=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Tool-based Support for Organization-specific Enterprise Architecture Management
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-592/PaperDemo10.pdf
|volume=Vol-592
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/caise/BucklDMS10
}}
==Tool-based Support for Organization-specific Enterprise Architecture Management==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-592/PaperDemo10.pdf
Tool-based Support for Organization-specific
Enterprise Architecture Management
Sabine Buckl, Thomas Dierl, Florian Matthes, and Christian M. Schweda
Technische Universität München, Institute for Informatics,
Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Germany
{sabine.buckl,dierl,matthes,schweda}@in.tum.de
http://www.systemcartography.info
Enterprise architecture (EA) management is a commonly accepted instru-
ment for modern organizations to deal with today’s challenging environment.
Effectively designed an organization-specific EA management function can im-
prove the overall agility of an organization. The design of such management
function is a challenging task, in which the different process steps, information
flows, and roles that constitute such function have to be shaped and aligned.
The complexity of the management subject EA and the high number of involved
stakeholders further aggravate the creation of a consistent but organization-
specific EA management, and call for tool support during the design phase. In
this phase, the designer selects the goals to be pursued, the concerns to be ad-
dressed, and the roles to be involved. Based on this selection, the user is supplied
with re-usable and practice-proven building blocks that can be integrated into a
tailored EA management function for the using organization. Different sources
for such building blocks exist, namely the EA management pattern catalog [1]
or TOGAF [5], although the latter does not explicitly state such blocks.
After the organization-specific EA management function has been defined,
it must be enacted in the organization. For the conduction phase, i.e. for man-
aging the EA, the tool must provide support by initializing the corresponding
processes and process steps, informing the relevant stakeholders, and ensuring
that their information demands are fulfilled. For the latter, the tool must sup-
port the generation of EA views that correspond to well-defined viewpoints [1,
3]. These viewpoints prescribe which architectural information is conveyed to
which stakeholder. Building on the prefabricates of [2], where a tool for flexibly
visualizing EAs is presented, we subsequently outline the core idea behind an
EA management design tool that further allows to enact the designed process,
sketch realization ideas, and give an outlook on future developments.
Approach Central idea behind the design tool is the understanding that re-
usable building blocks for an EA management function may be extracted from
different EA management approaches in literature as well as observed in practical
cases. These building blocks are then aligned to a common terminology and their
underlying organizational contexts as well as their pursued management goals are
elicited. Thereby, the different possibly competing building blocks are interlinked
into a nexus (cf. Figure 1) that backs the design tool.
Implementation While EA management is a collaborative function, the de-
sign phase can be considered a single user task. The design tool should hence
2 Sabine Buckl, Thomas Dierl, Florian Matthes, and Christian M. Schweda
be implemented as standalone application, e.g. based on the Eclipse Rich Client
Platform [4]. Aforementioned platform may especially be useful, as it supports
the development of graphical modeling tools via the graphical modeling frame-
work (GMF) and the eclipse modeling framework (EMF).
Goals
Competing approaches
Nexus
Design solution
Organizational
context
Fig. 1. Building block nexus backing the design tool
Outlook Building block-based modeling of EA management processes is in
many ways different from typical process modeling. The above tool can therefore
greatly benefit from using a modeling language appropriate for this purpose, i.e.
a language especially supporting the composition of process building blocks.
Further challenges arise from integrating the process with other building blocks,
e.g. the viewpoints. In each integration, consistency must be verified and minor
user-specific adaptations should be supported.
References
1. S. Buckl, A. M. Ernst, J. Lankes, and F. Matthes. Enterprise Architecture Man-
agement Pattern Catalog (Version 1.0, February 2008). Technical report, Chair for
Informatics 19 (sebis), Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany, 2008.
2. S. Buckl, A. M. Ernst, J. Lankes, F. Matthes, C. Schweda, and A. Wittenburg.
Generating visualizations of enterprise architectures using model transformation
(extended version). Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures –
An International Journal, 2(2):3–13, 2007.
3. S. Kurpjuweit and R. Winter. Viewpoint-based meta model engineering. In M. Re-
ichert, S. Strecker, and K. Turowski, editors, Enterprise Modelling and Information
Systems Architectures – Concepts and Applications , Proceedings of the 2nd Inter-
national Workshop on Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures
(EMISA’07), St. Goar, Germany, October 8-9, 2007, LNI, pages 143–161, Bonn,
Germany, 2007. Gesellschaft für Informatik.
4. The Eclipse Foundation. Rich client platform.
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich Client Platform (cited 2010-03-18),
2010.
5. The Open Group. TOGAF ”Enterprise Edition” Version 9. http://www.togaf.org
(cited 2010-02-25), 2009.