EAMML

Identifying, gathering, and maintaining information on the current, planned, and target states architecture of an enterprise is one major challenge of enterprise architecture (EA) management. A multitude of approaches towards EA management are proposed in literature greatly differing regarding the underlying perception of EA management and the description of the performing EA management function (cf. [HW08,Ni06,Op09]). The aforementioned plurality of methods and models can be interpreted as an indicator for the low maturity of the research area or as an inevitable consequence of the diversity of the enterprises under consideration pointing to the enterprise-specificy of the topic.

This guided research aims at analyzing the state-of-the-art in EA management from a knowledge management perspective. Thereby, we will follow a twofold approach: On the one hand the knowledge management cycle proposed by Probst (cf. [Pr98]) is used to develop an analysis framework and identify core constituents of EA management. Based on the developed framework and the identified constituents of knowledge management, we will analyze prominent EA management approaches as proposed in literature. The analysis results will be discussed and explanatory hypothesis will be derived. On the other hand, we will to investigate the current EA management practice via an industry study. Therefore, we want to interview EA management practitioners regarding their EA management practice from a knowledge management perspective. Thereby, the expected number of respondents is 10 industry partners. We will use the results of the industry study to revise the explanatory hypothesis derived form the literature review. Finally, we will investigate the results of the two analysis regarding their influence on current approaches to EA management and their impact on future research topics in this context.

• [HW08] Hafner, M. and Winter, R.: Processes for enterprise application architecture management. In 41st Hawaii International International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS-41 2008), Proceedings, 7-10 January 2008, Waikoloa, Big Island, USA, page 396. IEEE Computer Society, 2008.
• [Ni06]   Niemann, K. D.: From Enterprise Architecture to IT Governance – Elements of Effective IT Management. Vieweg+Teubner, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2006.
• [Op09]  The Open Group: TOGAF "Enterprise Edition" Version 9. http://www.togaf.org (cited 2009-07-10), 2009.
• [Pr98]   Probst, J.G.: Practical knowledge management: A model that works. Arthur D Little PRISM, 1998.