ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE AS A SYSTEM ENGINEERING DISCIPLINE

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE AS A SYSTEM ENGINEERING DISCIPLINE

Marcin Roszczyk SYNTHETIC SYSTEMS www.syntheticsystems.eu

Introduction The Enterprise Architecture (EA) term is widely used in the IT management world. Many organizations following the EA hype decided to introduce this practice with the expectation to improve their architecture management processes and centralize its IT strategic governance. Extensive literature has been written describing the benefits of EA covering many aspects from IT strategy formulation and “IT business alignment”, planning till architecture governance and strategy execution. Nowadays, the establishment of the EA practice in the organization usually reflects to some extend its maturity and advancement. From the theoretical perspective it seems obvious that centralized and coherent governance of the IT resources and its alignment with the business model and strategy should bring mostly benefits, and therefore EA, with its systems engineering principles, has potential to become the primary method supporting the design and management of a complex organizational systems. In practice however, practitioners still struggle to introduce the effective EA mechanisms and to avoid the increase of bureaucracy, overlaps and conflicts with other organizational management functions. The EA efficiency depends strongly on its particular implementation, adoption and positioning in the organizational decision process and structures. Currently EA is not sufficiently standardized as a system engineering discipline. The frameworks proposed and being iteratively developed by industry (e.g. TOGAF, Zachman), still provide rather high level descriptions and definitions of the artifacts and processes. As a result, the EA in many organizations, is implemented just as an umbrella to multiple aspects of IT management and governance aspects such as application portfolio analysis, solution architecture, service management etc. On the other hand, in many cases it lacks the holistic, integrated and complete view of all aspects of organizational systems from strategy formulation till its execution.

Organization as a System In light of the general theory of systems and “systems thinking” the enterprise can be also perceived as a complex socio-technical system composed of people, process and technology (Dietz et al., 2006). Systems thinking draws upon the assumption that the entity can be analyzed from the perspective of an interaction and relationship between its component parts. Roth et al. generalizes the systems concepts “as a larger entities in which we function” and furthermore he defines the organizations as a subsystems of a larger enterprise systems. Roth also argues that “systems thinking is vital to understanding enterprises” and to operate it effectively (Roth et al., 2015). The popular EA framework - TOGAF – promoted by Open Group, in its newest version 9.1 extended its scope and now considers more holistically, the entire enterprise as a system.

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Figure 1. Enterprise perceived as a system composed of people, processes, technology subsystems – operates in the context of the external factors

Furthermore, every system can be perceived also as a part of larger system – a context in which it operates. The organizational systems are placed in a wider economic, political and social environment. They are constantly influenced by the market forces and technological and business innovations resulting in the need for constant adjustment of the business strategy and organizational capabilities. The increase in the market competition enforces the companies to merge, consolidate or constantly update their strategic alliances which results in a continuous organizational transformation. As a result the enterprises endlessly update their strategies, innovate and implement new business models and technologies. The bigger the organization the more complex is the transformation and more sophisticated governance and management tools and methods are required to efficiently execute the change. Martin Op ’t in his book “Creating Value by informed Governance” argues that in context of current market challenges related to global competition, market dynamism and complexity of the organizations there is a need for “new instrument” and above all a coherent, consolidated and systemic approach to manage the organizational changes (Op ’t et al., 2009). Nowadays, more than “alignment of business and technology” it is the fusion and synergy of those two domains that creates the unique strategic capabilities and competencies of the organization - as Op't writes “Technology becomes part of almost everything and most processes have become at least IT reliant, if not fully automated” (Op’t et al., 2009). A system oriented perception of an organization allow its decomposition into multiple subsystems, layers, views and components and ease the analysis of the complex relationship and dependencies between them. The popular vision of the organizational system defines it as a system of systems (i.e. subsystems) of people, processes (e.g. business capabilities, functions and services), information and technology (i.e. technological tangible and intangible resources). Each organizational subsystem can be further decomposed into sub-layers and components, for example the business processes can be decomposed into sub-processes, functions and services and IT layer into application, data and IT software and hardware infrastructure. Such a methodic description of the organizational system structures creates a fundament for efficient planning and communicating its changes. Traditionally, the organizational changes are managed simultaneously although to some extend separately and consecutively from multiple perspectives: strategy, business models, organizational structures, processes, resources and operations as well as at the “soft” layers of behavioral patterns and organizational culture (Fritzneschaft, 2014). Multiple organizational change management techniques are concurrently applied under projects and program management umbrella. This approach, although predominant, originates from the times when the technology was not the core assets of the company’s and therefore it lacks “systems thinking”.

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Nowadays, the “systemization” of the organizations advances from the technology side as more IT systems become the foundation of the business core capabilities. This need of the system focused approach to management of the organizational system changes is fulfilled to some extend by the enterprise engineering concepts and furthermore by the creation of the enterprise architecture discipline, methods and tools.

Enterprise Architecture as a System Engineering Discipline EA has naturally evolved from the IT world focusing primarily on the IT systems landscape but it is increasingly being adopted by the business and it gradually becomes the integral tool and method of the business strategic and organizational planning. With the assumption that the organization can be perceived as a socio-technical system of systems the EA can be considered a specialized discipline of the system and enterprise engineering. System engineering in turn is perceived as a problem solving method with “holistic an integrative” approach (Griffin, 2007), that looks at the “big picture” of the problem and all its socio-technical aspects and composing parts (Williams, 2006) (Kapurch, 2007). The common systems engineering definitions summarized by Moser in his book “Systems Engineering, Systems Thinking, and Learning” emphasize aspects such as: holistic, integrative and multidisciplinary view, but also continuity, iterative, phased and top-down approach (Haskins et al., 2010)(Eisner, 2002)(Sage 1980)(Williams, 2006)(Griffin, 2007). Sage, defines systems engineering as a supportive for management in “direction, control, and regulation of activities relative to forecasting, planning, development, production, and operations of total systems” and to maintain overall “integrity and integration as related to performance and reliability” (Sage 1980). Furthermore the enterprise engineering and enterprise architecture as a sub-discipline of systems engineering, are focused on building or changing the organizational systems. They provide methods and tools allowing problem solving by structured and systemic decomposition of the organizational systems structures into smaller parts - subsystems and components and analysis of their relationship and dependencies, thus improving so called “business and IT alignment” (Nadler et al. 1992) (Lankhorst, 2013). The modeling and visualization techniques such as “viewpoints” increase the transparency, understanding and ease the communications between multiple stakeholders and reduction of the “informational silos” (Op ’t et al., 2009).

Figure 2. Enterprise Architecture as a System Engineering discipline

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In fact the EA discipline combines multiple sub-disciplines and capabilities. In practical implementations the proposed EA frameworks provide an umbrella for the various analysis, management and governance techniques. According to Lankhorst, EA is a a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an enterprise’s organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure (Lankhorst 2013). The EA should not be perceived as a management practice but rather a set of engineering techniques, methods and tools used to support the management of the organizational system. IT glues the complementary practices of IT management: the IT strategy and IT governance. It can be used as a method of translation of the strategic level into organizational system implementation level. At the current stage of the EA discipline evolution it is positioned as a supporting and complimentary function of the organization. It cooperates with the other well established practices of: IT Governance, ITSM – IT Service Management, Operations Management, and Project Portfolio Management. Especially interesting is the comparison of the EA with the ITSM as those disciplines have relatively closest range of similar capabilities. However, in principle EA is positioned more in the strategic and ITIL in the operational space and what is more important the EA has higher focus on systems and systems thinking while ITIL on services.

Figure 3. ITIL versus EA – service versus system focus

EA is on the other hand closely interrelated with IT governance. Conceptually the EA could be positioned as one of the disciplines and methods of the wider IT governance which in turn is positioned as a subdomain of the corporate governance. In practice, however the interrelation of the EA and IT governance will depend on the particular EA framework used or its particular implementation scope. As some EA frameworks such as TOGAF propose to implement multiple IT governance in its architecture management process.

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Figure 4. EA interrelation with IT governance

Third important IT business management practice that is closely related to EA is the project portfolio and program management (PPM, PMO). The EA very efficiently can complement program management office (Op ’t et al., 2009), especially by introducing the continuity which the program management lacks by nature (i.e. even the longterm programs are usually finite initiative. At the same time, most of the EA governance frameworks are designated to provide the perpetual ongoing mechanism of the organizational change envisioning, planning, execution and control.

Finally, many authors position EA as a tool to support strategy formulation, planning and strategy execution. Evidently, EA can provide insight into the organizational strategic capabilities and resources as well as help planning transformation. In most cases however the current EA frameworks lack the efficient business strategic toolbox and techniques or at least efficient links to business strategy artifacts. All in all the EA distinction from other techniques used in management is above all its engineering and system oriented approach that allow holistic, integrated but also methodic and iterative decomposition and analysis of the “problem”.

Summary The benefits of the EA discipline and its engineering approach in comparison to other IT management techniques seem more obvious when the organizations are perceived as a complex socio-technical and economic systems. In modern organizations the fusion of social, information, process and technological aspects is increasing and the dynamism and complexity of changes requires even more coherent, centralized, methodic and systemic approach. The EA perceived as a system engineering method seems well positioned to fulfill those requirements, always when in practical implementation its “systems thinking” embrace all aspects of the organizational architecture and it is not focused only on technical resources. EA evolved from the IT world and continuously expands towards the complete organizational engineering discipline but it still lacks the industry standardization and proven practical patterns and therefore, in many cases it is implemented as a complimentary practice to support IT program and portfolio management or as part of occasional IT strategy projects. With its “system thinking” and high level generalist focus EA however, it has potential to be considered the central point of consolidation of multiple management methods and tools especially in the context of the organizational change management.

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Radhakrishnan, R. 2008. The domains and roles of ITIL and TOGAF within an organization Taken from ITSM Frameworks and Processes and their Relationship to EA Frameworks and Processes. The Open Group.

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