Enterprise Architecture Analysis and Network Thinking: A Literature Review

Santana, Alixandre; Fischbach, Kai; Moura, Hermano Perrelli de

doi:10.1109/hicss.2016.567

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…There is an extensive volume of prior work discussing the systems nature of enterprises, as well as the systems approaches, as a means of solving various problems also considered in the field of EA. A limitation of our study is that prior work spread out to various fields, such as cybernetics [17] and EA network analysis [49], and not covered in detail here. Further, comparisons with the work in SoSE [18] as another promising line of research, is out of the scope of this study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems Approaches in the Enterprise Architecture Field of Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Nurmi

Pulkkinen

Seppänen

et al. 2018

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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This study explores the use of the systems approaches (systems thinking and systems theories) as the theoretical underpinnings for Enterprise Architecture (EA) research. Both the academic and the practitioner communities have maintained an interest in EA due to its potential benefits, promising for the recent technological and business advances. EA as a research area is, however, characterized by diversified views depicted in different definitions of the concept, and no acknowledged common theoretical foundation. A number of prior studies have noticed this gap in the EA field of research, and called for a strengthening of the theory of EA. Variegated systems approaches have been suggested as a theory base. The aim of this study is to examine if, and to what extent the systems approaches could provide a common theoretical foundation. We contribute with a systematic literature review on the state-of-art of systems approaches in EA research. We find that the systems approaches are, indeed, frequently referred to in the EA studies. However, as of yet, the application of these theories appears to be fragmented, and the approaches are rarely systematically used in empirical studies. We discuss the findings, reflecting to the types of theory and the use of theory in our area of research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems Approaches in the Enterprise Architecture Field of Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Nurmi

Pulkkinen

Seppänen

et al. 2018

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The notion of applying network science to enterprise architectures is not new, with several authors noting that pertinent aspects of an enterprise can be represented as a complex network of relationships and dependencies across multiple components and thus can be analyzed using network science approaches. A literature survey is provided by Santana et al . Network analysis on enterprise architectures has used centrality measures, such as Betweenness Centrality and Eigenvector Centrality to identify which components are most important to the overall architecture in terms of their relationships .…”

Section: Applying Network Science To Systems Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A literature survey is provided by Santana et al . Network analysis on enterprise architectures has used centrality measures, such as Betweenness Centrality and Eigenvector Centrality to identify which components are most important to the overall architecture in terms of their relationships . There appears to be no agreement in the literature about which aspects of an enterprise should be captured within an enterprise architecture, nor is there agreement on how such an architecture can be modeled from a network perspective—indeed, this is identified as an open research question …”

Section: Applying Network Science To Systems Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

A network perspective on assessing system architectures: Foundations and challenges

Potts

Sartor

Johnson

et al. 2019

Systems Engineering

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Organizations are increasingly faced with the challenge of architecting complex systems that must operate within a System of Systems context. While network science has offered usefully clear insights into product and system architectures, we seek to extend these approaches to evaluate enterprise system architectures. Here, we explore the application of graph‐theoretic methods to the analysis of two real‐world enterprise architectures (a military communications system and a search and rescue system) and to assess the relative importance of different architecture components. For both architectures, different topological measures of component significance identify differing network vertices as important. From this, we identify several significant challenges a system architect needs to be cognisant of when employing graph‐theoretic approaches to evaluate architectures; finding suitable abstractions of heterogeneous architectural elements and distinguishing between network‐structural properties and system‐functional properties. These challenges are summarized as five guiding principles for utilizing network science concepts for enterprise architecture evaluation.

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“…Further, Rahimi et al [48, p. 138] discuss the "importance of systems thinking and, especially, of adopting the open systems principle, for managing EA design and evolution". Recently, EA has been applied in networked [4,14,52] and ecosystemic [21,38,47] settings. Systemic and ecosystemic stance on public administration, and government architectures have been discussed especially in the context of e-government [26] and smart cities [7,27,38,39], as well as other endeavors [e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Ecosystemic Stance in Finnish Public Sector Enterprise Architecture

Nurmi

Penttinen

Seppänen

2019

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Governments and organizations in both public and private sector are operating in fields of ever-growing uncertainty and complexity. To study this complex environment, the concept of ecosystems has been suggested, interpreting organizations as intertwined systems among layers of evolving ecosystems. While offering possibilities, operating in an ecosystemic environment might prove to be challenging, and the change from traditional governance structures might be difficult to manage, requiring holistic yet detailed view. Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been an interest of academics and practitioners for few decades, offering one of the most prominent solutions to managing complex organizations. Recently, it has been discussed that EA should further evolve to respond to the interconnectedness of organizations', thus extending the focus of enterprise architecting from intra-organizational to the ecosystems level. Based on data from 26 in-depth practitioner interviews in Finland, we discuss how EA should be developed to better support Finnish public sector ecosystems. Our data indicates that qualities such as organizational capabilities, holistic view, cocreation and needs-based utilization are essential features of public sector ecosystem EA.

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Enterprise Architecture Analysis and Network Thinking: A Literature Review

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

Systems Approaches in the Enterprise Architecture Field of Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Systems Approaches in the Enterprise Architecture Field of Research: A Systematic Literature Review

A network perspective on assessing system architectures: Foundations and challenges

Towards Ecosystemic Stance in Finnish Public Sector Enterprise Architecture

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