Guided Research: Selected topics in EAM

Context

Enterprise architectures (EA) and their managment is a field of research, which receives increased interest over the last years. This becomes obvious when looking at the multitude of approaches to EA management, which have been proposed by researchers, standardization bodies, and practitioners. The state-of-the-art in the discipline of EA management is not very homogenous; the approaches differ widely in respect to the coverage and reach of EA management as well as concerning the level of detail, at which EAs are considered and analyzed.

To advance the topic of EA management, our current research aims at the establishment of a reference methodology for performing EA management. Such methodology would describe the typical management activities as well as the information objects, which are exchanged between and processed by these activities. Complementing the reference methodology, a current research project tries to establish concepts of an EA meta-modeling language for supporting the typical activities. Thereby, especially the activity of EA analysis, which is widely considered an essential part of an EA management endeavor, forms an interesting subject of research.

Topics for Guided Research

• Scientific case study on the proposed reference methodology for EA management
  Objective: The student researcher analyzes the EA management activities at an industry partner and re-engineers a description of the corresponding management process from existing documentation and with the help of interviews. Thereby, the management process is documented as a set of management methodologies, which are further related to the methodologies as described in the EA management pattern catalog. This set of methodologies is subsequently mapped to the comprehensive reference methodology and analyses are undertaken to find and explain deviations from the reference methodology.
• Scientific case study on techniques for EA analysis
  Objective: The student researcher documents existing EA analysis techniques at an industry partner and re-engineers the used EA models from existing documentation and with the help of interviews. During these interviews also additional requirements for EA analyses are gathered. Based on the proposed meta-language for EA analysis, the current techniques and their underlying models should be described in more detail and proposals for analysis techniques satisfying the newly collected demands should be created. In the latter activities, possible difficulties with applying the meta-language should be investigated.

Course of Action

Multiple students can work on the same topic independently, i.e. at different industry partners. Every student compiles a report on the results of his/her guided research, which must be "submitted" to an internal workshop and is reviewed by assistants of the chair. Additionally, every student must give a short talk on his/her results at the end of the semester at an internal workshop.

Students providing outstanding work are encouraged to submit their results to a scientific conference, workshop, or journal. For doing so, they are provided guidance by the organizers of the guided research after the internal workshop and presentation.

Referenced by:

• Guided Research
• Christian M. Schweda