Sebis Research News

The widespread use of agile methods shows a fundamental shift in the way organizations try to cope with unpredictable competitive environments. In large-scale agile settings, multiple development activities need to be coordinated to achieve desirable enterprise-wide effects and agility. A powerful instrument to effectively guide and steer large-scale agile endeavors is the formulation and usage of architecture principles.
Despite their raison d'être to guide large organizational transformations, extant studies on how principles can be used to support large-scale agile transformations are still lacking.

Against this backdrop, we present a multiple-case study involving five German companies that aims to shed light on the establishment of architecture principles to support large-scale agile transformations. Based on our results from sixteen semi-structured interviews, we present current practices as well as challenges faced by organizations during the application of architecture principles. In addition, we show a set of principles used to support large-scale agile transformations.

A joint paper with eight Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Modelling chairs from five countries with the title "From Expert Discipline to Common Practice: A Vision and Research Agenda for Extending the Reach of Enterprise Modeling" has been accepted by the prestigious Information Systems journal "Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE"). The article can be found here.

Abstract

The benefits of enterprise modeling (EM) and its contribution to organizational tasks are largely undisputed in business and information systems engineering. EM as a discipline has been around for several decades but is typically performed by a limited number of people in organizations with an affinity to modeling. What is captured in models is only a fragment of what ought to be captured. Thus, this research note argues that EM is far from its maximum potential. Many people develop some kind of model in their local practice without thinking about it consciously. Exploiting the potential of this “grass roots modeling” could lead to groundbreaking innovations. The aim is to investigate integration of the established practices of modeling with local practices of creating and using model-like artifacts of relevance for the overall organization. The paper develops a vision for extending the reach of EM, identifies research areas contributing to the vision and proposes elements of a future research agenda.

A research paper has been accepted for publication at the 11^th International Conference for Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2013). The paper entitled “Enterprise Architecture Documentation: Current Practices and Future Directions” reports on a survey among 140 Enterprise Architecture (EA) practitioners to analyze issues organizations face while documenting the EA and keeping the documentation up to date. The author team (Sascha Roth, Matheus Hauder, Matthias Farwick, Ruth Breu, and Florian Matthes) present results on current practices, challenges, and automation techniques for EA documentation in a descriptive manner.

The EAMTS2008 - Enterprise Architecture Management Tool Survey 2008 is now available for free download. In the EAMTS2008 the author team (Florian Matthes, Sabine Buckl, Jana Leitel, and Christian M. Schweda) analyze nine major players in the market of EA management tools.