Roadmaps for enterprise architecture evolution

Abstract

Managing the enterprise architecture (EA) is a major challenge of every larger modern enterprise. Aligning business and IT in order to optimize their interaction is the main goal of EA management. The first step of an EA management approach typically is to analyze and document the as-is-situation. Subsequently, the second step has to be the management of the EA evolution in order to achieve the desired target EA. Although IT projects guide this evolution by implementing the transformations from a current to an envisioned architecture, they are considered sparsely by EA approaches. Therefore, this article presents a methodology pattern (M-Pattern) describing a process including all necessary tasks and associated roles, which help to cope with the challenge of EA evolution management.