Project description

The enterprise architecture of an organisation refers to the structural and dynamic composition and properties of its ‘system’ of goals, strategies, business organisation (roles, responsibilities, processes, functions, services, products, ..), information systems (data and applications), information technology, other infrastructure (facilities, machinery), and implementation and migration plans (programs, projects, work packages). Enterprise architects are responsible for the coherence of all these organisational assets and knowledge items and help to steer the organisation in the right direction, supporting its strategic initiatives with their knowledge, skills and toolset.​ Based on enterprise architecture models, enterprise architects perform different kinds of analysis, e.g., change impact analysis, gap analysis, strategic fit analysis, etc.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a detailed account of the state-of-the-art (both state-of-the-research and state-of-the-practice) in enterprise architecture analysis: What different types of analysis exist? what theoretical or conceptual frameworks are used? What analysis methods and techniques? What analysis tools? But also, how does it work in practice? What is the perceived utility? What are the benefits and do they outweigh the costs and risks?​

Research methods include systematic literature mapping and review, and survey research and (2 students) /or (1 student) case-study research. ​

The main difference between literature mapping and literature review is that a mapping study is limited to investigating what research has been performed, by means of which methods and by whom (often by just reading a paper’s abstract, introduction and conclusion), whereas a literature review looks into the actual research results (requiring reading the entire paper). For guidance on how to conduct systematic literature studies and report their results, see (Kitchenham & Charters 2007, Okoli 2015, vom Brocke et al. 2015). For general guidance on research methodology in Information Systems, see (Recker, 2013).

References

Kitchenham, B., and Charters, S. (2007) Guidelines for performing Systematic Litera- ture Reviews in Software Engineering. Technical Report EBSE-2007-01. Soft- ware Engineering Group of Keele University Durham UK.

Okoli, Chitu (2015) “A Guide to Conducting a Standalone Systematic Literature Review,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 37, Article 43.

Recker, J. 2013. Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner’s Guide. Springer.

vom Brocke, J., Simons, A., Riemer, K., Niehaves, B., Plattfaut, R., & Cleven, A. (2015). Standing on the shoulders of giants: Challenges and recommendations of literature search in Information Systems research. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 37(1), Article 9, 205-224.
​