Back to top

Collaborative EAM

Collaborative EAM fosters and moderates participation of different stakeholders in the EAM process using lean, agile and Enterprise 2.0 approaches [BBL12].


Collaborative EAM Foundations

One key success factor for EAM initiatives is the collaboration of EA stakeholders [BBL12], since they have to provide their knowledge and participated in the transformation of the EA [RHM13]. According to [BBL12], collaborative EAM is based on three guidelines:

  • “Establish a lean set of processes and rules instead of overloading the stakeholders with bureaucratic processes and unsolicited artifacts.”. This first guideline aims at fostering a lean EAM practice [BBL12].
  • “Adopt evolutionary problem solving instead of blueprinting the whole future rigidly on a drawing board”. This second guideline aims at applying agile software development approaches to EAM [BBL12].
  • “Foster and moderate open participation instead of relying on experts and top-down wisdom”. This third guideline aims at promoting the use of Enterprise 2.0 technologies [BBL12].

 

Lean Approach

The goal of applying a lean approach to EAM is to establish a demand-driven EAM process. This means, a lightweight approach is chosen by eliminating heavy bureaucratic governance concept, over-processing and other types of waste [BBL12].

 

Agile Approach

In software development, agile principles like Scrum and Extreme Programming are increasingly adopted by organizations [Hau+14a]. The advantages of those approaches are an increased flexibility to react to changes as well as regular communication between parties and clear assignment of responsibilities [BBL12]. Since software development as well as EAM have to handle frequently changing requirements while ensuring a close collaboration among the stakeholders, these principles should also be applicable to both [Hau+14a].

A method to enable agile EAM processes is the application of Adaptive Case Management (ACM). In contrast to traditional workflow management, ACM enables the EA stakeholders to adapt their processes at run-time. This way the highly dynamic processes of EA can be easily adapted to changing situations [Hau+14c].

 

Enterprise 2.0 Tools

The basic idea of Enterprise 2.0 tools is to enable the creation of a living community of knowledge workers using technological advancements. This approach can help avoiding an Ivory Tower Syndrome, meaning a breach between high-level vision and ground-level reality [BBL12].

An example for a Enterprise 2.0 Tool are wikis. Wikis are tools for collecting and consolidating distributed knowledge. The most prominent example of such a wiki is the website Wikipedia. On a smaller scale, also a lot of enterprises have established wikis as tools for collaboration and knowledge exchange, since they are characterized by fast access to information and low maintenance costs [Mat11a]. An examples of such wiki software is SocioCortex developed at the Chair for Software Engineering of Business Information Systems at Technische Universität München.


Sources:

[BBL12]

S. Bente, U. Bombosch, and S. Langade. Collaborative Enterprise Architecture: Enriching EA with Lean, Agile, and Enterprise 2.0 Practices. Elsevier, Inc., 2012.

[RHM13]

S. Roth, M. Hauder, and F. Matthes. “A Tool for Collaborative Evolution of Enterprise Architecture Models at Runtime.” In: 8th International Workshop on Models at Runtime. Miami, USA, 2013.

[Hau+14a]

 

M. Hauder, D. Münch, F. Michel, A. Utz, and F. Matthes. “Examining Adaptive Case Handling to Support Processes for Enterprise Architecture Management.” In: 9th Trends in Enterprise Architecture Research Workshop (TEAR). Ulm, Germany, 2014.

[Hau+14c]

M. Hauder, S. Roth, C. Schulz, and F. Matthes. “Agile Enterprise Architecture Management: An Analysis on the Application of Agile Principles.” In: 4th International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2014). Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 2014.

[Mat11a]

C. Matthes Florian; Neubert. “Enabling Knowledge Workers to Collaboratively Add Structure to Enterprise Wikis.” In: 12th European Conference on Knowledge Management - ECKM 2011. University of Passau. 2011.