Lecture 3.1 EAM Motivation and Overview

Question 1

Which challenges need to be faced when managing application landscapes?

Answer 1

IT lies in dense fog
- business criticizes low benefit of IT
Lack of interest of management
Unclear responsibilities

Question 2

What often happens when platform functionality is increased?

Answer 2

Often the platform efficiency then decreases. Then a platform replacement is needed, which is often not possible

Question 3

How to balance efficiency and functionality?

Answer 3

Managed evolution. You make incremental improvements so that the functionality does not deteriorate too fast.

Question 4

What is system complexity?

Answer 4

number, variety, and dynamicity of elements and their dependencies

Question 5

How to reduce system complexity?

Answer 5

• Differentiation between necessary and unnecessary complexity
• Aligning the IT architecture with the future business architecture
• Coherent transformation through coordinated IT projects

Question 6

What does IT Architecture Management do?

Answer 6

reduce the IT Landscape complexity surplus

Question 7

What does Business Architecture Management do?

Answer 7

reduce the business complexity surplus

Question 8

What is an enterprise architecture?

Answer 8

It concerns the vertical and horizontal dependencies between business capabilities, business services, and infrastructure services

Question 9

How many models does EAM use?

Answer 9

at least 3

Question 10

What are the EAM models?

Answer 10

• current state of the EA
• planned state of the EA derived from planned and budgeted projects for transforming the EA until a certain point in time.
• target state of the EA describes an ideal state to be pursued according to the strategies and architectural principles of the organization

Question 11

What should the business architecture model focus on?

Answer 11

The current stakeholders and their information demands

Stakeholder –> Concern (information demand) –> Viewpoint –> Model

Question 12

Do you ever see EAM in its entirety?

Answer 12

No, only from a certain perspective

Question 13

Reflect & Adapt cycle for EAM and its influence factors

Answer 13

Develop and Describe ->
Communicate and Enact ->
Analyze and Evaluate

influenced by:
- enterprise context
- organizational context
- EAM goals
- EAM questions
- maturity of other IT management functions

Question 14

Does EAM have to be integrated with other management functions?

Answer 14

Yes, architectural changes are performed through a coherent set of projects

Question 15

Which position does a company strive to be in in a customer centric business network?

Answer 15

Platform provider/ coordinator
–> integration of all services e.g. Car2Go

Question 16

What is results oriented control and management?

Answer 16

Digital devices enable companies to create new forms of controlling their own business.
The outcome economy shifts the focus from selling things to selling results.
–> E.g. from the sale of a book to reading habits (kindle)

Question 17

Old is a company-centric design of the IT architecture. What is the new version?

Answer 17

Outside-in thinking. Here the IT architecture is based on the future skills of partners and customers.

Question 18

To which new priorities does digitalization lead in the design of IT application landscapes?

Answer 18

Now the requirements of organizations are more focused on flexibility and connectivity than on functionality

Question 19

What does service-oriented application landscape architecture look like?

Answer 19

• separation of front-end and back-end systems
• modularization of back-end systems
• flexible and fault-tolerant coupling via service interfaces

Question 20

ESB

Answer 20

Enterprise service bus = an architecture for integrating many applications together

Question 21

How to separate customer channel systems in the modular service-oriented application landscape architecture

Answer 21

• separation of internal ESB and external bus based on IT
• return channels are powerful data analysis systems
• systems for modelling and managing dynamic service networks

Question 22

What are the 3 EAM schools of thought?

Answer 22

• Enterprise IT Architecture
• Enterprise Integration
• Enterprise Ecological Adaptation (most modern)

Question 23

What is Enterprise IT Architecture about?

Answer 23

• EA is the glue between business and IT
• support IT planning, reduce costs
• apply a reductionist (mechanistic) stance

Question 24

What is Enterprise Integration about?

Answer 24

• EA is the link between strategy and execution
• support organizational coherence
• holistic (system) stance
• enable significant organ. efficiency

Question 25

What is Enterprise Ecological Adaptation about?

Answer 25

• EA is the means for organizational innovation and sustainability
• encourage system-in-environment coevolution
• environment can be changed -> jointly design all organizational dimensions

Question 26

Limitation of Enterprise IT Architecture

Answer 26

• can produce inadequate or unfeasible solutions for the larger organizational context.
• struggles with solution acceptance and implementation barriers.
• susceptible to perfect designs that support unsustainable strategies

Question 27

Limitation of Enterprise Integrating

Answer 27

• susceptible to perfect design that supports unsustainable strategies
• requires paradigm shift from reductionism to holism

Question 28

Limitation of Ecological Adaptation

Answer 28

• requires many organizational preconditions for management and strategy creation