Enterprise architecture driven approach for digital transformation of modern organization
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2018
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The acquisition of real-time data is only possible if systems are end-to-end connected across an entire organization. To generate effective real-time information, organizations need to streamline their business processes, rationalize their applications and deploy technologies that address the needs of the organization rather than individual departments. Hence, it is critical for organizations to embrace the Enterprise Architecture (EA) best practices, open standards, architectural design patterns, proven methodologies and architectural frameworks. Furthermore, the trend towards the model and architecture driven design that addresses disruptive technologies and needs of the business will continue. A non-sustainable option is to stick with spaghetti-like architectures.
This research explores the impact of applying The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF) methodology on the digital transformation of business organizations. The core components of methodology that use open standards and best-practices are evaluated from the business perspective. Several, real-life and industry-based action research studies are elaborated on, and both pitfalls and merits of the architectural approach are discussed.
Massive amounts of data collected and analyzed to benefit this research originate from large scale, and actual industrial projects. The data collection for the research was executed while the real projects were running using surveys, questionnaires and observation notes both before and after the project. The data collected were compared and validated with the theoretical model. Validation of various architectural models and methods was performed using an action studies approach. Enterprise Architecture practice takes a rather long time to realize real benefits. Therefore, a Qualitative approach supported by statistical analysis was performed as a part of the experimentation that confirmed the validity of the initial hypothesis. A critical approach to a priori data collection at the beginning of the project and posteriori data collection after project execution was applied. Also, an adaptive model of Archers Morphogenesis was used for identification and validation of the selected categories and attributes of the research outcomes.
The key projects that contributed the relevant data used in this research originate from such domains as: education, health, logistics, utility and financial sectors. The results obtained confirm that a successful, digital transformation needs to be EA-Driven. It was also found that for EA practice to be successful, maturity assessment should be done across all stages of the Architecture Development Methodology (ADM) cycle. Hence, it's critical to use a suitable EA tool to perform this task.
The investigation has justified the merits of using the EA Approach for Digital Transformation. Notably, the proposed extended Comprehensive Capability Maturity Model (CCMM) Assessment framework represents the research contribution of the thesis. The model enables to capture a realistic estimate of cost, time and efforts to match the business objectives. Organizations can get the actual value of digitization by choosing the best breed of methodologies to obtain optimal results. Using proposed sophisticated enterprise architecture tools is validated in action studies, allows to capture real-time information that is required to perform the advanced impact analysis to assist decision making and foster organizational innovation.
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