Abstract. Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations between such views. To help produce a consistent design the framework also aids in specifying consistency rules that apply to the view relations and in checking the consistency according to those rules. The framework focuses on the higher levels of abstraction in a design, we refer to design at those levels of abstraction as architectural design. The highest level of abstraction that we consider is that of business process design and the lowest level is that of software component design. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts that is common to viewpoints in the area of enterprise information systems. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) a basis for defining re-usable consistency rules. In particular we define re-usable rules to check consistency between behavioural views that overlap or are a refinement of each other. We also present an architecture for a tool suite that supports our framework. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints.

An enterprise architecture is intended to be a comprehensive blueprint describing the key components and relationships for an enterprise from strategies to business processes to information systems and technologies. Enterprise architectures have become essential for managing change in complex organizations. While “motivation ” has been recognized since Zachman 0 as an important element of enterprise architecture, yet to date, most enterprise architecture modeling only deals with structure, function, and behaviour, neglecting the intentional dimension of motivations, rationales, and goals. The contribution at hand explores this challenge and aims to illustrate the potentials of intentional modeling in the context of enterprise architecture. After introducing two intentional modeling languages and their potential relation to an enterprise architecture construction process, we report on an explorative case study that aimed to investigate the practical implications of intentional modeling and analysis for enterprise architectures. Finally, we present key observations from interviews that were conducted with practitioners to obtain feedback regarding the material developed in the case study. 1.

Abstract: The number of business applications operated by enterprises to provide support for the business has increased over the last years. With increasing number of applications and connections between them, also the overall complexity of the application landscape has grown. A main task in managing an application landscape is maintaining quality levels. This article contributes a set of metrics for measuring a specific attribute of an application landscape – failure propagation. 1

The complexity of today’s enterprise application landscapes makes the selection of new applications which still fit into the existing landscape a complex and daunting task. In this paper, we present an approach to support this task by a two-phase landscape-dependent evaluation process. In the initial phase single characteristics of the landscape’s different applications and the application to be introduced are assessed. In the second phase these characteristics are combined into an overall value which can be regarded as an indication of how adequate the new application will be in the context of the existing landscape. We rely on vague evaluation models for the calculation of this indication and present fuzzy logic as one example for such a model. Finally, we substantiate our approach by a practical example.

Abstract. For large security systems a clear separation of concerns is achieved through architecting. Particularly the dynamic consistency between the architectural components should be addressed, in addition to individual component behaviour. In this paper, relevant dynamic consistency is specified through Paradigm, a coordination modeling language based on dynamic constraints. As it is argued, this fits well with security issues. A smaller example introduces the architectural approach towards implementing security policies. A larger casestudy illustrates the use of Paradigm in analyzing the FOO voting scheme. In addition, translating the Paradigm models into process algebra brings model checking within reach. Security properties of the examples discussed, are formally verified with the model checker mCRL2. 1

(EA) management is proposed in literature, differing in the underlying understanding of the EA as well as in the description of the function for performing EA management. These plurality of methods and models should be interpreted as an indicator of the low maturity of the research area. In contrast, some researchers see it as inevitable consequence of the diversity of the enterprises under consideration. Staying to this interpretation, we approach the topic of EA management from a cybernetic point of view. Thereby, we elicit constituents, which should be considered in every EA management function based on a viable system perspective on the topic. From this perspective, we further revisit selected EA management approaches and show to which extent they allude to the viable system nature of the EA.

Abstract. This article presents a model for projects that have to adhere to Enterprise Architecture (EA) in order for their results to be aligned with the broader organization. The model features project artifacts (i.e. deliverables such as Software Architecture Documents), their mutual relationships, their relationship with EA, and the processes in which they are created and tested on conformance. We start with applying Activity Theory to show the crucial mediating role that artifacts have in projects and to identify and justify the new EA-related artifacts we introduce. We subsequently incorporate these findings and existing best practices in a standard systems development approach in order to create a practical model that projects can apply for EA conformance. This model features both new, dedicated EA artifacts, and well-known existing artifacts of which we describe the way they should conform to EA. Finally, two action research studies are used to empirically support the model.

The rapid movement towards service orientation, on both the business and technology fronts, offers unprecedented opportunities for business-IT alignment. As we will argue, to achieve true agility in its service provisioning to meet rapidly changing requirements, an organization needs a multi-dimensional business-IT alignment strategy—alignment via architecture, via governance and via communication—integrated with a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm to develop their service-based system. To help engineer such a service-based system with this integrated approach, we have developed a 3-layer, multi-disciplinary BITAM-SOA Service Engineering Schematic. The schematic also serves as a process model for service design and management. This schematic is rooted in the Resource-Based View theory perspective: business value can be created by IT-enhanced capabilities that can dynamically integrate resources. The strategic, managerial and practical implications of this schematic on service oriented implementations are exemplified and discussed.

Abstract: Over the last years a multitude of approaches and frameworks making prescriptions on how to document an enterprise architecture (EA) have been developed. These approaches target different purposes and correspondingly different concerns (areas of interest) in the architecture. In this way, a company seeking to develop or evolve an organization-specific EA documentation technique based on different approaches most likely runs into difficulties to understand the interdependencies between the different frameworks. In this research-in-progress paper, we revisit well-known documentation approaches to devise different types of concern relationships that may be helpful during development and evolution of an organization-specific EA documentation technique. 1 Introduction and

Abstract. Projects are the executors of organizational change and hence in charge of the managed evolution of the application landscape in the context of enterprise architecture (EA) management. Although the aforementioned fact is widely agreed upon, no generally accepted information model addressing the challenges arising in the context of future planning and historization of management decisions concerning projects yet exists. This paper addresses this challenge by identifying requirements regarding an information model for linking projects and application landscape management concepts from an extensive survey, during which the demands from practitioners and the existing tool support for EA management were analyzed. Furthermore, we discuss the shortcomings of existing approaches to temporal landscape management in literature and propose an information model capable of addressing the identified requirements by taking related modeling techniques from nearby disciplines into account.