensive plan for information, but rather as a variable set of loosely related instruments and practices that help organizations manage information.
Originality/value: The study offers a unique perspective on the concept of IA, as it is practiced in the industry today, as well as a critical scrutiny of the respective prescriptions abundant in the existing literature. Although this study does not attempt to theorize on the findings, it makes a significant empirical contribution by offering a solid evidence-based view of IA and its key instruments currently missing in the available literature.
Objective: This study intends to explore the roles of different EA artifacts in organizations and develop a generic descriptive theory explaining these roles. The theory purports to cover various properties of EA artifacts as well as the relationships between them.
Method: The research method of this study follows two consecutive phases: theory construction and theory validation. First, theory construction is based on the qualitative in-depth analysis of five case organizations with established EA practices. Next, theory validation includes confirmatory interviews with ten EA experts.
Results: This study develops a descriptive theory explaining the roles of different EA artifacts in an EA practice. The resulting theory defines six general types of EA artifacts (Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines and Designs, CSVLOD) and explains their type-specific practical roles, including their informational contents, typical usage, ensuing organizational benefits and interrelationships with each other.
Conclusions: This study presents the first systematic theory describing the usage of EA artifacts in organizations. Our theory facilitates better theoretical understanding of the concept of EA and also provides evidence-based solutions to the commonly reported practical problems with EA. This study suggests that the EA research community should focus on studying individual EA artifacts instead of studying EA in general and calls for further research on EA artifacts and their usage as part of EA practices.
Objective: This paper intends to explore in detail the problem of achieving effective engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders in an organization, identify the main inhibitors of engagement and present a theoretical model explaining the problem of establishing engagement in practice.
Method: This paper is based on a single in-depth revelatory case study including nine interviews with different participants of EA practice (e.g. architects and other EA stakeholders) and documentation analysis. It leverages the grounded theory method to construct a conceptual model explaining the problem of engagement in the studied organization.
Results: This paper identifies 28 direct and indirect inhibitors of engagement and unifies them into a holistic conceptual model addressing the problem of achieving engagement that covers the factors undermining both strategic and initiative-based engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders.
Conclusions: This paper focuses on the notion of engagement and offers arguably the first available theoretical model that explains how typical engagement problems between architects and other stakeholders inhibit the realization of value from EA practice. However, the developed model has a number of limitations and we call for further empirical research on engagement problems in EA practice and coping strategies for addressing these problems.
Objective: This study aims to explore how exactly EA artifacts as boundary objects facilitate communication between different professional communities. Specifically, it intends to identify what types of EA artifacts represent boundary objects, analyze their properties and usage scenarios, as well as the differences between them.
Method: This study is based on an in-depth case study of an organization with an established EA practice. Data collection procedures include both interviews with various participants of its EA practice and comprehensive scrutiny of its EA documentation.
Results: We identify five specific types of EA artifacts used in the organization as boundary objects and analyze them in detail. In particular, we analyze their informational contents and usage scenarios, their target audiences and value for cross-community collaboration, as well as their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic boundary-spanning capacity. Moreover, we also introduce the notion of duality as a characteristic of interpretive flexibility of EA artifacts and distinguish two different types of duality leveraging somewhat different boundary-spanning mechanisms: implicit duality and explicit duality.
Conclusions: This paper provides arguably the first inductive qualitative analysis of EA artifacts as boundary objects available in the existing EA literature. It contributes to our understanding of their boundary-spanning properties, distinctive features and general roles in an EA practice. Also, the concepts of implicit and explicit duality that we introduce further advance the theory of boundary objects.
Design/methodology/approach: This study builds on the analysis of architecture practices in 27 diverse organizations. Based on the semi-structured interviews with architects and the examination of utilized architectural documents, we explore IA-related instruments with their usage scenarios that have been adopted in the studied organizations.
Findings: The authors identify 12 distinct instruments used in the industry and analyze in detail their features, properties and relationships. This paper analysis shows that these instruments are rather diverse and largely inconsistent across different organizations. The study findings also suggest that IA cannot be considered as a comprehensive plan for information, but rather as a variable set of loosely related instruments and practices that help organizations manage information.
Originality/value: The study offers a unique perspective on the concept of IA, as it is practiced in the industry today, as well as a critical scrutiny of the respective prescriptions abundant in the existing literature. Although this study does not attempt to theorize on the findings, it makes a significant empirical contribution by offering a solid evidence-based view of IA and its key instruments currently missing in the available literature.
Objective: This study intends to explore the roles of different EA artifacts in organizations and develop a generic descriptive theory explaining these roles. The theory purports to cover various properties of EA artifacts as well as the relationships between them.
Method: The research method of this study follows two consecutive phases: theory construction and theory validation. First, theory construction is based on the qualitative in-depth analysis of five case organizations with established EA practices. Next, theory validation includes confirmatory interviews with ten EA experts.
Results: This study develops a descriptive theory explaining the roles of different EA artifacts in an EA practice. The resulting theory defines six general types of EA artifacts (Considerations, Standards, Visions, Landscapes, Outlines and Designs, CSVLOD) and explains their type-specific practical roles, including their informational contents, typical usage, ensuing organizational benefits and interrelationships with each other.
Conclusions: This study presents the first systematic theory describing the usage of EA artifacts in organizations. Our theory facilitates better theoretical understanding of the concept of EA and also provides evidence-based solutions to the commonly reported practical problems with EA. This study suggests that the EA research community should focus on studying individual EA artifacts instead of studying EA in general and calls for further research on EA artifacts and their usage as part of EA practices.
Objective: This paper intends to explore in detail the problem of achieving effective engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders in an organization, identify the main inhibitors of engagement and present a theoretical model explaining the problem of establishing engagement in practice.
Method: This paper is based on a single in-depth revelatory case study including nine interviews with different participants of EA practice (e.g. architects and other EA stakeholders) and documentation analysis. It leverages the grounded theory method to construct a conceptual model explaining the problem of engagement in the studied organization.
Results: This paper identifies 28 direct and indirect inhibitors of engagement and unifies them into a holistic conceptual model addressing the problem of achieving engagement that covers the factors undermining both strategic and initiative-based engagement between architects and other EA stakeholders.
Conclusions: This paper focuses on the notion of engagement and offers arguably the first available theoretical model that explains how typical engagement problems between architects and other stakeholders inhibit the realization of value from EA practice. However, the developed model has a number of limitations and we call for further empirical research on engagement problems in EA practice and coping strategies for addressing these problems.