Business Architecture Implementation

The Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline was initiated roughly two decades ago. During the same timeframe, Information Technology (IT) spending has generally increased year after year. As a result, organisations have started to consider implementing EA projects to better manage their IT spending. When implementing EA projects, Enterprise Architects may choose to use EA frameworks as a guide to help them manage the complexity within enterprises. These frameworks are generally strong in the descriptive sense, but weak in the actionable one. EA essentially entails the collaboration between the business and IT elements, which are intertwined in any given EA project implementation. Despite the extensive details pertaining to EA frameworks, and the use of these frameworks in aiding EA project implementations, Enterprise Architects may find themselves having to deviate from a framework’s prescribed guidelines when implementing an EA project. As such, this thesis conducts an in depth comparison between the Business Architecture (BA) element’s theoretically prescribed implementation steps, and its practical implementation guidelines that are commonly applied by Enterprise Architects. The Open Group’s Architecture Framework (TOGAF) was selected within this study, enabling the comparison to be performed. Interviews with Enterprise Architects across Sweden and Denmark were carried out in order to determine the steps that they put into practice during the actual implementation of the BA phase within an EA project. The empirical findings obtained as a result of these interviews illustrate that a number of differences exist between TOGAF’s prescribed steps for implementing the BA phase and the steps practically implemented by the experienced Enterprise Architects. In overall terms, TOGAF was found to provide fairly comprehensive guidelines regarding BA’s implementation. However, certain steps could be further enhanced by making a number of small, but significantly important modifications to them, ensuring that their practical implementation is achievable to a higher degree. Consequently, this study aims to provide Architects with more comprehensive guidelines that will aid them when implementing the BA phase within EA projects. Additionally, by raising awareness of the existing differences, this study should enable Architects to take actionable steps in order to bridge this existing gap when implementing EA projects