EA management patterns for consolidations after mergers

Abstract

Mergers between enterprises or carved-out parts thereof are a common phenomenon in todays economic environment. They nevertheless form a major challenge for enterprise architects, who have to consolidate, i.e. to harmonize and integrate the business capabilities in the newly formed enterprise, reducing redundancy as far as possible. This article presents a best practice approach to this consolidation endeavor, detailing a methodology to do so together with a supporting viewpoint on the enterprise architecture (EA). An information model, which outlines the information demands for methodology execution, is presented to complement the approach.