Enterprise Architecture at Work


Book Description

An enterprise architecture tries to describe and control an organisation’s structure, processes, applications, systems and techniques in an integrated way. The unambiguous specification and description of components and their relationships in such an architecture requires a coherent architecture modelling language. Lankhorst and his co-authors present such an enterprise modelling language that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as-is’ to ‘to-be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues. The modelling language and the other techniques presented have been proven in practice in many real-life case studies. So this book is an ideal companion for enterprise IT or business architects in industry as well as for computer or management science students studying the field of enterprise architecture.




Enterprise Information Systems Engineering


Book Description

The increasing penetration of IT in organizations calls for an integrative perspective on enterprises and their supporting information systems. MERODE offers an intuitive and practical approach to enterprise modelling and using these models as core for building enterprise information systems. From a business analyst perspective, benefits of the approach are its simplicity and the possibility to evaluate the consequences of modeling choices through fast prototyping, without requiring any technical experience. The focus on domain modelling ensures the development of a common language for talking about essential business concepts and of a shared understanding of business rules. On the construction side, experienced benefits of the approach are a clear separation between specification and implementation, more generic and future-proof systems, and an improved insight in the cost of changes. A first distinguishing feature is the method’s grounding in process algebra provides clear criteria and practical support for model quality. Second, the use of the concept of business events provides a deep integration between structural and behavioral aspects. The clear and intuitive semantics easily extend to application integration (COTS software and Web Services). Students and practitioners are the book’s main target audience, as both groups will benefit from its practical advice on how to create complete models which combine structural and behavioral views of a system-to-be and which can readily be transformed into code, and on how to evaluate the quality of those models. In addition, researchers in the area of conceptual or enterprise modelling will find a concise overview of the main findings related to the MERODE project. The work is complemented by a wealth of extra material on the author’s web page at KU Leuven, including a free CASE tool with code generator, a collection of cases with solutions, and a set of domain modelling patterns that have been developed on the basis of the method’s use in industry and government.




Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering


Book Description

Achieving enterprise success necessitates addressing enterprises in ways that match the complexity and dynamics of the modern enterprise environment. However, since the majority of enterprise strategic initiatives appear to fail – among which those regarding information technology – the currently often practiced approaches to strategy development and implementation seem more an obstacle than an enabler for strategic enterprise success. Two themes underpin the fundamentally different views outlined in this book. First, the competence-based perspective on governance, whereby employees are viewed as the crucial core for effectively addressing the complex, dynamic and uncertain enterprise reality, as well as for successfully defining and operationalizing strategic choices. Second, enterprise engineering as the formal conceptual framework and methodology for arranging a unified and integrated enterprise design, which is a necessary condition for enterprise success. Jan Hoogervorst's presentation, which is based on both research and his professional background at Sogeti B.V., aims at professionals in management and consulting as well as students in management science and business information systems.




Enterprise Systems Engineering


Book Description

Although usually well-funded, systems development projects are often late to market and over budget. Worse still, many are obsolete before they can be deployed or the program is cancelled before delivery. Clearly, it is time for a new approach. With coverage ranging from the complex characteristics and behaviors of enterprises to the challenges the




Architecture Principles


Book Description

Enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture. In this book, Greefhorst and Proper focus on the role of architecture principles. They provide both a theoretical and a practical perspective on architecture principles. The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. Architecture principles are regarded as a specific class of normative principles that direct the design of an enterprise, from the definition of its business to its supporting IT. The practical perspective on architecture principles is concerned with an approach to the formulation of architecture principles, as well as their actual use in organizations. To illustrate their use in practice, several real-life cases are discussed, an application of architecture principles in TOGAF is included, and a catalogue of example architecture principles is provided. With this broad coverage, the authors target students and researchers specializing in enterprise architecture or business information systems, as well as practitioners who want to understand the foundations underlying their practical daily work.




Architecture and Principles of Systems Engineering


Book Description

The rapid evolution of technical capabilities in the systems engineering (SE) community requires constant clarification of how to answer the following questions: What is Systems Architecture? How does it relate to Systems Engineering? What is the role of a Systems Architect? How should Systems Architecture be practiced?A perpetual reassessment of c




Agile Service Development


Book Description

Economies around the globe have evolved into being largely service-oriented economies. Consumers no longer just want a printer or a car, they rather ask for a printing service or a mobility service. In addition, service-oriented organizations increasingly exploit new devices, technologies and infrastructures. Agility is the ability to deal with such changing requirements and environments. Agile ways of working embrace change as a positive force and harness it to the organization's competitive advantage. The approach described in this book focuses on the notion of a service as a piece of functionality that offers value to its customers. Instead of solely looking at agility in the context of system or software development, agility is approached in a broader context. The authors illustrate three kinds of agility that can be found in an agile enterprise: business, process and system agility. These three types of agility reinforce each other and establish the foundation for the agile enterprise. Architecture, patterns, models, and all of the best practices in system development contribute to agile service development and building agile applications. This book addresses two audiences. On the one hand, it aims at agile and architecture practitioners who are looking for more agile ways of working in designing and building business services or who are interested in extending and improving their agile methods by using models and model-based architectures. On the other hand, it addresses students of (enterprise) architecture and software development or service science courses, both in computer science and in business administration.




Engineering Mega-Systems


Book Description

With their ability to cross traditional boundaries and achieve a level of functionality greater than their component elements, mega-systems have helped corporations and government organizations around the world resolve complex challenges that they otherwise couldn't address with stand-alone systems. Engineering Mega-Systems: The Challenge of System




Advanced Risk Analysis in Engineering Enterprise Systems


Book Description

Since the emerging discipline of engineering enterprise systems extends traditional systems engineering to develop webs of systems and systems-of-systems, the engineering management and management science communities need new approaches for analyzing and managing risk in engineering enterprise systems. Advanced Risk Analysis in Engineering Enterpri




Enterprise Architecture


Book Description

This book is positioned as a rst in a series of books on enterprise architecture needed for a Master of Enterprise Architecture program, and is targeted both at university students and practitioners with a drive to increase their understanding of these elds. As an introductory book, this book aims to explore the concept of enterprise architecture. At rst glance, writing such an introductory book might seem as a straight forward task of setting up a structure and lling in “the blanks. ” However, writing this book turned out to be a pleasant journey of discovery. Based on our past experiences, each of us had a clear understanding of enterprise architecture, based on several years of experience and insight in the eld. However, when we started writing this book, and each of us exposed our individual understandings, it became apparent that our understanding of the eld differed in several ways. This prompted several discussions leading to an abundance of new insights. Without exception, thesediscussionstookplaceina pleasantandopenatmosphere,fueledbyourshared driveforunderstandingandincreasedinsight. Wearenowevenmoreconvincedthan before, that the eld enterprise architecture is a true multi-disciplinary profession. In the resulting book, we would like to share our insights, while also hoping to continue our discussions, now also involving you as a reader. We also realise that the journey is still far from complete. While this introductory book provides an overview of the eld of enterprise architecture from the perspective of our insights, many aspects need further re nement.