Does Enterprise Architecture Form the Ground for Group Decisions in eGovernment Programme? Qualitative Study of the Finnish National Project for IT in Social Services

Saarelainen, Miia-Maarit; Hotti, Virpi

doi:10.1109/edocw.2011.26

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Insufficient management commitment during EA development is reported as a major issue in the literature (Lucke, Krell, and Lechner 2010;Seppänen, Heikkilä, and Liimatainen 2009;Valtonen et al 2011;Ylimäki 2008). A lack of shared understanding of EA is another major issue that is frequently reported in the literature (Hjort-Madsen 2006;Iyamu 2009;Saarelainen and Hotti 2011;Seppänen, Heikkilä, and Liimatainen 2009;Ylimäki 2008). The issues of shared understanding and communication are related to each other.…”

Section: Enterprise Architecture Development Obstaclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In practice, EA development projects encounter different challenges, and not all of these projects end with success (Haki, Legner, and Ahlemann 2012;Roeleven 2010;Schmidt and Buxmann 2011;Seppänen, Heikkilä, and Liimatainen 2009). Many studies have addressed the challenges and issues in EA development, but none of these have gone further than proposing taxonomies (Armour and Kaisler 2001;Bricknall et al 2006;Chuang and van Loggerenberg 2010;Hauder et al 2013;Isomäki and Liimatainen 2008;Iyamu 2009; Jahani, Reza Seyyed Javadein, and Abedi Jafari 2010; Kaisler, Armour, and Valivullah 2005;Löhe and Legner 2014;Lucke, Krell, and Lechner 2010;Nikpay et al 2013;Roth et al 2013;Saarelainen and Hotti 2011;Seppänen, Heikkilä, and Liimatainen 2009;Valtonen et al 2011;Wan, Luo, and Luo 2014;Ylimäki 2008). Therefore, there is a need for research to move further than categorising the challenges of EA to a more theoretical direction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lack of Communication and Collaboration in Enterprise Architecture Development

Banaeianjahromi

Smolander

2017

Inf Syst Front

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Enterprise architecture (EA) is widely employed to reduce complexity and to improve business-information technology (IT) alignment. Despite the efforts by practitioners and academics in proposing approaches to smoothen EA development, it is not easy to find a fully successful EA. Because EA development is a complex endeavour, it is important to understand the obstacles that practitioners face during EA development. With the grounded theory, we studied how obstacles during EA development emerged from practitioners' point of view in 15 large enterprises. The study identifies lack of communication and collaboration as the core obstacle that can explain many other obstacles. Communication and collaboration were also harmed by other perceived EA development obstacles, including lack of knowledge and support inside organization and issues imposed by external parties, hesitation in training personnel, setting too ambitious goals, constant change of management, (lack of) clarity in EA development process, lack of budget, forcing personnel to adopt EA, lack of motivation, organizational culture, and organizational structure deficiencies. The lack of communication and collaboration caused several undesired effects to organizations, such as being unable to set common goals and achieve a shared understanding, personnel's distrust, endangered EA governance, lack of innovation capability, lost competitive edge, and ineffective EA outputs. The study highlights that organisations should improve their communication and collaboration before embarking on EA to encounter fewer obstacles. We provide four recommendations for practitioners to improve communication and collaboration in EA development.

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Section: Enterprise Architecture Development Obstaclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lack of Communication and Collaboration in Enterprise Architecture Development

Banaeianjahromi

Smolander

2017

Inf Syst Front

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“…In another study, Seppänen et al (2009), determined three key issues in EA implementation by studying two governmental agencies [27]: (1) the lack of establishing proper EA governance, (2) insufficient support for the development, and (3) inadequate resources to achieve the former two. Furthermore, Saarelainen and Hotti (2011), identified four EA challenges while investigating the role of EA in the E-Government program [29]: (1) difficulties to introduce EA thinking to the whole project, (2) executive group does not understand the meaning and purpose of EA, (3) lack of shared understanding and communication, and (4) lack of understanding of the whole picture. In another study, Valtonen et al (2011) proposed EA as a tool for improving the coherency of the local government and its alignment to IT and other resources through an action research [30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Top Management Commitment in Enterprise Architecture Development in Governmental Organizations

Banaeianjahromi

2018

CSIMQ

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Governmental organizations adopt Enterprise Architecture (EA) not only to enhance their performance and efficiency but also to move toward egovernment implementation. The article at hand investigates the EA development obstacles in governmental organizations. An interpretivist paradigm using the grounded theory methodology (GTM) was selected to carry out this study. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 9 governmental organizations in Iran. In total, 17 obstacles were identified. This study revealed the precedence in addressing EA development obstacles and top management commitment category was identified as a category that has the highest impact on the EA projects. It was realized that the commitment that top management level of the organizations show toward EA development projects, motivates employees to effectively engage with the projects. In addition, a committed top manager assigns adequate resources to the EA project in order to prepare the infrastructure of the company. In this study, government and politics category appeared to be a category of external obstacles that affects most of the other categories directly or indirectly. This study contributes to industry and academia by investigating the EA development obstacles.

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“…A recurring problem pertains to organisational issues, such as inadequate support, involvement and understanding from management and business units (Hjort-Madsen and Pries-Heje, 2009;Banaeianjahromi and Smolander, 2016;Dang and Pekkola, 2016;Banaeianjahromi, 2018a;Seppänen, Penttinen and Pulkkinen, 2018). Furthermore, socio-technical issues related to the many different actors involved from different autonomous organisational units pose problems with authority, prioritising of projects and agreement on standards (Boh and Yellin, 2006;Hjort-Madsen, 2006;Saarelainen and Hotti, 2011;Drews and Schirmer, 2014;Bakar and Selamat, 2016;Dang and Pekkola, 2016).…”

Section: Enterprise Architecture and Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enterprise Architecture Implementation Is a Bumpy Ride: A Case Study in the Norwegian Public Sector

Ajer¹,

Olsen²

2019

EJEG

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Enterprise architecture (EA) is a widespread approach for the development of new digital solutions in a planned and controlled way for large and complex organisations. EA is also viewed as a prerequisite for the digitalisation of the public sector. However, public sector organisations struggle to implement EA programmes, and research has demonstrated that organisational and managerial issues are critical obstacles to EA implementation. This study aims to increase our understanding of EA implementation in the public sector by investigating the central challenges for EA initiatives and to trace the progress of current EA initiatives in the Norwegian public sector. An additional goal is to disclose some ways to improve the situation. We conducted three interpretive case studies in the hospital, higher education, and labour and welfare sectors. We have identified 28 challenges to the EA initiatives. We find that organisational and technical complexities, as well as a limited understanding of EA and lack of formal EA governance mechanisms, are significant obstacles. Among others, the lack of understanding of EA and its methodology will lead to problems with anchoring the EA approach in the organisation and facilitating the necessary EA arrangements to induce the promised benefits of EA, which are necessary requirements to establish the EA initiative’s legitimacy and foster the organisation’s willingness to implement change. Our study provides four lessons learned for planning and implementing EA initiatives, as follows: #1. It is advisable to take small steps. #2. The use of external consultants should be carefully considered. #3. Formal architectural governance mechanisms are important for legitimacy and enforced use. #4. Executive commitment and understanding of EA are crucial for achieving a sustainable EA initiative. Finally, we find a common evolution of the EA initiatives through the phases of optimism, resistance, decline and finally, reconsolidation of the most persistent ones.

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Does Enterprise Architecture Form the Ground for Group Decisions in eGovernment Programme? Qualitative Study of the Finnish National Project for IT in Social Services

Cited by 7 publications

References 18 publications

Lack of Communication and Collaboration in Enterprise Architecture Development

Lack of Communication and Collaboration in Enterprise Architecture Development

The Role of Top Management Commitment in Enterprise Architecture Development in Governmental Organizations

Enterprise Architecture Implementation Is a Bumpy Ride: A Case Study in the Norwegian Public Sector

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