Reviewing Enterprise Architecture Literature

This study looks deep into frameworks and methods of governance that are more practical oriented. The paper gives maximum attention to the relationship of the stakeholders and the architects, how this relationship determines the productivity of an enterprise architecture group and discusses the importance of this relationship to the governance of the Enterprise Architecture initiative.

Enterprise Architecture 1
REVIEWING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE LITERATURE
(Name)
Name of Professor
Name of Institution
Location of Institution

Enterprise Architecture 2
In the current world running organizations requires more than just having people working
but having to understand relationships of all the aspects of the organization (Baldwin, 2015). The
proper relationship of this aspect is something that matters a lot in making the organization a
success. Enterprise Architecture has evolved and has become one of the most relevant aspects of
an organization. However, many people in different organizations doubt its relevance and have
set their efforts in criticizing the need for enterprise architecture in an organization. Some of
these issues arise due to poor governance of the enterprise initiative, not knowing the importance
of a good relationship between the stakeholders and the enterprise architecture teams, and lastly
not putting into consideration what impact recruitment and training can bring in an enterprise
architecture group. This means not knowing the importance of EA in determining the value of
businesses.
The following study looks deep into frameworks and methods of governance that are
more practical oriented (Chorafas, 2016). In addition, the paper gives maximum attention to the
relationship of the stakeholders and the architects, how this relationship determines the
productivity of an enterprise architecture group and discusses the importance of this relationship
to the governance of the Enterprise Architecture initiative. The approach used in discussing the
governance of the EA initiative is by checking what challenges are faced by the EA initiatives
and what the criticism that comes along the challenges is. On the same, the paper gives a way
forward on how to survive negative things said by the stakeholders about EA. The objective of
this study is to liberate people’s ignorance on the relevance of EA and to create awareness on the
importance of EA to the success of an organization.
A large number of companies have committed an enterprise architecture group that
oversees all business processes so that the companies are able to deliver services and goods in a

Enterprise Architecture 3
more efficient way and effectively. However, not all companies conquer on what effective
governance of EA constitutes. Therefore, most companies tend to focus on some it related
problem and changing their business operations as needed. Other companies give an argument
that good governance can only happen where the EA leaders are empowered to promote
teamwork between groups in it business processes. Most of the time the enterprise architecture
governance is not always spotted as a weakness thus companies stakeholders go on criticizing
the architect department. Below are some of the most effective methods of governing the
enterprise architects that will help increase the relevance of EA in different companies.
The organization of enterprise architecture should resemble the business organization
(Zarvic and wieringa, 2014). Companies should centralize their enterprise departments
considering that their basic roles are directly connected to the company’s management. The
enterprise architecture activities are assessing and accounting for the things required by the
company’s processes and systems to work efficiently. Whenever different the company’s
requirements differ from one sector to another the EA group is in a good position to foresee the
prospective system incompatibilities and interdependence. However, some companies have gone
forward to splitting enterprise activities among small business units. The main reason being that
the company foresees small synergies between business groups. This means they do not manage
the management of enterprise architecture does not reflect the business organization. This makes
the enterprise less productive and seems to be useless.
The company should clearly know who is to account for any EA decision (Simon and
Shoder, 2014). In most companies when change is needed or implementation of a new process,
which is IT-enabled, all relevant stakeholders are brought on the table. EA leaders assembled
together with members of strategy team, finance, and software development group. This is to

Enterprise Architecture 4
make a decision by vetting options so that they can come to an agreement of which changes to
make and how to make the changes. This approach is important in decision making because it
ensures all members of the organization are involved, but when disagreements arise the EA
department tends to be blamed by the rest of the members. This is particularly when there is a
need for system replacements and IT infrastructure updates are required in multi-millions. To get
rid of all this blame game the companies need to assign full accountability to either a person who
can be the chief architect or any other capable person. Therefore, the person will be fully
accountable for the changes relating to the standard of technology.
Approval rights should always be given to the EA department (Rouhani et al, 2015).
Many companies have a very wrong perception that the EA have a lenient impact on
comprehensive corporate initiatives as compared with other departments like IT, which tend to
have huge budgets and are directly responsible for major operational areas. Ineffective
governance of the EA initiatives, companies should give the EA department bigger
responsibilities for decisions that are major in the company. This helps the EA group attract
leadership talents and other operations needed in designing and supporting the IT systems more
effectively. This will also motivate most of the EA staff members who value contributing to the
main decisions than receiving increments.
Close collaboration among the EA department, IT department, and the business should be
maintained (Goethal et al, 2016). The work of the EA department is a conceptualization of
complex ideas bringing them together and giving a clear explanation of how they work. Software
developers and system architects have a task of designing convoluted technology frameworks.
Many times when EA members strive to immerse in making sense of these details, they are often
isolated from the other members of the organization. The result is something that cannot interpret

Enterprise Architecture 5
by even the IT organization or even the businesses organization. To ensure that the IT
department effectively there can support the business is need to involve the EA department. This
is to help in the process of designing this new technologies and translation of complex ideas to
those, which can be digested, and implemented to actual actions as planned.
The EA department should separate operational tasks from strategy-related ones
(Plataniotis et al, 2014). Sometimes the EA department because of all the big-picture tasks they
undertake they can sometimes end up taking tasks from the business and the IT department and
which are very immediate. For example, they might involve themselves in building a business
case for doing a big IT-changing project, which is purely the task of the supply chain group.
Similarly, they might take part in a system-migration project helping the IT department with its
tasks. This happens because of the mix of skills by the members of the EA department.
Therefore, the members tend to have a particular knowledge that understands not only the
technological strategies but also the business processes and techniques involved in problem-
solving. Because of this members of this department can be involved in any task. Therefore, the
EA members should stay focused on the critical tasks and day-to-day operations but still give
attention to long-term issues, which are strategic, by not giving all of their attention to the very
urgent. In addition, the leaders of EA have a responsibility to assign the different tasks to
different team members.
Now it’s clear that good governance entails a lot and has a very big role to play in making
the EA relevance to a company noticeable (Jacob et al, 2016). The other thing that makes the
EA department seem irrelevant is the relationship between the architects and stakeholders. Their
relationship brings a lot of impact on the productivity of the EA department. The case in many
companies is where stakeholders are always criticizing the EA department and putting the

Enterprise Architecture 6
relevance the department in doubt. The stakeholders are most of the time involved in killing
architects initiatives by giving negative comments about the need of the architect in a company.
Therefore, a good relationship between stakeholders and architects should be maintained to
ensure that the work of EA department is visible. In the current situation, the stakeholder-
architects relationship in different companies has not been good and has lead to making the EA
seem to be very irrelevant. Stakeholders view architects as only busy people making counterfeit
pictures on the air. Architects are viewed as those people who go around with large complicating
diagrams. The only way for architects to survive this poor perception that the stakeholders view
them with is by focusing on what they do by making sure new developments fit in the
stakeholder's structures which are already existing. Stakeholders should also try and understand
how important the architects are and what can result after they have maintained a supportive
relationship. Communication with architects and getting involved in what they do will bring
them together for the success of any company.
Most of the literature on EA only mentions many impacts that it has on business
performance and other areas in a business but does not discuss them in detail (Schonherr,2015).
Below are some of the very many impacts enterprise architecture brings in business. There are
strategic impacts, which are positive benefits, which are realized after a long period and are
because of many factors. First, through EA, information of good quality is available to the
organization. This information is useful in decision making whereby the organization is able to
make designs that are reliable for the success of its operations. It is capable of providing both
business related information and information relating to the clients. This improves the business
competitive abilities because the targets are well identified and the best marketing strategies are
put in place. This leads to an increase in sales made by the business thus increased revenue. In

Enterprise Architecture 7
addition, EA has been identified to be a reliable information sharing. It has been proven a
reliable source of accurate information, which can be relied on in making decisions concerning
the organization.
Another important impact that enterprise architecture brings in an organization is
organizational alignment (Hansen and Hacks, 2017). This impact receives incredible attention in
literature especially the business and IT alignment. The alignment is not also in the other
business units and domains that an organization constitutes. EA also improves complementarily
of resources in an organization. This is possible because EA department is able to identify
potential synergies for the organization. It also gives recommendations on how the organization
leverages this cooperation. Authors give the importance of being recruited in the enterprise
architect training which comes along with the following benefits. It improves its performance in
general and enables the business to be more competitive. It also makes it possible to change your
business, meet your goals and make an effective investment in your IT. It also enables people to
visualize the future thus; one is able to deal with tomorrow’s challenges.
In conclusion, enterprise architecture is a very important aspect of organizations and
contributes a lot to making organization processes and systems successful. In order for enterprise
architecture to be productive, we have seen that good governance needs to be embraced. The
company or the organization should involve giving the EA department approval rights to
contribute to the core decisions made in the organization. It should also assign accountability to a
person in the EA department to avoid blaming the whole EA whenever there is a disagreement.
In addition to that, it is clear that it is important to have the ea organization resembling the
company’s organization. The collaboration of the enterprise architecture, the business together
with the IT department is also an important aspect when it comes to the governance of EA

Enterprise Architecture 8
initiative. Lastly, EA should be able to separate operational tasks from the strategical ones in
order to prevent involving other tasks, which are the responsibilities of other departments. From
most of the authors, it is clear that the relationship between architects and stakeholders is not at
any time good in many organizations. Stakeholders are always criticizing the relevance of the
EA and talking negative things about it. Finally, yet importantly, we have seen the impacts of EA
in organizations. These impacts are not discussed in details in most literature papers are but just
highlighted. Availing quality information, aligning business processes and systems and
improving complementarily of resources are some of the impacts accompanying enterprise
architects. Therefore, the relevance of EA from all literature papers is clear and should be
embraced and supported.

Enterprise Architecture 9
References
Baldwin, D., 2015. A Domain Neutral Enterprise Architecture Framework for Enterprise
Application Integration and Pervasive Platform Services Master of Science Thesis.
Chorafas, D.N., 2016. Enterprise architecture and new generation information systems. CRC
Press.
Goethals, F.G., Snoeck, M., Lemahieu, W. and Vandenbulcke, J., 2006. Management and
enterprise architecture click: The FAD (E) E framework. Information Systems Frontiers, 8(2),
pp.67-79.
Hameed, K., Shah, H., Ahsan, K. and Yang, W., 2014. An enterprise architecture framework for
mobile commerce. DESIGNING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORKS, p.277.
Hansen, P. and Hacks, S., 2017. Continuous Delivery for Enterprise Architecture
Maintenance. Full-scale Software Engineering/The Art of Software Testing, 56.
Iacob, M.E., Meertens, L.O., Jonkers, H., Quartel, D.A., Nieuwenhuis, L.J. and van Sinderen,
M.J., 2014. From enterprise architecture to business models and back. Software & Systems
Modeling, 13(3), pp.1059-1083.
Lapalme, J., Gerber, A., Van der Merwe, A., Zachman, J., De Vries, M. and Hinkelmann, K.,
2016. Exploring the future of enterprise architecture: A Zachman perspective. Computers in
Industry, 79, pp.103-113.
Leist, S. and Zellner, G., 2006, April. Evaluation of current architecture frameworks.
In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied computing (pp. 1546-1553). ACM.

Enterprise Architecture 10
Mowbray, T., Donaldson, G., Keller, B., Neal, C. and Rachakonda, V., 2014. Rediscovering
Enterprise Architecture via Consensus Standards. Enterprise Architecture, (1), p.42.
Nunes, V.T., Cappelli, C. and Costa, M.V., 2016. Promoting Transparency in Government
through FACIN: The Brazilian Government Enterprise Architecture Framework. In Workshop
de Transparência em Sistemas, Rio de Janeiro.
Plataniotis, G., De Kinderen, S. and Proper, H.A., 2014. Ea anamnesis: An approach for decision
making analysis in enterprise architecture. International Journal of Information System
Modeling and Design (IJISMD), 5(3), pp.75-95.
Rouhani, B.D., Mahrin, M.N.R., Nikpay, F., Ahmad, R.B. and Nikfard, P., 2015. A systematic
literature review on Enterprise Architecture Implementation Methodologies. Information and
Software Technology, 62, pp.1-20.
Schekkerman, J., 2004. How to survive in the jungle of enterprise architecture frameworks:
Creating or choosing an enterprise architecture framework. Trafford Publishing.
Schönherr, M., 2006. Enterprise architecture frameworks. Enterprise Application Integration-
Serviceorientierung und nachhaltige Architekturen, Enterprise Architecture, 2, pp.3-48.
Simon, D., Fischbach, K. and Schoder, D., 2014. Enterprise architecture management and its role
in corporate strategic management. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(1),
pp.5-42.
Simon, D., Fischbach, K. and Schoder, D., 2014. Enterprise architecture management and its role
in corporate strategic management. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(1),
pp.5-42.

Enterprise Architecture 11
Urbaczewski, L. and Mrdalj, S., 2006. A comparison of enterprise architecture
frameworks. Issues in Information Systems, 7(2), pp.18-23.
Zarvić, N. and Wieringa, R., 2014. An integrated enterprise architecture framework for business-
IT alignment. Designing Enterprise Architecture Frameworks: Integrating Business Processes
with IT Infrastructure, 63, p.9.