Towards a conceptual framework for interactive enterprise architecture management visualizations

Abstract

Visualizations have grown to a de-facto standard as means for decisionmaking in the management discipline of enterprise architecture (EA). Thereby, those visualizations are often created manually, so that they get soon outdated since underlying data change on a frequent basis. As a consequence, EA management tools require mechanisms to generate visualizations. In this vein, a major challenge is to adapt common EA visualizations to an organization-specific metamodel. At the same time, end-users want to interact with the visualization in terms of changing data immediately within the visualization for the strategic planning of an EA. As of today, there is no standard, framework, or reference model for the generation of such an interactive EA visualization. This paper 1) introduces a framework, i.e. an interplay of different models to realize interactive visualizations, 2) outlines requirements for interactive EA management visualizations referring to concepts of the framework, 3) applies the framework to a prototypical implementation detailing the therein used models as an example, and 4) compares the prototype to related work employing the framework.