Enterprise architecture planning in practice : the perspectives of information and communication technology service provider and end-user

Abstract

Ari Hirvonen kehitti väitöskirjatutkimuksessaan yritysarkkitehtuurin hallinnan ja suunnittelun menetelmiä. Yritysarkkitehtuuri muodostuu muun muassa organisaation liiketoiminta-arkkitehtuurista, joka sisältää muun muassa organisaation strategian, vision, palvelut ja tuotteet sekä prosessit, joissa palveluja ja tuotteita tuotetaan. Yritysarkkitehtuuriin kuuluu myös informaatioarkkitehtuuri, joka sisältää organisaation toiminnassaan tarvitseman informaation. Yritysarkkitehtuurien hallinta on organisaation johdon väline hallita ja kehittää organisaation koko tietotekniikkaa. Ilman yritysarkkitehtuurien suunnittelua ja hallintaa tietotekniikka on tarpeettoman kallista muun muassa päällekkäisten ja ristiriitaisten investointien johdosta ja se palvelee organisaatiota ja sen tavoitteita huonosti.

The role of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has changed dramatically during the recent years. ICT is enabling new businesses and is also one of the key means in organisations’ efficiency improvements. Its strategic role has inspired organisation management to get involved in ICT management, and Enterprise Architecture (EA) has emerged as a framework for planning and managing organisations’ business, information, systems and technologies. Because of the changing role of ICT and new requirements for its development and management, new business oriented consulting services are increasingly requested from ICT services providers. The target of this study was the EA consulting methodology development for TietoEnator, the largest ICT service provider in the Nordic countries. As a starting point, the service provider’s service offerings, its consulting project participation profiles and its project risk and success factors as well as the requirements for EA consulting methodology are analysed. Some of the current academic and commercial methodologies and their usability for EA consulting are studied. Current EA methodologies seem to support the end-users’ continuous EA management process better than they support diverse ICT consulting cases with more variability. Therefore, the EA management grid is proposed as a planning framework for EA consulting. V-model for EA testing and evaluation is developed to support both the end-users and the service providers in EA related testing and evaluation. Project participation profiles for the end-user and the service provider is proposed as the means to support project planning. Usability of Application portfolios for information and communication technologies management, planning and evaluation purposes is analysed. This study was a company wide action research effort. All results presented here were tried out in practice.