A collaboration process for enterprise architecture creation

Abstract

Designing an enterprise architecture involves architect-specific tasks (those that are executed by enterprise architects) and collaboration dependent tasks (those whose proper execution requires enterprise architects to collaborate with organizational stakeholders). Enterprise architecture frameworks and methods richly inform the execution of architect-specific tasks, but hardly provide detailed operational guidelines for executing collaboration dependent tasks. To fill this gap, this thesis presents CEADA - a process or method that provides an explicit and detailed procedure for executing collaboration dependent tasks. The basic idea in executing collaboration dependent tasks during enterprise architecture creation is to ensure that stakeholders make collaborative decisions on problems (or concerns) and requirements that the enterprise architecture must address. In doing so, stakeholders and architects acquire a shared understanding of the problems in the baseline situation and the requirements associated with the target situation of the enterprise. It is assumed that increased awareness (among stakeholders) of the enterprise architecture creation process, creates a sense of ownership of the architecture creation results, and leads to collaborative organizational change or transformation.