TAXONOMY OF PURPOSE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Nestori Syynimaa

Informatics Research Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, U.K.

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Technology, University of Vaasa, CIO, Anvia IT Ltd, Finland

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Grounded Theory, Semiotic framework.

Abstract: Initial phase of all Enterprise Architecture (EA) initiatives is important. One of the most crucial tasks in that

phase is to sell EA to the top management by explaining its purpose. In this paper, by using semiotic

framework we show that there is a clear gap between the definition of EA and its purpose. Contribution of

this paper is a taxonomy that expands knowledge of pragmatics of EA, and that can be used as a tool for

explaining the purpose of EA. Grounded theory is used to form the taxonomy. Data is collected from a

discussion group used by EA practitioners. Results indicate that the purpose of EA is to meet organisations’

stakeholder’s goals and to create value to organisation. Results are in line with current literature. Most

interesting result is that EA practitioners seem to realise that technical solutions are not the purpose of EA,

but means for fulfilling it.

1 INTRODUCTION

For Enterprise Architecture (EA) initiative, it is

crucial to sell EA to top management (Schekkerman,

2004, p. 103; TOGAF, 2009, p. 83). The lack of

management buy-in is seen as one of the main

reasons for EA initiatives to fail (Perks & Beveridge,

2003, p. 142). Even though EA itself can be used as

a tool to bridge a communication gap between IT

and business (Lankhorst, 2009, p. 11), it is still

challenging to explain why EA should be used.

Thus, motivation for this paper is to find out how to

explain the purpose of EA. Contribution to the body

of knowledge of EA is a taxonomy of purpose of

EA, based on empirical qualitative research on EA

practitioners' view to EA.

Strategy of this paper is following. First we

introduce the semiotic framework. Secondly we look

for current definitions of EA and discuss on them

from semiotics point of view. Thirdly we conduct an

empirical research on practitioners’ view on EA.

Lastly we present results and conclusions.

This paper is a part of a larger research for

understanding the nature of Enterprise Architecture.

2 METHODOLOGY

Purpose of this paper is to construct a theory of the

purpose of EA. To form such a theory, we will use

data of EA practitioners' view to the purpose of EA

by utilising Grounded Theory (GT) application by

Pandit (1996). He introduces five distinct phases on

GT which are research design, data collection, data

ordering, data analysis and literature comparison.

The first phase, research design, contains two steps.

First step is to review current literature to form a

research question. Second step on this phase, and

next two phases, data collection and data ordering,

are not relevant since we are using data already

available. This is explained later on this paper. Data

analysis phase is where the data is analysed using

different types of coding. When data analysis

reaches saturation point, which is the point where

the value of new data is minimal, theory building

process is considered to be completed. Last phase,

literature comparison, is to compare the emerged

theory to current theories and discuss about

similarities or differences.

Qualitative research approach was selected due

to explorative nature of the research problem.

Taxonomy is used to present the emerging theory as

it captures both the concepts and their relations to

each other.

322

Syynimaa N.

TAXONOMY OF PURPOSE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE.

DOI: 10.5220/0003270303220328

In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-8425-26-3

3 THE SEMIOTIC FRAMEWORK

Semiotics is about information science. Eco (1976,

p. 7) defines semiotics as ”..concerned with

everything that can be taken as a sign”. In the

context of semiotics, a sign can be for instance a

word, a sentence, a picture, a blueprint, even a

gesture. Semiotics has been studied for a decades.

Populous semiotics framework from Stamper can be

seen in Figure 1. Many of today’s literature is based

on Stamper’s framework (Beynon-Davies, 2009;

Liu, Clarke, Andersen, & Stamper, 2001).

To better understand semiotics, let’s define some

key concepts seen in Figure 1. Pragmatics is about

the purpose of communication, in other words, why

we are communicating or what we are trying to

accomplish by communicating. Semantics is about

the meaning of messages or signs, in other words,

definitions about things. Syntactics is about the

structure of the messages or signs, such as a

grammar of a language. Empirics is about the

medium used for communication (Barron, Chiang,

& Storey, 1999; Beynon-Davies, 2009; Liu, 2000,

pp 26-35).



Figure 1: Adapted Stamper’s (1973) Semiotic ladder (cited

by Liu, 2000, p. 27).

4 DEFINITION OF ENTERPRISE

ARCHITECTURE

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has multiple

definitions on current literature. The term Enterprise

Architecture consists of two distinct terms,

enterprise and architecture. In the context of EA,

enterprise is defined as a whole or part of an

organisation that has a common goal (TOGAF,

2009, p. 5). In this sense, enterprise can be anything

from a workgroup to a global corporation.

Architecture has also a number of definitions in the

context of EA.

John Zachman (1997) defines architecture as “..

that set of design artifacts, or descriptive

representations, that are relevant for describing an

object such that it can be produced to requirements

(quality) as well as maintained over the period of its

useful life (change)”.

ISO/IEC 42010: 2007 defines architecture as

‘‘The fundamental organization of a system,

embodied in its components, their relationships to

each other and the environment, and the principles

governing its design and evolution’’.

In TOGAF (TOGAF, 2009, p. 9), architecture

has two meanings depending upon the context (i) “A

formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of

the system at component level to guide its

implementation” and (ii) “The structure of

components, their inter-relationships, and the

principles and guidelines governing their design and

evolution over time”.

Federal Chief Information Officer Council of

United States defines Enterprise Architecture as

(CIO Council, 2001, p. 5) “..a strategic information

asset base, which defines the mission, the

information necessary to perform the mission and

the technologies necessary to perform the mission,

and the transitional processes for implementing new

technologies in response to the changing mission

needs. An enterprise architecture includes a baseline

architecture, target architecture, and a sequencing

plan”.

As a summary of previous definitions, taxonomy

of Enterprise Architecture by The Finnish Ministry

of Finance (ValtIT, 2007) can be seen in Figure 2.

Pulkkinen summarises EA (Pulkkinen, 2008, p.

46) as “The management of the ICT assets as

enterprise resources”, “Planning developments of

these assets and developments enabled with them,

like business models, services or processes”,

“Collaboration of different groups; first and

foremost the business and the ICT managers in the

enterprise”, “Managerial activity, meaning decision

making”, “Recording and describing the ICT

resources and evaluating them for the decisions to be

made”, “Scanning for new technology enablers as

part of the environment information the enterprise is

collecting for its strategic management”, “Planning

development steps both for the business and the

supporting ICT, according to the strategies of the

enterprise.”

All of the previous definitions are similar to each

other in a sense that they are on high abstraction

level. Pulkkinen’s summary, however, introduces

some characteristics of EA that are more practical,

such as the management of ICT assets and scanning

of new technology assets. All definitions do share

two common concepts, (i) “evolution” – a managed

TAXONOMY OF PURPOSE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

323



Figure 2: Taxonomy of Enterprise Architecture (ValtIT, 2007) (translated).

change over time, and (ii) formal description of an

organisation at a specific time.

Let’s examine EA from the semiotics point of

view using Stamper's semiotic ladder. The two

concepts found in the current EA literature defines

what EA is. Therefore we can say that we do know

EA's semantics. Moreover, current EA frameworks,

such as TOGAF, contains a set of EA deliverables

which are used as a common language to describe

EA of a given organisation from a given viewpoint.

Thus, we can say that current literature also contains

EA's syntactics. What is missing in the current

literature is a link to EA's pragmatics. As already

noted, it has been found that the support of top

management of an organisation is crucial to the

success of EA initiatives. It has also been found that

managers do not understand what EA is (Rafidah,

Dahalin, Dahari, Kamaruddin, & Abdullah, 2007).

Logical argumentation for the importance of

pragmatics is that if managers do not understand the

purpose of EA, they do not provide support for it. A

place to look for pragmatics of EA is the social

world of EA practitioners. There is some literature

that can be argued to state the purpose of EA (see for

example Pavlak, 2006; Sims, 2005). However, these

references are applicable in the social world of EA

practitioners and cannot be transferred to the social

world of managers as is. Thus, there is a need to find

out the purpose of EA on the conceptual level. This

is also the basis for our research question:

“How does Enterprise Architecture practitioners

perceive the purpose of Enterprise Architecture?”

5 DATA COLLECTING

Data used in this paper was collected from a

discussion group in www.linkedin.com, a social

network used by professionals in various fields. In

October 2009, a question was posted on a discussion

group called “The Enterprise Architecture

Network”. According to group’s profile (LinkedIn,

2010), it is for people into Enterprise Architecture.

The question posted was “Describe the purpose of

EA in one 160 character SMS message (including

spaces, punctuation and carriage returns)?” (Smith,

2009). The data used in this paper was collected

from those discussions between October and

December 2009. Only responses that were actual

answers to the announced question are included in

the data analysis, general comments and discussions

were discarded. There were 125 individual

contributors and 155 definitions or statements. Total

number of members in the discussion group is about

40,000 so respondents represents about 3 percent of

the total population of group members. The

discussion group was still active on 27th February

2010, while there were more than 1,200 responses.

Distribution of respondents’ roles can be seen in

Table 1.

Table 1: Respondents’ roles.

Role n %

IT expert, specialist or professional 3 2 %

EA, software or systems Architect or

Consultant

75 60 %

IT manager, director, or executive 33 26 %

Other / unknown 14 11 %

Total 125 100 %

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6 ANALYSIS

Data analysis was broken down to three phases. In

the first phase, data was reviewed and some initial

notes on key concepts were made. On the second

phase, data was analysed in more detail. Each

response was analysed using microanalysis (Strauss

& Corbin, 1990, p. 57).

Responses included a number of statements of

the purpose of EA. For instance “To make

organizational change less time and money

consuming”, “The purpose of EA is to ensure

digitised organisations meet or exceed customer and

shareholder expectations”, and “To Align Business

and IT”. The first response indicates that the purpose

of EA is to decrease the amount of time and money

while conducting organisational change. Anything

that helps organisation to use less resources creates

value to the organisation. In this case, value is

created by making organisation more agile using

EA. Second response indicates that the purpose of

EA is to meet or exceed customer and shareholders

expectations. In other words, purpose is to meet

organisation’s stakeholders’ goals. Third response

states that EA’s purpose is to align business and IT.

By aligning IT and business, organisations tries to

create value. Value is not in this case necessarily

created by efficiency, but by agility, since after

alignment IT is more responsive to business changes

and vice versa.

It is noteworthy to mention that some responses

actually stated what EA is, not its purpose, this can

also be seen on findings. For instance, one of the

responses were “EA is optimal enterprise business

process, information and technology asset

management tuned to meet customer and

shareholder needs in relevant time frame”. This

implies that EA is a process that aims to fulfilment

of certain needs. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary

defines process as “a series of actions or operations

conducing to an end”. So process can be seen as an

endeavour that ends at some point. According to the

response, this point is when needs are fulfilled.

Another response was “EA is a business planning

method that ensures companies execute informed,

integrated (business and IT), strategically aligned

change programs”. This response has more

meanings than the first one. It implies that without

EA, change programs are not necessary strategically

aligned. Moreover, strategically aligned change

programs are somehow “good for the company”, or

in other words, they create value. Merriam-

Webster’s dictionary defines strategy as “a careful

plan or method: a clever stratagem” and as “the art

of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward

a goal”. Strategy is defined usually by

organisation’s management, owners, or other

stakeholders. Although these responses were

definitions of EA, they also revealed what its

purpose is.

Endeavour

Meeting goals

aims to

Creating value

Stakeholders

Profitability

Competitiveness

Growth

Stability

which are

IT utilisation

by enabling

Agility

Strategic planning

Efficiency

Innovation

Data

Tools

produces

Figure 3: Findings.

Findings from the second phase can be seen in

Figure 3. Data suggests that EA is seen as an

endeavour aiming to reach organisational goals set

by its stakeholders. Those goals are met by creating

value to organisation. EA is a tool or a method,

which produces a description of the enterprise.

On third phase, categories were formed based on

findings. By using axial coding some categories

were combined and irrelevant ones were discarded.

First version of emerging taxonomy can be seen in

Figure 4. As it can be seen, the main category is

Enterprise Architecture, and under that there are

four subcategories. First two categories, Meets

stakeholders’ goals and Creates value are categories

about the purpose of EA. Two remaining categories

are about the definition of EA, which are not the

focus of this paper. Therefore the main category was

renamed to Purpose of Enterprise Architecture and

Description of Enterprise and Method/tool

categories were removed. It is, however, noteworthy

that those categories have similarities with the

taxonomy in Figure 2.

Final emerging taxonomy of the purpose of the

Enterprise Architecture can be seen in Figure 5. The

purpose of EA is two folded. One purpose is to meet

goals of the organisation. These goals are set by

organisation’s stakeholders. Goals to be met are

profitability, competitiveness, growth and stability.

Another purpose is to create value to organisation.

Value is created by agility, strategic planning,

efficiency and innovation.

TAXONOMY OF PURPOSE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

325



Figure 4: Initial emerging taxonomy.



Figure 5: Emerging taxonomy of purpose of Enterprise Architecture.

7 COMPARISON WITH

CURRENT LITERATURE

According to Sims (2005), EA’s purpose is to help

IT to achieve its goals. These goals are time to

market, responsiveness, agility, flexibility and

quality. Goals are met by designing environment

that reduces the effort required to implement

business applications. Sims’ EA’s purpose is in line

with the emerging taxonomy. According to him,

EA’s purpose is to achieve stakeholders’ goals. In

this case, stakeholder is IT department. Sims point

of view to EA is application development. His goals

actually refers to value that application development

should create. These values are also in line with the

emerging taxonomy. Responsiveness and flexibility

are characteristics of agility. Therefore these values

along with agility go under Agility category. As

quality can be understood as organisational

efficiency, it goes under Efficiency category.

According Pavlak (2006), purpose of EA is to

determine the relationship between business

processes and information systems. This aims for

business process automation. Business processes are

to execute business strategy, which is typically

defined by top management. Pavlak’s definition for

EA’s purpose fits perfectly to the emerging

taxonomy. EA’s purpose is to execute strategy (a

goal), which is defined by top management

(stakeholder). EA creates value by identifying

information systems that enables business processes

to be automated, or in other words, making them

more efficient.

According to TOGAF (2009, p. 6), the purpose

of EA is to optimise organisations processes so that

they are responsive to change and execute business

strategy. Furthermore, EA’s purpose is to achieve

competitive advantage. Those descriptions of EA’s

purpose are in line with the emerging taxonomy.

TOGAF’s EA's purpose is to optimise processes

(create value by making processes more efficient), to

execute business strategy (to meet goals) and to keep

organisation competitive.

Zachman’s (1997) framework has a motivation

column, that answers to a question why? In other

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words, what is the purpose of the particular

architecture. Top rows of the framework contains

reasons like Major Business Goals, Critical Success

Factor, Business Objective and Business Strategy.

These all are goals, which in enterprise context are

usually for example profitability, competitiveness,

growth and stability. Therefore it can be argued that

Zachman's framework is in line with the emerging

taxonomy.

8 RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Based on the emerging taxonomy, the purpose of

EA is (i) to meet goals of organisation’s

stakeholders, and (ii) to create value to organisation.

Thus, EA practitioners realises that technical

solutions are not the purpose of EA, but means for

fulfilling it. Moreover, as comparison of emerging

taxonomy to current literature indicated no

differences, EA practitioners can be argued to

perceive the purpose of EA correctly on conceptual

level. Therefore it can also be argued that the

emerging taxonomy presented in this paper can be

used as tool for explaining the purpose EA to

organisation’s top management.

A limitation of this study is that the data used in

analysis is not collected in controlled manner. In

their nature, discussion groups are open to everyone

to post responses. In this case, the discussion group

was focused entirely on EA. Although there are over

40,000 members in the group, it is not fair to argue

that members of the group represent the whole

population of EA practitioners. The data used in this

paper (n=125) is not collected using random

sampling. However, the saturation point in coding

was reached by data used, which indicates that the

data is reliable. As can be seen in Table 1,

respondents were professional practitioners of EA.

Moreover, emerging taxonomy is in line with the

current literature. Therefore it can be argued that the

data and results are valid.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Author would like to express his grateful thanks to

the author of the discussion group, Mr Kevin Smith,

for collecting and giving access to the data used in

this paper. Author also expresses thanks to

anonymous reviewers who helped to improve this

paper.

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