=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2470/p29
|storemode=property
|title=Aligning agile software development with enterprise architecture framework
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2470/p29.pdf
|volume=Vol-2470
|authors=Karolis Noreika,Saulius Gudas
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ivus/NoreikaG19
}}
==Aligning agile software development with enterprise architecture framework==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2470/p29.pdf
Aligning agile software development with enterprise
architecture framework
Karolis Noreika Saulius Gudas
Kaunas, Lithuania Institute of Data Science and Digital Technologies
E-mail: knoreikos@gmail.com Vilnius University
Vilnius, Lithuania
E-mail: saulius.gudas@mii.vu.lt
Abstract. The effectiveness of internal processes is a key in either decommission the system or accept the extremely costly
modern day economy for companies of all sizes. This also includes support of it (i.e. mainframe systems in financial institutions).
the effectiveness in software development management and its
alignment with business goals both short and long term. But it is Enterprise architecture is a well-defined practice for
not always easy to align IT development with organizational goals. conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and imple-
This paper suggests a method for aligning modern software mentation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for
development approaches with enterprise architecture frameworks. the successful development and execution of strategy [3]. The
agile methodology life cycle could be structured and aligned
Keywords: agile software development, business and IT with TOGAF life cycle, which is a standard for enterprise
alignment, enterprise architecture framework, TOGAF architecture development. TOGAF is a framework – a detailed
method – for designing, planning, implementing, and
I. INTRODUCTION governing an enterprise architecture [4], [10].
Agile approach is a popular software development This paper proposes a methodology for how agile
methodology. Agile approach currently is being adopted to methodology life cycle can be aligned with TOGAF enterprise
business strategy execution, decision making to achieve architecture framework.
strategic goals. Companies are “going agile” [1] in order to
improve productivity of software teams as well as business II. AGILITY IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND SOFTWARE
teams making business decisions. “Going agile” is a big DEVELOPMENT
organizational change. It means that employees in all levels of
Agile approach allows business representatives to see the
organization will need to adapt to the new way of working,
value of the software product being developed faster
which is getting the results of their daily duties evaluated
compared to traditional software development. Traditional or
much faster than in the traditional way of working. However,
“waterfall” software development dates back to around
when “going agile”, the overall goals of the organization are
1970ties when the development of large enterprise IT systems
not always supported with an organizational change. There are
was started to be described in a scientific way [5].
researches that emphasize the importance of supporting the
agile way of working from organizational perspective The waterfall methodology utilizes the idea that each
(provide appropriate physical atmosphere, work environment phase in software development is sequential and cannot
that encourages creativity) [2]. The gaps between business and repeat. The agile methodology promotes the idea of repeated
IT strategies appear. It might result in not sufficient quality of and iterative steps, which are explained in Fig. 1 below.
software products, that are not in line with overall goals of the
organization both short and long term.
Eventually the misalignment becomes so significant that
organizations get into a position when there is no way back –
Fig. 1. THE CONCEPTUAL DIAGRAM OF THE AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
© 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
98
Fig. 1 explains how the software product is being developed information/knowledge flows. The detailed description of
after the business need is received. It contains the whole agile each of the elements is in table 1 below.
life cycle which is organized by having different
TABLE 1. DESCRIPTION OF AGILE LIFE CYCLE ELEMENTS
Step/ Step/element Step/element description
element name
no.
1 Data flow no. 1 The data flow, containing the information needed for understanding the business need,
problem. It is transformed into product backlog item (element no. 2)
2 Product backlog List of features and requirements that the solution should have once completed.
items
3 Data flow no. 2 An incoming data flow for the next element in the life cycle – sprint backlog (element no.
4). It contains the features that software should contain after development iteration – sprint.
4 Sprint backlog List of features that will be developed in the next sprint. Sprint is a time frame with a list of
features described and approved by business and IT representatives.
5 Data flow no. 3 Once the high level features to be developed in the next sprint are agreed upon – the details
must be clarified to the level needed in order to accomplish the business needs. This data
flow contains the sprint backlog items or features explained in smaller pieces of information
or requirements – user stories.
6 User stories The detailed requirements are worked on – analyzed by the development team so that both
IT and business representatives understands the problem each user story would solve.
7 Data flow no. 4 The detailed user stories are placed in some software tool that would allow keeping track of
the progress of development of user stories.
8 Sprints/ This is the most beneficial part of the agile life cycle. It is a method of constantly developing
development small part of the overall software solution and getting the feedback fast.
Each sprint consists of:
a) Design – designing the user interface, business rules placed in the solution.
b) Build (develop) – coding, styling, working on the solution from development
perspective.
c) Test – test the developed solution against the requirements.
d) Review – review the solution test findings and decide what to improve.
e) Launch – after the items that were agreed to be developed at the end of sprint are
verified against the solution itself and the found changes that were necessary to do
are done, the project team decides should the solution at current stage be deployed
into production (or live) environment, where it could be already used by business
representatives.
Note: agile promotes the approach that the project team should be able to continue the
iterative development for indefinite amount of time. Therefore, the number of sprints with
the same phases as mentioned above could continue indefinitely.
9 Data flow no. 5 The information gathered from the business need at the beginning of the project and
throughout development phase aggregated to prepare the demo of the solution.
10 Demo The demo for the solution is a system presentation conducted to all relevant stakeholders.
11 Data flow no. 6 The decision after the demo whether the solution should be included into production
environment or should the development continue with taking the next set of requirements
made.
12 Repeat or close As Agile methodology describes – self-organizing team should be capable of keeping the
development accepted efficiency for product development indefinitely. This means that if business
managers decide – the team should be able to repeat the whole cycle indefinite amount of
times until the repetition does not increase the value significantly. If the decision is made to
close the project – the agile life cycle is completed.
13 Data flow no. 7 If it is decided to continue development – the next set of requirements is taken from the
product backlog items list (element no. 2) and the agile life cycle is repeated.
There are a lot of details and techniques how agile life multiple projects in same business area (i.e. store related
cycle should be managed to achieve the best efficiency [6], documents in single repository, have same classification of
[7], [8], but this is not a subject of this paper. them, etc.) The business side in the enterprises is also starting
to take decision based on agile methodology, although it is
However, running a successful business is not only about often perceived as a part of startup culture – i.e. not something
doing software development in an agile way. Often IT established and large organizations would do. Table 2 below
development is ahead of business decisions where to come up represents the comparison of agile and traditional approach on
with a suitable software solution development teams needs business decision making in agile and traditional ways.
quick decisions by business that might be applicable across
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TABLE 2. AGILE AND TRADITIONAL DECISION MAKING COMPARISON
Methodology Flexibility Risk Adapting to Amount of data needed to
change make decision
Agile (including Higher Higher Faster Smaller
variations)
Traditional Lower Lower Slower Larger
Agile methodology could be applied to business decision also one of key aspects to have for the agile development
making by mapping the agile phases to decision making teams to be successful and self-organizing.
process – i.e. limit the information needed to make decision
could be compared to sprint backlog. Having a deadline for a 3) Competitive potential – focuses on utilizing emerging
decision could be understood as the date for demo. Adjust to IT capabilities to impact new products and services also to
new information on the decision could be understood as influence key attributes of strategy (distinct competences) as
review part of sprint. well as form new relationships (business governance). This
perspective also allows the changing of business strategy via
III. IDENTIFICATION OF GAPS BETWEEN BUSINESS emerging IT capabilities. The role of the management is of
AND IT STRATEGIES business visionary who dictates how emerging IT
competences and functionality would impact the business
A. Business and IT alignment model strategy. The role of IT manager is of the one who identifies
The business and IT alignment model was created by and interprets the trend in the IT environment to assist the
Henderson and improved by Venkatraman to represent business managers to understand the potential opportunities
business strategy alignment with IT strategy thus providing and threats from an IT perspective and handle them
analysis method aimed for competitive advantage [9]. Fig. 2 accordingly.
below represents the strategic alignment model. 4) Service level – this perspective focuses on building
world class IT team. Therefore, the role of IT manager is also
of a business leadership with tasks of making the internal
business succeed with the operating guidelines from top
management.
B. TOGAF
TOGAF is framework for designing, planning,
implementing, and governing an enterprise information
technology architecture. The TOGAF standard includes a
content framework to drive the Architecture Development
Method (ADM). TOGAF is an iterative process model
(enterprise architecture development life cycle) supported by
best practices and a re-usable set of existing architecture
Fig. 2. THE BUSINESS AND IT ALIGNMENT MODEL assets. TOGAF supports Capability-Based Planning of
There are four domain alignment perspectives where each enterprise architecture [10].
focuses on different aspect of alignment between the business The TOGAF framework is presented in Fig. 3 below.
and IT alignment, i.e.:
1) Strategy execution – business strategy is the driver for
organization design changes and the logic of IT infrastructure.
In this perspective, the top management of the organization
dictates the strategy of the company and the IT management
is the strategy implementer.
2) Technology potential – business strategy is the driver
for change, however it is closely aligned with IT strategy as
well, therefore the IT systems are more aligned with IT
strategy and also business strategy.
The top management should provide the vision of the
technology to articulate the logic and choices to IT strategy
what would best support the chosen business strategy. The
role of IT manager in this perspective should be of the
technology architect – the IT manager should efficiently and
effectively design and also implement information system
infrastructure that is consistent with the IT strategy. This
alignment perspective could be used for aligning business and
IT strategy along with IT systems in an agile way as vision is
100
Enterprise architecture development life cycle (defined in
TOGAF) could be used for analysis of the agile software
development approach.
The TOGAF life cycle in Fig. 3 was transformed to a
schematic view of a table (Fig. 4) in which the columns
represent the phases of TOGAF enterprise architecture
development life cycle and agile methodology life cycle and
the activities in the intersecting sections – the phases of agile
development (design, build, test and deploy) [11]. This
approach could be used into applying agile way of working
for building up and aligning with enterprise architecture
implementation that TOGAF provides.
Although companies can change strategies quickly, they
then face the big slowdown of executing one or several
strategies. For enterprise architects, this has traditionally
meant defining a new target state, comparing it with the
current state, and then developing a road map. But this
multistep process is now perceived as taking too long — by
the time EA has all of these documented and approved, the
business will have moved on [12].
Fig. 3. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPMENT LIFE
CYCLE TOGAF (https://www.opengroup.org/togaf)
Fig. 4. TOGAF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORK AND AGILE METHODOLOGY ALIGNMENT
MODEL
IV. ALIGNING AGILE LIFE CYCLE WITH ENTERPRISE (also called stakeholders, subject matter experts or in agile –
ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORK product owners) represent the business only fragmentally –
whenever there is a question regarding IT and business
It is a common belief that TOGAF and also other large alignment – it is solved on ad-hoc basis, but a long term IT
enterprise architecture frameworks are “waterfall”. This is a and business strategy should be capable of answering these
common misinterpretation largely due to these models questions on a higher – strategic – level which is orchestrated
encompassing all related IT activities and not specific. But by using the TOGAF methodology.
basically all these enterprise architecture frameworks are sets
of tools, similar like agile where one also should choose the The idea behind mapping TOGAF to agile life cycle is use
tools and methods suitable for each specific case. A problem the strategic vision that TOGAF provides by using its
in large organizations is that there are different levels of framework and utilize the benefits of agile continuous
maturity of agile of different teams. Business representatives
101
improvement and “inspect and adapt” approach. The technology advances to the cloud based solutions more and
suggested mapping is displayed in Fig. 5. more companies are concerned about the safety of the data in
the cloud based systems. Combining these concerns with the
When TOGAF is used for overall overview on the agreed service level agreements provided by external vendors
enterprise architecture and agile is used for project’s not being maintained for enterprises to run their operations
iterations, the business gets benefit from even faster deliveries smoothly (i.e. important IT system being outsourced is not
and projects are aligned with business goals at all times. working part of the day due to agreed service level agreement
V. CASE STUDY breached) might lead to decisions to insource the IT and IS
infrastructure. But the cost of such decisions is very dependent
Large enterprises often combine the IT infrastructure „in- on the level of alignment between IT and business strategy and
house“ together with outsourcing it. It could be only storing the less is the alignment, the bigger are the costs. Whenever
part of data or all the data of the enterprise. These decisions an enterprise is faced with such decision, it is very important
are made according to IT strategy mostly and not always these to keep the alignment between business and IT strategies
decisions are aligned with business strategy. As the moving on.
Fig. 5. THE SIMPLIFIED MAPPING OF TOGAF TO AGILE LIFE CYCLE
By using the TOGAF enterprise architecture framework The case where such suggestion was made was about large
and agile methodology alignment suggested in chapter 4, the enterprise moving over 2000 servers of different purposes
company facing such decision might significantly reduce the from outsource to in-house. When using the suggested method
cost and impact of the migration from outsource provider to of enterprise architecture framework TOGAF being aligned
in-house solution by constantly aligning the enterprise with agile methodology the implementation of the change
architecture which TOGAF describes with the constant could have taken at least 10 % less effort both in terms of cost
feedback, “inspect and adapt” approach that agile promotes. and time needed for the change as the comparison of activities
102
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