Improving EA Evaluations Through the Work-Oriented Approach
摘要
Enterprise Architecture (EA) plays a critical role in delivering information products such as process models, governance frameworks, and reference architectures. For these information products to be effective, they must help stakeholders within an organization to perform their work more effectively—for example, when analyzing organizational structures, introducing new tools, or aligning business and IT operations. Therefore, these information products must be designed with the stakeholders’ needs and practices in mind. This paper presents a systematic literature review focusing on research that evaluates EA and considers stakeholders, their relationships, and their practices. As the foundation for this review, we apply the Work-Oriented Approach (WOA), which structures descriptions of stakeholders, their relationships, practices, use and co-use of information products, and examines how information products are integrated into these practices. The literature review reveals several challenges. A key issue is uneven stakeholder participation in evaluations, with EA experts and IT personnel dominating, while other stakeholders are often underrepresented. Furthermore, stakeholders’ relationships and work practices are frequently poorly defined, making assessing how EA provides tangible organizational benefits difficult. To address these issues, we propose using WOA to improve and shift the focus of EA evaluations towards the work practices most affected by EA. This will ensure that the evaluations are more comprehensive and grounded in the real-world practices of the stakeholders.